CREATURE

・chapter 22・

Asya rested her head against the coolness of the wall next to her with a heavy sigh, closing her eyes for a few moments to see if she could soothe the throbbing headache she'd woken up with that morning.

A few days had passed since her little meltdown of sorts in the dressing room, and much to her own dismay, since then things had gone from pretty bad to unimaginably worse. Her hip was flaring up every chance it got, her head was spinning from performing three different roles every night and rehearsing four others during the day, and most recently, she'd been struggling to get in a decent night's sleep no matter how brutally exhausted she was.

It all started that night she'd decided to stay behind for a few hours and rehearse Gamzatti. After the evening performance she made herself sick in a desperate effort to soothe her anxiety, and as usual, it had made her feel blissfully numb and empty, wide awake and craving something to do. So she'd popped a few painkillers and made her way to the studios to squeeze in some rehearsal time, thinking she'd be alone.

And then he showed up.

There was no fathomable excuse for what she allowed to happen that night. She should have said no, just left for goodness sake, or tried to put him off for good, but instead she let him touch her, put his hands on her, make her trust him. The painkillers must have messed with her head, because there was simply no other way she would ever have agreed to something as reckless as that.

But as disgusted as she was with herself for allowing it to happen, she couldn't deny that the results were nothing short of intoxicating. Over her short career she worked with some incredible partners, among them Julian, Ivan, and even a few of the other male principals. And tragically, none of them were in the same league as the cursed, wretched, selfish maniac who called himself Roman Zharnov.

With one dance that couldn't have lasted more than two minutes hed redefined everything ballet meant to her, torn down all she knew about technique and classical principles and left nothing untouched. It was like he'd ripped her apart and delved into the most hidden parts of her, split her right open, and dared her to get lost in the broken pieces with him. In movement, athleticism, and the deepest, most lucrative layers of what two souls shared when they danced.

But there was no escaping reality once it ended, he was still the same scandal-tainted rebel had been before, and she was still under orders from her coach to stay away from him. She'd gone home and showered twice to try and scrub him off, and then lay in bed for hours tossing and turning while she replayed that dance in her head over and over like a tireless obsession. When she got to the theatre the next morning she was irrationally paranoid that his handprints were somehow visible on her, on her thighs, stomach, back, arms, like he somehow managed to brand her as a traitor in those few minutes.

She was ashamed. She'd let down Debbie, who had so clearly warned her about staying out of his way. To so blatantly go against a coach's advice was a level of disobedience utterly unknown to her. Since then she'd been making a tremendous effort to avoid him at all costs, not wanting to have to admit to what had happened and land herself in even bigger trouble. But still, she found herself slipping him sneaky glimpses in class and subconsciously venturing near studios he would be rehearsing in if only to try and piece together what exactly happened between them that night.

He'd done something to her, she wasn't sure what, but he did.

She opened her heavy eyelids and her foggy vision slowly came into focus, right as her head gave another painful throb to let her know her headache hadn't miraculously cured itself. Ahead of her, on the other side of the glass door, she could make out Zharnov rehearsing a variation from Le Corsaire with his coach.

She wanted to yell at him, scream at him until he understood what he did. Those few moments with him were the last calm before the storm hit, the final slither of peace shed felt before it all went hollow. Half of her wanted to relive it, get close to him and see if he could do it again, and the other half of her was disgusted that she'd even think like that.