Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(70)
“Thanks.” There wasn’t much to say and no need to disagree. I felt like I was better and I knew it was because of him. But, he didn’t need me to stroke his ego.
“You nervous about the audition?” I nodded, moving my gaze off the water and onto his face as he leaned back against the chair. His features were soft just then, relaxed and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look more beautiful. There wasn’t any worry tensing up his expression and I’d have given anything to keep him that beautiful, that free of the shit dragging him down. “You want me to go?”
“You don’t have to bother, Ransom,” I said, not wanting to ask more from him than he’d already given.
“Hey.” His fingers on my hand, curling around my thumb felt warm, safe and when my gaze flashed to his, I said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t pull his hand away. “I wanna be there. You need a cheerleader and someone to look at when you sing.” He squeezed my thumb and then leaned back, taking that unanswered prayer with him. “You know, now that you can actually look at me when you sing.”
“Shut up,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.
“I don’t mind, Aly. I really don’t.”
I thought I did. I thought him being there, being what I focused on, would distract me because I needed to sing my kontantman. And he didn’t know, not then, not nearly two months later, Ransom had no idea that when I sang, it wasn’t the lyrics or melody that made me sing my joy. It was him. Only him. He was my joy.
“Yeah,” I’d said, watching the water again, too scared that if I looked at him, he’d see everything I wanted to keep hidden. “Yeah, I want you there.”
Present
He didn’t show.
I stood on that stage, bunching up the side of my dress between my fingers, knowing that I’d leave wrinkles, scanning the spattering of people who sat in the nearly empty auditorium. Ransom wasn’t among them. My heart pounded, my stomach coiled and emptied and I thought I’d be sick, that all of this was too much—my walking away from the family I loved, the hatred and rage in Ransom’s eyes when I took off my mask, the accusation in Leann’s tone when she asked why the hell I’d abandoned Koa. The day hadn’t been a good one for an audition that would determine the next four years of my life.
But I come from a long line of fierce women. My grann had been one, had tried to help me unlearn the bullshit my father wanted me to take as gospel. My mother, Grann had told me, had been fierce as well. She loved hard and fought harder to keep that love inside her when her family flung insults at her, when the world around her promised I would never be anything but an accident she couldn’t fix. Those two fierce women, and the hundreds before them who made up the curve of my hips, the green tint of my eyes and deep pout of my lips, those who’d engendered my stubbornness, my talent, that desperate, abiding need to overcome, all spun through my head as I stepped on that stage. They shouted at me to be bold. They told me to forget my fear and the shame.
He doesn’t matter right now, I heard my Grann whisper. You do.
And so I didn’t look at the audience when I sang. I didn’t do anything but smile at the small table in front of the stage and the men and women who held clipboards in front of them. I sang about wild horses, because I was one. I sang from my belly, because that’s where my passion burned the deepest. I sang with my head held high, with my voice sharp and loud and lulling because that’s what Ransom had taught me. I didn’t sing for him or those judges. I sang for me and the tomorrow I wanted.
For the first time in my life, I sang with a joy that was self-induced.
And I was good.
When the clapping and cheers died down and I’d returned the smiles given to me at that front table, I left the stage feeling good, better than I had in days. I had nailed that audition. I’d nail the dance audition the next week. But reality loomed and I needed to be back at the studio for my first practice with Tommy. It was my hurry and that leftover accomplishment drunk that distracted me when I walked to the parking lot and saw Leann sitting on the hood of her car.
I’d blown her off the other day, not really eager to confess what I’d done to Ransom or why. Leann loved me in her own, bitchy, smartass way, I knew that. But she was still just my boss and Ransom was her blood. I knew where her loyalties would lie if I’d made my confession to her. I didn’t want to risk that, not before. Now it looked like I didn’t have a choice.
“Hey,” she said, pulling her attention away from her phone as I approached. “That was f*cking glorious.” She nodded toward the auditorium.
“You heard my audition?”
When Leann only tilted her head, dropped her phone on the hood of her car like it was the least important thing to her in the world, my mouth fell open, surprised by her shock. “Aly, of course I heard you. Did you think…” she exhaled, offered me her hand to help me onto her car. “Something I don’t think you have ever quite gotten is that I love you, kid.”
“Leann…”
“I don’t say that just to say it, you know.” My body swayed a little when Leann pushed me with her elbow. She looked over at me, knuckle on her chin and smiled, like I was simple, a little ignorant how she felt. “Keira got pregnant with Ransom before we were even twenty. I followed her lead the next year. You think I don’t know how hard it is, struggling on your own? You don’t think I get that you want to succeed and do whatever the hell you can to get your head above water?” She took my hand and held it on her knee. “Sweetie, no one wants you to kick ass more than I do. No one will scream louder for you when you do that ass kicking.”