The Daddy Dance (19 page)

And as Kat looked more closely, she saw other resemblances, as well. The line of Niffer’s jaw. The tilt of her nose. The way that she clutched a red bandanna, tight in her left hand.

Left.

Like Rye.

Suddenly, everything was bright around the four of them, as if they were illuminated from within. There was a buzz in Kat’s ears, a humming sound. The roof of her mouth had gone numb, and she realized that her fingertips were tingling. She felt isolated from the world. Cut off. Alone.

“You’re her father,” Kat said.

Those three words jolted through Rye like a bolt cutter.

His first response was relief. At last, his secret was out. He was through with the lies, done with the stupid disclosure he’d been struggling to make since Josh had told him the truth.

His second response, though, was sickening fear. The color had drained from Kat’s cheeks; she looked like she had seen a ghost.

He should have found a way to tell Kat sooner. He should have owned the situation instead of waiting for her to uncover it this way. If he’d stepped up to the plate, he could have broken the news more gently, explained everything more completely. Even over the phone—he could have protected her, guided her, made her see how this had happened.

Well, he hadn’t chosen the time or the place, but he could still make Kat understand. Tenderly, he reached out to take her arm, to guide her toward the nearest bench.

She pulled away from him as if his hands were acid. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped. Her voice was high. Broken. She sounded as if she were fracturing into a million jagged pieces.

“Kat, it was a long time ago.” He pitched his voice low, unconsciously slipping into the comforting register that he would use for an injured animal, for a sick child.

“Rachel is my
sister
.” Kat’s eyes were wide, unfocused. “You slept with my
sister!
”

Of course, what she said was true, the bare words. But there were a dozen things wrong with that sentence, a hundred ways that the facts failed to capture the reality. Starting with: “It was six years ago. We only dated for a few weeks.”

“You told me that! But you never said you
slept
with her!”

Rye glared at Rachel, at the pink-haired harpy that was laughing at him over the head of her distraught daughter. “Tell her, Rachel. Tell her that it never meant anything.”

Impossibly, Rachel was throwing back her head to laugh. But no. That wasn’t
impossible
. Rachel had been manipulating Kat for years. Manipulating him, as well, even when he hadn’t realized they were enmeshed in a game.

Now Rachel settled a hand over her daughter’s—
their
daughter’s—head. “I don’t know, Rye,” she said. “I wouldn’t say that it never meant
anything
.”

A strangled sound caught at the back of Kat’s throat. Instinctively, Rye glanced around to see who was watching them. The kids were all playing at the far end of the park, shouting and running around in circles. A couple of the adults had glanced their way, but no one was close enough to hear. Kat whispered, “Were you planning on telling me anytime soon, Rye?”

“I didn’t know… I only found out last week.”

Rachel laughed—a harsh bark. “Not very observant, then, were you?”

“You stay out of this!” He would have said more, would have lashed out with the anger that flashed through his chest, but he saw Niffer cringe against her mother’s side. He forced himself to lower his voice, and he bit out the words, “Rachel, you are not helping here.”

“It’s not my job to help you, is it?”

“Mommy?” Niffer whispered, but her question was perfectly clear. “Why is Mr. Harmon angry?”

“I don’t know, baby,” Rachel said, her voice as sweet as molasses dregs. “I think because he was caught lying to Aunt Kat.”

“Gram says it’s bad to tell a lie.”

Rachel’s laugh was loud, like the call of a raucous jay. “Yes, baby. Telling a lie is definitely bad.”

Rye thought his heart would break as Niffer turned toward him, her jet-black eyes enormous in her pale face. “You shouldn’t tell lies, Mr. Harmon.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said, before he’d thought out a way to explain all of this to a child. “It was more of a…secret.” As Rachel laughed again, Rye turned to Kat. The color had come back to her face with a vengeance; her cheeks were spotted with two hectic patches. He could hear her breath coming in short pants, and she hugged herself like a wounded creature. “Kat,” he said. “Let me explain.”

Kat heard his plea, and her belly twisted into a pulsing knot. Even so, she felt disconnected from her body, cut loose from the arms and legs and heart that she was so used to working, every minute of every day. Her hurt and fury cut her off from herself, like a shimmering electric curtain. She wasn’t certain where her words came from, where she found the strength to ask, “What could you possibly have to say? How could you possibly have forgotten to mention something so important?”

It wasn’t fair. It had never been fair. Rachel had always gotten her own way, done whatever she wanted to do, and damn the consequences. Rachel had never bothered with goals, with strategies. Rachel had always broken the rules. Rachel had lied to Susan and Mike all her life, lied to Kat, lied to her own daughter, Niffer.

Why
Rye
? Of all the men that Rachel could have had, why did it have to be Rye?

Kat’s thoughts collapsed in on themselves, sending up embers of memories. She was back in the high school auditorium, her cheeks wet with tears of adolescent frustration, with shame at being laughed at by the high school kids. She was staring at Rye, confused by his kiss, even as she was delighted by the tenderness he had shown her.

She’d been mortified to find her sister waiting for her, embarrassed to hear that Susan was waiting outside, ready to drive them both home. Rachel had eyed Kat with a knowing expression. Rachel had bided her time, never telling Susan and Mike what she’d seen backstage in the high school auditorium. Rachel had known even then, even when they were in eighth grade, that she was going to set her hat for Rye Harmon.

But Rachel couldn’t have done it alone. She couldn’t have broken Kat’s heart without an accomplice. She couldn’t have turned Kat’s life upside down without Rye playing along.

“Rye,” Kat said, and her heart was breaking. “How could you?”

He sighed, unsure of the answer, even as he knew he had to find one. “I swear I didn’t know, Kat. Not until last week.”

“Last
week
? You admitted that you dated her, but it went a bit beyond that, didn’t it? A
lot
beyond that.”

“I should have told you everything. I didn’t think it mattered.” He hadn’t wanted it to matter.

Kat shook her head vehemently, clearly rejecting his excuses. “Where?” she demanded. “Where did you sleep with her?”

There wasn’t any good answer, nothing that would help Kat to understand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Was it in her house? Rye, were you on her couch? In her bedroom?” Kat twisted her mouth around the ugly questions.

Rye knew that she had to be picturing the room where they had embraced, where he had first realized the fragility of the soul inside her steel. Even now, he could picture Kat’s mouth open in a perfect O of ecstasy as she shuddered beneath him, as she rode the waves of pleasure that he had given to her—
her
—because she was the woman he wanted to be with. She was the woman he loved.

The woman he loved.
The realization tore through him, dragging him away from the perfection of memories, pushing him back to the terrible, horrible
now
. He loved Kat, and he had somehow managed to hurt her more than he had ever hurt anyone before. He shrugged helplessly, unable to imagine words that would reassure her.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her breath came in short gasps. “I thought we were working together, Rye.”

“We were!”

Rachel chortled at his protest, even as Niffer asked her mother what was going on.

Kat could not believe Rye. Not when his secrets involved Rachel. Not when they involved the sister who had let her down—let her entire family down—so many times in the past. Kat laughed herself, but there was no humor behind her words. “I fell for everything, didn’t I? Hook, line and sinker. Oh my God, I am so stupid!”

“Kat, you know that isn’t true. Listen to me. This doesn’t have to change anything between us. This doesn’t have to be the end.”

“Really? Rye Harmon, why should I believe anything you say, ever again?” Her words chased after each other, tumbling from her lips as if they had a life of their own. She was hurt. She was embarrassed. She was utterly terrified that Rye was telling her the truth now, and she feared that he was not. She didn’t know what to believe, not anymore. Not after she’d been so blind.

The only way she could protect herself, the only way she could defend the wounded perimeter of her heart, was to lash out—fast, and furious, and with the sharpest weapon she had in her arsenal. “You don’t know how to have a real relationship, do you, Rye? That’s why you moved to Richmond in the first place. So that you wouldn’t have to deal with
feelings
, with responsibility. Everything was fine between us, as long as we were both just having fun. But when things got serious, you shut down. When you learned the truth about Niffer, you stayed away—avoided me for an entire week! You chose Rachel and Richmond over Niffer, Rye. Over me.”

How could she have let this happen?

Her mother had told her to be happy. Her mother had told her to relax her rigid rules. Her mother had told her to take each day as it came, to enjoy herself.

And this was the result.

Kat had set her rules, years ago, for one simple reason. Rules protected her. Rules kept her safe. Rules preserved her from the jagged pain that was shattering her even now. She never should have relaxed her standards, never should have given in. She never should have let Rye take the fortress of her heart, of her solitude, of all the protective isolation she had built when she was a teenager.

“Kat, I never chose Rachel over you. I stayed in Richmond because I’ve spent the past week trying to figure out how to tell you the truth. You have to understand. I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did,” she sobbed. “You really did, Rye. I thought we had something special. I thought there was a real connection between us. I thought you understood who I am, and what I want, what I
need
.”

He had one last chance here. One final opportunity to use words to make it right. “I do, Kat. I promise you, I do.”

She shook her head hard enough that her easy chignon fell loose about her face. “No! If you truly understood me, you would know that this is one thing that I can never, ever forgive.”

He reached out for her, desperate to change her mind.

“Don’t touch me!” That shout was loud enough to get attention. Out of the corner of his eye, Rye could see faces turn. He could measure the moment when everyone recognized Rachel, when they discovered the drama unfolding in their midst.

“Kat,” he said again, stepping closer, trying to keep this horrible, awkward conversation between the two of them.

“Leave me alone!” Kat jerked her arm up, pushing his away. The contact hurt, but not nearly as much as the desolate look in her eyes.

“Hey, buddy.” Brandon’s voice floated across the playground as his cousin jogged up to his side. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Rye said tersely. Kat turned away, trying to hide her tear-streaked face. He took a step to close the new distance between them. Before he could say anything, though, Brandon’s fingers closed on his biceps.

“Rye,” Brandon said. “Buddy—”

“Leave me alone,
buddy
.” He jerked his arm away, letting some of his frustration curl his fingers into fists. “Kat and I are just talking.”

“It doesn’t look like Kat wants to talk right now.” Brandon pitched his voice low.

“Kat—” Rye appealed.

“Please,” she said through her tears. “Just leave me alone. I don’t want to hear anymore. I can’t think about this right now.”

“Kat—” he tried one more time.

Brandon shouldered between them. “Come on, buddy—”

Hopeless, helpless anger flashed crimson across Rye’s vision. Anger with Brandon, for acting like the town sheriff. Anger with himself, for hurting Kat so deeply. Anger with Rachel, for dragging him into this entire ridiculous mess so long ago, for avoiding his calls until she could inflict maximum damage here, today.

Rye turned on his heel and strode across the park, making his way past the laughing children and their naive game of rescuing the princess. He barely resisted the urge to shout at them, to tell them that the princess was never going to be rescued. The princess was lost forever.

Chapter Nine

K
at felt everyone’s eyes turn toward her as Rye stalked off. Brandon took a step closer, asking, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, knowing she was lying. How much did he know? How much had he overheard of her fight with Rye?

Her cousin Amanda appeared out of nowhere. “Kat!” Amanda’s eyes slid over to Rachel, to the still-cowering Niffer. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she repeated, looking around for an escape, knowing that she had to get away from everyone. Amanda seemed to be the Pied Piper; half of Eden Falls followed behind her. A couple of people called out to Rachel, welcoming her home. A few more hollered for Susan and Mike to join the crowd. Kat looked at the sea of faces, and she felt like she was going to faint.

Susan took one glance at her daughters and set her lips in a grim line. “Rachel,” she said, and then she reached out for Kat. “Come sit down, baby. You look like you’ve seen a ghost! We’re all worried about you.”

Baby. That was what Rachel called her daughter. Called
Rye’s
daughter. One more time, Kat said, “I’m fine.” When it was obvious that no one believed her, she looked her mother right in the eye. “Did you know?”

“Know what?” Susan honestly looked perplexed.

“About Rye and Rachel. About Niffer.” Kat watched the crowd jostle closer. She imagined the whispers that were even now skating away to those out of earshot. The scandal would be front-page news in seconds.

Susan said, “Dear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even as her kindly face registered concern, though, Kat read sudden comprehension in her eyes. There. Every single person in Eden Falls would add one and one together. They would all know how Kat had been deceived.

Kat pushed away her mother’s fluttering hands. “I have to go, Mama.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I just have to get out of here.”

Susan looked around helplessly. “Let me get your father—”

“No, you stay with Daddy. And Niffer, too. And Rachel.” She practically spat her sister’s name.

Susan sounded panicked as she said, “I don’t want you going off on your own, dear. You’ve had a terrible shock. Amanda can—”

“No!” Kat heard the anguish in her voice, and she knew she shouldn’t be shouting at her mother, shouldn’t take her anger and pain out on an innocent victim. There had been enough innocent victims this spring—herself and Niffer heading up the list. But Kat couldn’t hand herself over to Amanda’s solicitous care. She couldn’t face her cousin’s concerned look, her certain questions. Not when Amanda knew so much already. Not when Amanda had been there, the night that Kat and Rye first… She forbade herself to think about that night, to think about the couch, to think about the white-hot heat that had… Forcing her voice to a quieter register, Kat said, “I’m fine, Mama. I just need to get away from here.”

And then, because she knew she could not hold back the fresh tears, because she knew she could not bear the pitying looks of the crowd, because she knew she did not have the first idea of what she could ever say or do to make everything—anything—right again, Kat turned on her heel and strode across the park.

She surprised herself by arriving at the parking lot. Rye’s truck hulked in a nearby spot, gleaming silver in the bright afternoon sunlight. And all of a sudden, Kat knew what she had to do.

She glanced at her watch. Half an hour. Plenty of time.

Ignoring the people who must still be staring at her, Kat pulled open the truck’s door. His keys were exactly where she expected to find them—on the floor mat, just where he had dropped them the night he took her out to the diner. The night he brought her home. The night he fooled her into thinking she was special to him, that they had shared something beautiful and meaningful and unique.

Her mind was filled with memories of Rye. The weight of him, settling over her. The heat of his mouth on hers. The wild passion that he had stroked to life between her thighs. The crashing release that he had given her, the bonds that had pulled them closer to each other.

Or so she had thought.

Her fingers trembled as she picked up the keys. Even as she wanted to block Rye’s voice from her memory forever, she heard him instructing her. Foot on the brake. Key in the ignition. Turn the key. Shift into Drive.

Before, when she had driven the truck, she had been haunted by all the things that could go wrong. She had cringed at every sound, shied away from every fast motion.

This time, she did not care. She did not worry about damaging the vehicle, about embarrassing herself in front of the patient man who had sat in the passenger’s seat. She did not think about what it meant to conquer a simple summit, the sort of responsibility that nearly every person she knew had accomplished when they were mere teenagers, when they only
thought
they were burdened by all the cares in the world.

Remembering Rye’s instruction, Kat looked left, then right, then left again. She shifted her foot off the brake, fully ready when the truck’s massive engine began to pull it forward. She gripped the wheel and drove the pickup out of the parking lot.

Afterward, she could not have said how many stop signs she confronted. She could not have told whether the single traffic light was red or green. She could not recount how many trucks she passed, or how many passed her. She only knew that she drove the pickup to the train station, to the empty asphalt patch where her homecoming had begun, a month before.

Was it only a month? Kat felt as if she’d changed so much. When she had arrived in Eden Falls, she had been bound by her lifelong mantra—goals, strategies, rules. The
rules
especially—she’d had one for every situation. She’d known what to expect of herself, of others.

But in one short month, she’d discovered a new way of living. A way that included Magic Zoo and ice cream and late-night bacon blue cheeseburgers and glasses of beer swilled at an actual roadside bar. What had Susan said? That she wanted to see Kat embrace her impulsive side. Well, here was impulse, all right. Let Susan and Mike and Rye and Rachel settle everything, after Kat was back in New York. They’d work it out between them.

Kat shifted the truck into Park and dropped the keys on the floor mat. Entering the tiny station building, she immediately realized she was alone—no one to sell her a ticket. That was fine. She could buy one on the train.

Kat patted the tiny purse that swung from her shoulder. She had bought it when she splurged on her green blouse—was it only the day before? She’d somehow thought she’d been changing herself, remaking herself so that she could live in Eden Falls for the rest of her life.

Ironic, wasn’t it? Kat had finally realized she could stay in Eden Falls, work beside her mother at the Morehouse Dance Academy, teach the Advanced Showcase class, and
be happy
, maybe for the first time in years.

But that was before the
Family
Day picnic. That was before she’d learned the truth about her family. About her sister and the man that Kat had come to love.

No. She couldn’t say that. Couldn’t believe it. She could not love Rye. Not after what he’d done. Not after the secret he had kept from her. Sure, he might only have known that he was Niffer’s father for a week. But he had known that he’d slept with Rachel long before that. Slept with her, and kept the truth from Kat. Slept with her, and minimized the connection, made it sound casual, like nothing more than a meaningless fling.

No. She could not love Rye.

She had only
thought
she loved him. She’d been deceived. Rye had presented himself under false pretenses. Whatever emotions Kat thought she had felt were lies. Lies, like his silence had been.

She couldn’t sit still on the station’s hard wooden bench. She needed to pace, needed to shed some of the physical energy that still sparked through her. She wrapped her arms around her belly and measured out her steps, planting her heels as firmly as if she’d never been hampered by a walking boot.

She should call Haley. Let her roommate know she was coming back to their apartment. Kat was going to make the midnight deadline for the
Coppelia
sign-up after all. She was returning to her life as a dancer.

Forget about
fun
. Dance was her career.

And all that justifying she had done before, all the ways she had convinced herself that Eden Falls was right for her? That was just Kat’s tactic for grappling with fear, just like she’d suffered from homesickness, years before, when she’d first moved to New York. She had been
afraid
to reach out for the role she really wanted. She had abandoned her goals, slashed through her strategies, trampled every one of her rules. All because she was afraid she might not have what it took to dance Swanilda.

What had Rye said to her, the day she ran his truck into the ditch? She had to get back on the horse that had thrown her? She had refused then, but she was never going to back down again. Ballet had thrown her, when she developed her stress fracture. Well, it was high time for her to head back to New York. To get back to her real life.

Of course, she didn’t have a way to reach Haley. Her cell phone was useless here. And she didn’t have any change with her; she couldn’t place a call from the ancient pay phone in the corner.

What did it matter, though? She had a credit card; she could buy her train ticket north. And once she got back to the city, she had an apartment full of belongings.

Kat paced some more. This was what Susan had hoped for, wasn’t it? That Kat would cast off all bonds, all limits. Susan just hadn’t realized that her daughter would use her hard-won freedom to return to New York, without planning, without luggage, without restraint.

She crossed to the wall of windows and pushed her cheek against the glass to peer down the long line of tracks. No train in sight yet. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes.

A strong breeze gusted through the station as the far door opened and someone stepped inside.

When had she learned to recognize the sound of Rye’s footsteps? She knew he was standing behind her. She could hear him breathing. She knew that he swallowed hard. She could imagine him reaching toward her, flexing his hands, letting his empty fists fall to his sides.

“Kat,” he said. “Please.”

She breathed in deeply, as if the gesture could pour steel down her spine, could give her the strength to withstand the next five minutes, until the Clipper chugged into the station. Setting her jaw so that she couldn’t possibly say the wrong thing, she turned to face him.

Rye marveled at the change that had come over Kat in the four weeks since they had last been at the train station. Then, she had been a frigid woman, desperate to control the world around her, iced over with frozen fury at the dancer’s body that had failed her. Now, he saw a passionate creature, someone who embraced challenge and battled it on her own ground. He had seen her consumed by passion, not just beneath his fingers, not just in response to his lips, but in the very way she tackled living every day.

He had tested a hundred conversational openings on the way from the park, so intent on finding the words to keep Kat in Eden Falls that he nearly crashed his brother Noah’s sports car a dozen times. He thought he had worked out the perfect plea, but now all those eloquent words fled him. He was reduced to repeating the only thing that mattered: “Kat, please. Don’t leave me.”

She glanced at her watch.

He was afraid to check his own, afraid to discover how little time was left for him to plead his case. Instead, he took advantage of her silence, spinning out all the things he’d meant to tell her, all the confessions he’d longed to make. “I know it seems like I deceived you. Hell, I
did
deceive you. And I can’t imagine how I’ve made you feel. But you have to understand—I didn’t know. Not until I saw Josh Barton in Richmond. I’ve spent the past week trying to find Rachel and ask her if it was true. Trying to figure out the right way to tell you. Trying to figure out all the right words.”

“But you didn’t tell me. Rachel did.”

She spoke so quietly that he almost missed her words. She directed her speech to the knot of her fingers, white-knuckled across her flat belly.

Nevertheless, he took heart that she had said
something
. If she was willing to spare him any words at all, that meant they were having a conversation. They were still communicating. The door between them was still open, even if he could barely make out a glimmer of light on her side.

Even though he knew he was fighting against time, even though he was certain the hourglass was draining away, he chose his words carefully. “I wish it hadn’t happened that way. I wish I had told you the second that Josh walked away, in Richmond. I wish I had taken out my phone, dialed your number and told you everything, all at once.”

She did not seem to hear him. Instead, she looked around the train station, like a woman in a trance. “Did you know it was me that first day? Did you think I was Rachel?”

This time, she met his eyes. Her silver gaze was cloudy, shrouded in misery. He heard the tremble behind her words, knew she was questioning the very foundation of everything they’d had together.