Dancing for the Lord: The Academy (17 page)

“I did it, didn’t I?” he shot back.  The effect was ruined somewhat by the fact that his left hand was pressed hard against his right shoulder, and even to discount her theory that he needed to take a break, he couldn’t pull it away.

“Yeah, and how much are you hurting right now?”  She fell completely out of position, letting her posture slump.  “If you were having trouble, you should have
said
something to me! We could have called it an early day.”

“As hard as you’ve been pushing?”  He snorted.  “You wouldn’t have had any patience at all for me needing to take a break!” 

“A break?  You need to take a
day!
”  Danni dragged her hands through her hair, ignoring the fact that the gesture sent pins flying everywhere. 

“What do you want me to do?” he demanded.  “You need to practice with me.  Allie needs to practice with me.  And heaven forbid I shouldn’t be on hand for any of the other dances I’m supposed to be involved in.  Your practice schedule alone would run me into the ground, but I’ve got news for you, Danni:  you’re not the only one who wants a piece of my time!”

“Well, go on, then!” she snapped.  Her voice was still quiet, but somehow, there was more menace in it than if she had shouted.  “Get out of here.  Go work with all the other people who need your time and attention.  I’m doing fine, in case you hadn’t noticed.”  She pivoted on one foot and strode over to her bag, ignoring the sudden surge of tears behind her eyes.  She was
not
going to let him see her cry—not for him. 

A long silence passed; suddenly, Nick’s hands closed on her shoulders, and he turned her to face him.

Danni didn’t even think about disobeying.  She had been following his every cue for days, learning to listen for his soft voice, to feel his gentle commands.  This was just one more—though she regretted it the moment she turned to face him.  She had been determined not to let him see the fact that he had upset her, and here she was, letting it all show.

She ducked her head; he tipped it back up with gentle fingers.  “I’m sorry,” Nicholas said simply.

Danni darted a look at him, actually meeting his eyes for the first time.  “What?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated patiently.  “None of this is your fault.  And I keep forgetting….”  He sighed, knowing that his next words were as likely to set off a fresh explosion as they were to calm anything.  “I keep forgetting you aren’t Katarina.” 

Danni’s eyes snapped fire at him, but she didn’t say anything.  Surely he’d had a point, if he was going to insult her that thoroughly. 

“It’s not….”  He sighed, letting her go so that he could pace the small space uncomfortably.  “I told you when I first met you that there are things about Katarina that I admire and even appreciate.  Her innate sense of grace.  Her work ethic.  Her
determination to give everything that she does her absolute best, no matter what it costs her.  You…share some of those qualities.”

“No matter what it costs
me
.”  Danni added the emphasis to the word very quietly and very gently.  “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, Nick.” 

“I know you wouldn’t.  I just….”  He dragged his good hand through his hair.  Being a guy, he didn’t have to worry about pins.  “Can you imagine what it was like for me?” he asked quietly.  “Even a little bit?  I told her that my shoulder was hurting, and she insisted that I needed to just keep working for it.  ‘It won’t get any better if you don’t push’ was kind of the party line.  And I know that, okay?  I know that if I don’t push, I’ll never get the arm back to where it was.  I’ve lived with that reality since I first got hurt.  So I work as hard as I can for as long as I can, and I ignore the pain until it starts affecting my ability to control my muscles—because I don’t want to put you in danger.”  He took a deep breath.  “I don’t want…what happened to Kat….” 

Danni didn’t make him say it.  “You don’t want me to get hurt.” 

“Exactly.”  He looked relieved.  “But with her, it was always one more after what I thought I could do, you know?  So I learned to keep my mouth shut and just do it, and she’d feel it when my arm actually started shaking, most of the time.” 

“I feel it,” Danni said quietly.  “I didn’t realize how far beyond your endurance you had pushed, for it to be doing that.”

Nicholas winced.  “I guess you wouldn’t, huh?” he asked quietly.

“Not unless you tell me.”  Danni sighed.  “I know now,” she offered. 

“You know now.”  He closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall with a grimace that showed her far more clearly than anything he might have said just how intense the pain had gotten.  “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Danni said simply, “that I’m calling it quits for the day.  If I need a partner, I’ll go hunt down Androv.”

“I don’t want you to have to do that,” Nick told her. 

“I know.”  She smiled, grateful that he couldn’t see it because she knew it didn’t entirely meet her eyes.  “And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me—but honestly, Nick, I think I’ve got it.  The practice now is just…well, if you asked Michael, he would probably tell you that I get a little bit compulsive about these things.”

“A little bit compulsive.”  He actually opened his eyes to look at her then.  “Is that actually how he would describe it?”

“No.”  She grinned, and this one actually was genuine.  “He would describe me as the practice Nazi—but even he knows better than to lie to me about how he’s feeling.”  With a sigh, she admitted, “Though to be honest, I should have figured it out for myself.  I…actually, I had forgotten that you were working with Allie, too.” 

It was Nick’s turn to sigh now, letting all his breath out in one great whoosh that conveyed more about his feelings than he realized.  He didn’t want to tell her…but at the same time, if he didn’t, she was going to keep blaming herself for the fact that he had pushed too hard.  That wasn’t what he wanted—not at all.  “Listen, Danni,” he said carefully.  “I’m not….”  He hesitated.  It was so hard to get the words out!  “If you’d been Kat…I wouldn’t have pushed as hard to be here for you.”  That wasn’t what he really wanted to say.  He tried again, conscious as he did so of the furrow between her brows. 
“It’s peaceful, having someone to work with who just…gets it.  You don’t dwell on the bad stuff; you just…dance.  And every time you dance, you dance for God.” He still wasn’t saying it right.  “I like being around you, okay?  I like spending time with you.  And your focus right now is on the dance, so the easiest way to get your company has been to just dance with you.”

Danni gaped at him as though he had suddenly started speaking a foreign language. 
Oh.
  She smiled at him—a dazzlingly bright smile that told him that no matter how difficult it might have been, telling her the truth had been the right thing to do.  “I enjoy being around you, too,” she admitted shyly.  “It’s nice…having another believer around.”

“Precious few of them around here.”  Nick bent, gathering his things and tossing them haphazardly into his bag.  He’d clean it out later…like after
The Nutcracker
was over.  “I’m sorry,” he told her seriously.  “I didn’t mean to blame you for any of this—because none of it is your fault.”

“Apology accepted.”  She hesitated, but the look in his eyes was so wistful that she couldn’t do anything else:  she leaned over and gave him a firm, reassuring hug.  “You still want my company?” she asked as she pulled away.

Nick nodded, half relieved that his confession hadn’t scared her and half intrigued by her question. 

“Want to go study for a few hours?  I think we’ve done all the damage we can do in here today.”  The offer was a genuine one; her eyes even sparkled as she gave it. 

“That sounds…good,” Nick admitted slowly.  “Very good, actually.”  He tried for a smile.  “I don’t guess you’d be willing to take it back to my place, let me ice my shoulder while we work?”

“There’s ice at my place, too,” she pointed out.  “And I have a bigger stack of pillows than you do.”  She grinned.  “Not to mention the fact that I actually know where all of my textbooks are.”

“Oh, well, when you put it that way.”  He hadn’t actually misplaced his.  He knew where they were…mostly.  It was just that his math book—always his weakest subject, and the one that he liked the least as a result—was under his bed.

Somewhere.

And now that Danni mentioned it, he didn’t particularly feel like digging for it, either.  “Your place it is,” he informed her grandly. 

The one thing that neither of them had taken into consideration—the thing that they had forgotten, as they teased one another and enjoyed each other’s company—was that Katarina was in Danni’s dorm.  She had made herself scarce for the first week or so; and that scarcity had given them a false sense of security.  They had gotten used to the fact that yes, she was around somewhere, but there was no reason for them to worry about her.

There was just one problem with that mentality:  Katarina was feeling better.  She had learned how to navigate on her crutches, and she was tired of sulking up in her room, playing the part of the injured princess and allowing anyone who was interested to wait on her hand and foot.

She was downstairs in the common room when they got there.

Danni, for the most part, ignored her.  It was how she typically treated the other girl; thanks to Katarina’s injury, she was at least less inclined to spit bile at her every time she turned around, and Danni was doing her best to take advantage of that fact. 

Unfortunately, for Nicholas to ignore Katarina would have been the height of rudeness.  They had been partners for several months, and even developed a tentative friendship.  If he walked by without acknowledging her, she would be insulted—and not only that, she would probably have a whole new set of nasty things to say about him in front of half of the Academy. 

Bad enough that she had tried to trash his reputation when she got hurt.  It would be worse if she went after him again now.

So he sighed, lifted a quick prayer for strength heavenward, and leaned in the doorway to the common room, making sure to prop his good shoulder against the wall and not the bad.  “Hey, Katarina,” he said quietly.  Caution made him keep his voice low; his determination to not make her angry again reminded him to use her full name, as he almost never did when speaking
about
her.  “How are you feeling?”

She glared up at him.  “Better—no thanks to you,” she said sourly.  “What, is it too much effort to pick up a blasted telephone and call to see how your partner is? 
She
doesn’t have any trouble with it.”  She transferred her glower behind him, guessing that if he was there, Danni probably wasn’t far behind.

As it happened, she wasn’t—well, she was in the kitchen, retrieving an ice pack for Nick’s shoulder and letting Mrs. Baxter know that he was there.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t close enough to come to his defense. 

“Excuse me?” Nicholas asked tightly. 

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t know?  She’s up there every night talking to her partner back home, going on and on about how much they miss each other.”  Katarina rolled her eyes.  “I don’t know what she’s whining about when she’s got you.” 

For a moment, Nick considered responding with jealousy.  The longer he danced with Danni, the more he liked her—and the more he wanted to keep dancing with her even after
The Nutcracker
was over.  Oh, the odds in favor of it weren’t good—but they looked good together, and the teachers usually tried to keep pairs together if they could.  They considered it unfair to force them to learn to dance with someone else at the same time as they learned a new routine, especially as quickly as those were thrown at them.  Having Danni go back to Michael as soon as he arrived would be a blow.

On the other hand, her loyalty to her partner was commendable—and he remembered her saying that Michael wasn’t just her partner, he was also her best friend.  It would have devastated her to hear that he was jealous of that friendship. 

Besides,
that still, small voice inside him reminded him gently,
look who’s saying it.

Katarina wasn’t exactly known for her honesty.  Danni and Michael might miss each other; but Nick was sure that he was well on his way to attaining her loyalty and her friendship. 

He shifted his weight, trying to ease some of the ache in his shoulder.  It wasn’t working.  What he really needed was that big mound of pillows up in Danni’s room—a mound even more extensive than his own, and therefore twice as comfortable.  “Last time I talked to you, you made it pretty clear that you didn’t want to be anywhere near me,” he pointed out quietly.

“Oh, that.”  Katarina waved it off.  “You didn’t actually take me seriously, did you?  I mean, I was hurting, you know?”  She cast a haughty glance at his shoulder.  “Something you ought to understand.”

Yeah—and I never once lashed out at you just because I was hurting, even when you were the one causing it.
  Nick didn’t dare say that aloud, however.  Starting a fight with Katarina now wasn’t his intention. 

Actually, he wasn’t sure what his intention had been.  He had just known that if he didn’t speak to her on the way by, she would be furiously insulted—though there wasn’t any real justification for her anger.  They had never really associated outside of dance class.  Oh, they’d talked occasionally—for her to inform him that she needed him to be in a certain place at a certain time for so many hours of practice.  In all the months that they had worked together, he had never gotten to know her any better than he had the first time he had danced with her.