One Waltz with His Enemy

NORA'S POV

I didn't move.

My hand found the handrail on the back wall, and the metal was so cold it felt wet. Somewhere above us, the cables groaned. The car had stopped between floors. I could tell by the way the silence pressed in from both sides.

Then I smelled him. Cedar, and rain, like he'd just come in from the storm and hadn't bothered to dry off.

"Nora," Gabriel said. "You still with me?"

"I'm fine."

I wasn't. The dark had weight. Two years ago, Platform B had given way during the premiere, and I'd lain on the floor below with my ankle bent the wrong way, staring into blackness while people shouted above me. I couldn't get a full breath then, either.

My lungs were doing it again. Short pulls, too fast.

"Okay," he said, calm and even. "I'm about four feet to your left. The doors are behind you. The floor's solid. We're not falling."

"You don't know that."

"I know the brakes engaged. That's the jolt you felt." A pause. "I'm going to hold out my hand. You don't have to take it."

I heard fabric shift. He didn't step closer.

"I can hold you steady, Nora. But only if you ask."

My fingers ached around the rail. Every man I knew would've just grabbed me by now. Julian would have, then told me later I'd overreacted.

"Yes," I said. "Okay. Yes."

A warm palm slid into the space in front of me, open and patient. I put my hand in it. His other hand hovered near my left side, and when I shifted, I felt him angle away from my right leg, careful not to brush the brace.

He knew which ankle it was. In the dark, he knew.

---

The emergency light kicked on with a buzz, a dull orange strip above the door.

Gabriel Stone looked the same and not the same. Taller than I remembered, broader in the shoulders, rain still darkening the collar of his black suit. And there, cutting through his left eyebrow, the thin white scar.

I'd stared at that scar for three hours once. I was twenty-two, shaking through my first choreography competition, and he'd been on the judging panel, a touring champion who'd retired at the top. Everyone said he was brutal.

He'd given me first place. Afterward, in the hallway, he'd said, *There's defiance in the way you move. Don't let anyone train it out of you.*

Someone had trained it out of me anyway. Slowly. Lovingly. Over six years.

Gabriel's eyes dropped to my ankle. Something in his face went still and dark, then smoothed over.

He'd been in that theater. Had he seen the screen? Had he heard Julian call me *was*?

He didn't say a word about it.

Instead, he reached past me and pulled down the folding emergency seat from the wall. "Sit. Please."

"I can stand."

"I know you can. I'm asking you not to."

I sat. The seat was hard and narrow, but my ankle stopped screaming. He pulled a folded square of black linen from his inside pocket and held it out.

"Your face," he said quietly.

I touched my cheek. Wet. I hadn't even noticed.

I took the handkerchief and pressed it under my eyes. It smelled like him. "I should explain."

"You don't owe me the story. You don't owe me anything."

I looked up at him. For six years, I'd explained myself. Why I was slow on the stairs. Why I needed to sit at rehearsal. Why I wasn't ready to come back, then why I was. Every limp had needed a reason, and every reason had needed Julian's approval.

Gabriel just leaned against the wall and waited, like slow was a perfectly normal speed.

---

The car dropped.

Only a few inches, but my stomach went with it. I lurched off the seat, and my hands shot out and grabbed the first solid thing they found. Black wool. The front of his jacket, fisted in both hands.

His hand landed at my waist and stayed there. Firm, steady. It didn't slide anywhere it shouldn't.

We were close enough that I felt his breath move the hair at my forehead. His heartbeat thudded under my knuckles, faster than his voice had let on.

And my body did what it had learned to do. My arms locked, ready to shove.

He felt it. Before I could push, his hand was gone. He stepped back until his shoulders met the far wall, leaving a full stride of orange-lit space between us.

"Sorry," I said, letting go of his lapel. "That wasn't about you."

"It doesn't need to be." He pulled out his phone. "Being close to you doesn't give me permission to keep you here."

He dialed. "This is Gabriel Stone. I'm in the freight car at the Halloway, east side, stuck between two and lobby. One passenger with me, injured ankle. How long?" He listened. "Then tell them to hurry."

I stared at the space he'd left. One step. He'd taken it without being asked, like my flinch was information and not an insult.

My heart was still racing. And I knew, with a sinking kind of clarity, that not all of it was fear.

The car shuddered, hummed, and eased down. The doors opened onto the lobby's marble floor and the sound of rain beating on glass.

I walked out first.

He didn't follow too close, and he didn't try to stop me.

---

GABRIEL'S POV

She turned at the edge of the lobby and came back to me.

Nora held out my handkerchief, folded into a neat square, corners lined up. Of course she'd folded it. Dancers don't leave things messy when they can control them.

"Thank you," she said.

"Keep it."

"No." She pressed it into my palm. "I'm done keeping things I can't afford to owe."

"Let me drive you home. My car's out front."

"I'll get a cab."

"It's pouring."

"I know." She almost smiled. "I'm a big girl, Gabriel."

She walked toward the revolving doors, and I watched her favor that right leg on every third step, her chin up like the whole building was an audience. I wanted to go after her. I put my hands in my pockets instead.

She'd asked once tonight. That was more than I'd earned.

My office was three floors up, a borrowed room the Halloway kept for investors. I'd guaranteed twelve million in financing for the *Red Thread* tour, and the audit package from the financing review had landed on my desk that afternoon. Contracts, budgets, rights agreements, and a hard drive of raw rehearsal footage I hadn't bothered to open.

I opened it now.

Most of it was unremarkable. Dancers marking. Julian talking over the music. Then a file dated two years ago, before the accident. Grainy, shot on a phone propped against a mirror.

Nora was in the center of the room.

She was counting out loud, clapping the rhythm against her thigh. "Five, hitch. Six, seven, break the turn, don't finish it." She ran it, stopped, frowned, and ran it again. On the third pass, she changed the final turn, snapping out of it a half-count early so it looked like something had been torn loose.

Behind her, in the mirror, Julian was typing on his phone.

I flipped open the audit file folder. The rights agreement sat on top. Clean font, notarized seal.

*Choreography: Savannah Lane.*

Savannah wasn't in the video. Not once.

I hit pause. Nora froze mid-turn on the screen, one arm flung wide, her face fierce and certain.

I picked up my phone and called the auditor. He answered on the fourth ring, groggy.

"Mr. Stone? It's almost midnight."

"I need the original authorization documents for the *Red Thread* choreography rights. Not copies. The originals, with every signature and every revision."

"That could take a few days."

"Then start tonight." I looked at the frozen screen, at the woman nobody had bothered to credit. "If they erased her name, I want to know whose pen did it."