Dance, Sugarplum

26. Lyla

CHAPTER 26

LYLA

FINALE

I sit on the bed in my childhood room, but I don’t feel safe like I used to in the good old days. I’m sick to my stomach. Everywhere I look, I find things I left behind when Carter threw me out. The precious memories I shared with my family before he entered the picture and ruined everything.

My mind can’t help but trip over all the times he came into this room. All the nights he laid in the bed with me, saying he loved to put me to sleep. Tears stream down my face when I think how sick he was that whole time and what those seemingly innocent nights meant to him. How often did he take advantage of how naive and needy I was when he entered our lives?

It’s not fair that he ruined my room for me, too. I can’t look at its pale lavender walls without thinking about him. All the dance awards and trophies for other various activities and competitions don’t take away from his constant influence. Some of my favorite dolls sit on high shelves, dusty, out of the way, and untouched for a long, long time. My heart breaks for the girl who used to live in this room and died when her mother did.

Carter hasn’t only stained my memories and stolen my childhood home, he made sure I never had time to sit and mourn my own mother like I should. She deserved that, and I did too.

Carter uses the same half knock he did when I was a kid, and it opens a second later. Carter smiles brightly as he walks inside. After all this time with Mikhail, I find his wide smile especially alarming. I’m afraid of him, truly afraid, for the first time in my life. When he hit on me, I was disgusted, ashamed, and hurt, but I never thought he might harm me or abduct me.

There’s a sickness in that smile. The way he looks at me breaks my skin out in chills. It’s cruel that he brought me here. This all feels too familiar on some level, and I’m scared to let my guard down. I keep thinking Carter has reached his limit of cruelty and depravity, but he keeps proving I underestimated him.

My body reacts to him before my brain. I make a frantic noise and kick, trying to put as much space between us as possible.

“Calm down, baby.”

The pet name makes me want to die just to get away from him. He wasn’t just a man who wanted to fuck me. He raised me, nurtured me—groomed me, for his own sick ends. He always wanted me.

The truth is, he saw my first, auditioning for his company.

“We’ll take things slow.” He promises me, talking low like he’s too scared to frighten me, but he’s savoring this.

Adrenaline spikes in my system, and my heart races. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed with a smile on his face.

“Let’s start simple. How about a kiss?”

I don’t answer and just stare at him with my mouth agape. He didn’t say much to me on the ride over here, and I was too afraid to fight, knowing he’s willing to at the very least spank me. Knowing what he must have gotten out of punishing me as a child makes my skin crawl.

“I said kiss me.” His gaze hardens, and rage that I somehow never saw simmers just below the surface.

I don’t know for sure what he will do when I reject him again, but I can’t underestimate Carter. He’ll beat the shit out of me, or he’ll force me. I know it in my bones. Tears gather on my lashes, and I wish for just one more goddamn Christmas miracle.

The girl who slept in this bed believed in miracles, and I want to latch onto that version of me with all my might. I wish for Mikhail to save me, to come in and take me from this nightmare, but even as I try to have faith, I know this won’t happen. We have a show tonight, and he probably doesn’t even know I’m missing.

Carter’s hand slides over, resting on my knee. If I could, I would turn my body inside out just to avoid his touch. His skin feels wrong and damp against mine. I try to shimmy away, but he only massages the muscle, forcing his touch on me.

Mikhail never asked for my permission, but I realize he had it all along. My body craves Mikhail, and my pleasure always meets his actions. When he looks at me, I feel seen. Maybe it’s fucked up, but it’s our fucked up way, and I’m addicted to us.

Carter’s touch is a violation to me and my mother’s memory. My skin crawls, and the longer he touches me, the more I know I can’t endure that kiss.

“You’re going to have to relax. This is very exciting for me. You might think fighting is a good idea, but I’ll only like it more.” Despite myself, my gaze flicks to his pants, and sure enough, he’s hard.

He leans forward, dead set on closing the distance between us. I push him off, turning my body and trying like hell to get off the bed and away from him. It doesn’t really work out in my favor. I’m half dangling off the bed as he wrestles with my lower half, his face presses into my ass, and I shriek at the top of my lungs in pure disgust.

“Get the fuck off me!” I shout.

I grab at the floor, trying to pull myself away. Random things wind up in my hands as I struggle, but the items from under my bed won’t give me the purchase to escape.

Suddenly, I grip a set of silk ribbons, and I nearly toss them away before I realize what they are. My first set of pointe shoes from when I was a little girl. They’re much smaller than what I wear now, but the slippers are just as hard with a solid toe made of densely packed paper and glue meant to lift and display the dancer—it’s hard as fuck.

I grab the heel rather than the laces and swing backward, colliding the hard box in the toe with Carter’s head. The blunt feeling of the strike travels up my arm and makes me squeamish, but it’s better than him touching me. He curses at the first collision, dazed, but I waste no time. I hit him again and again, the combination of flesh and bone beneath my pointe a sensation I won’t soon forget.

Finally, on the fourth strike, he’s unconscious. He groans in his Lyla-induced sleep, and I know it won’t last very long. I hit the pervert once more for luck before running out of the room and through the house. This is not how I wanted my last time in my childhood home to go.

I race past pictures of Mom and me that I wish I could grab, leaving behind things that meant a lot to us. I think about the ruby Christmas necklace. I don’t have time for any of that when Carter is bound to wake up soon.

The front door stands twenty feet away when I hear him roar. He’s been rejected and offended too many times, and he’s coming for blood. I can feel it. Heavy footsteps echo down the hall at his approach, and I run to the front door, whimpering in true terror at what he will do.

My fingers grip the knob in relief, but it doesn’t turn. It’s fucking locked. The little knob does nothing but spin as I try to open it. His heavy footsteps echo down the stairs, and I look over my shoulder to catch him round the bottom. We make eye contact, and the moment my heart constricts painfully, he smiles wickedly.

“You little bitch, I’m going to fuck your ass raw for that.”

I don’t think twice. I reach for the table beside the door and throw Mom’s favorite vase through the glass, shattering it. He just told me what he’s going to do if he catches me, and I don’t want to stick around to find out if he’s lying. It’s plenty tall and just wide enough for me to slip through with my clothes snagging and only a couple of minor scrapes.

I land on the wooden porch; broken shards of glass cutting into my hands and knees. With the weight of my fall, my cuts are much deeper than what was left in the pane of glass. Hot pain pulses along my knees and palms, but it’s nothing compared to what would happen to me if I stayed in that house.

Getting to my feet, I have every intention of running as far as I have to in order to get the hell away from Carter and get help. But I don’t get very far, stopping short as I hit a wall of muscle.

Tears spill over my eyes as I swing my fists, sure that it’s one of his goons, but when I look up, I find the only person in the world I trust.

Mikhail Ivanov.

He wraps me in his arms, and I inhale his scent and the feeling of being with him once again. Safe. We hold each other for only a moment before Mikhail shoves me behind his back.

Carter opens the front door, but he stops short when he sees I have company. The excited smile slips off his face, and rage replaces it. He reaches into his back pocket, and I guess I’m still underestimating him because I do not expect the gun he pulls on us. My eyes go wide as saucers. Did he have that the whole time? This is so much worse than I feared.

He raises the gun, his eyes mean, and I fear my life is about to end or I’m about to watch Mikhail’s death. I don’t want my last moment on this earth facing Carter, so I turn to Mikhail, but he’s not beside me. I shout his name as he runs at Carter. I distract the one with the gun, but not the determined director who owns my soul. He’s quicker than the older man, and maybe Carter wasn’t as ready to shoot as he seemed.

They grapple for the gun, and a shot fires. I shriek, but as far as I can tell, no one is injured. They continue to fight for another minute until there’s another pop, and the tension between them immediately dissolves. I know in my bones one of them is dead or minutes away from it.

“Mikhail!” I shout.

My bloody hands cover my mouth, and I remember how Mikhail's hands were filled with glass just a couple of weeks ago. This porch was where Mom took pictures of me before every school year started. It’s where she got dressed up and handed candy to the neighborhood kids. Our wholesome memories are washed away by blood. It drips between the floorboards, forever changing our old home history.

In the blink of an eye, everything changes. Carter falls, face ashen, and bright blood drips down his cheek. Mikhail is left standing and holding the smoking gun.