Leaps & Lies

Chapter Twelve

J ulian rolls his eyes when he finds Vivian in a curtained-off bed in the furthest corner of the ER, attempting to wedge a hospital clipboard between her hip and the forearm of her injured arm. His hat is pulled down low over his eyes, curls appearing especially disheveled, and he’s spinning his car keys around one finger lazily. Even in the unforgiving fluorescents of a hospital, he’s alluring.

“What are you doing. You look absurd.” It’s not phrased as a question. Has he ever asked a question before? Vivian can only imagine what it must be like to navigate the world with such surety.

“You already parked? They said they need intake information. If I balance this, I think I can scribble with my other hand.”

Vivian does her best to gesture at the clipboard without extending her right arm.

Julian plucks the paperwork from her grip before she manages to mangle it or herself further.

“Give me the pen too.”

“Thanks for the ride, but you don’t have to stay. I can get Scarlett to pick me up. I’m not sure how long this will take.”

Her arm is somehow throbbing and tingling simultaneously, her fingers are a worrisome shade of mauve, and the last thing she can handle is a cranky Julian King intimidating nurses.

Julian ignores her and begins filling in her intake form.

He scrawls her first and last name down before pausing. “Middle initial?”

“C.”

“Catherine?”

“No. Celeste.”

“Vivian Celeste?” Julian raises an eyebrow but doesn’t inquire further. “Birth date?”

Maybe it’s the pain in her shoulder and arm, maybe it’s the fear that’s eating away at her carefully constructed lies, maybe it’s something else entirely. Regardless, Vivian rattles off her birthday without a second thought.

Her real birthday.

Every atom of Julian stills, pen still hovering just above the paper.

He’s frozen, and Vivian is absolutely certain that all of her hopes of a professional ballet career have died a miserable death with this truth.

Fuck.

“How old are you.”

In any other voice, on any other day, the sentence would be a question, but Julian spits the words as if they hurt to speak. As if their very existence pains him. God knows, it hurts Vivian to hear them. It hurts that she’s watching her dream career fade away in real time, and it hurts that he’s going to be the one to take it away.

Her shoulder hurts, her hand hurts, and now her heart hurts. So she says the first stupid thing that comes to mind.

“Well, I was born on Leap Day. And it only happens every few years, you know? So the other ones don’t count.”

It has to be the dumbest thing that has ever come out of her mouth. Without a doubt. They both know it. Her secret is out, and there’s no going back now, even as she’s desperately scrambling for a handhold below the cliff she’s thrown herself off.

“You are the worst liar I’ve ever seen.”

Vivian can’t decide if Julian looks enraged or broken. There’s a tic in his jaw and a tightening around his eyes that make Vivian’s stomach churn like a washing machine set to the extra spin cycle. His expression is indescribable. She never wants to see him this way again, and yet she can’t stop staring.

“I can explain—”

That’s when the radiology tech wanders in, rolling equipment with her and appearing decidedly unimpressed with Vivian. Monica snaps her gum and pulls on a pair of blue gloves like she’s ready to play Operation.

“You said you hurt your shoulder dancing ?”

Monica verifies Vivian’s intake paperwork, positions her body with painfully apathetic gloved hands, and confirms that the X-rays show exactly what Vivian already knew. Her right shoulder is dislocated.

Monica snaps her gum again. Should she even be chewing that around patients?

“I’m gonna grab your doc, and then we’ll pop that thing right back in,” she says, gesturing at Vivian’s limp arm. “Then you two can get back to dancing .”

Monica raises a skeptical eyebrow in time with her words before flouncing away. The moment she’s past the curtain, Vivian’s spinning toward Julian.

“If you can just let me explain—or maybe you should leave?”

Vivian is torn between the desperate pull to keep Julian in sight where she knows he isn’t calling Ms. Renee and getting as far away from him and his broken expression as she can. Should she send him away and hope he’ll stay quiet or continue suffering through his silent brooding? The choice feels impossible.

Julian pulls his hat off and runs a hand over his face and into his hair, pulling a little. His brown curls under the hat are rumpled and lopsided, slightly favoring the right side of his head. He sighs, spins the hat to settle it back on backward, and Vivian’s stomach drops. It feels far closer to the swing of the gallows than the turning of a baseball cap. How can a simple gesture be so ominous?

“Let’s deal with your shoulder first, Ladoe.”

Ladoe. Fucking Ladoe?

He never calls her by her last name.

He’s sitting in an ugly, plastic orange hospital chair merely six feet away from where she sits on the exam table, but Vivian swears an ocean would fit between them. She hates the empty, panging ache that settles in her stomach.

He knows she lied. He knows she lied about her age so Ellapond would cast her. So that he would work with her. He knows she lied, and he’s simply sitting there, waiting for some faceless doctor to shove her shoulder back where it belongs after Alex dropped her. He knows her secret, and she has no idea what happens now.

It turns out that what happens next is “closed reduction.” At least, those are the words Vivian catches the ER doctor mumbling as he snaps gloves on and reaches for her limp arm.

“Monica already gave you something for the pain, right?” the doctor asks without even glancing up from where he’s examining her shoulder.

“Uhh, yeah. But I think it was only—” Vivian’s voice cuts out when the ER doctor lifts her right wrist away from where she has been protectively cradling it against her torso.

Ibuprofen.

All Monica gave her was fucking ibuprofen. Is that supposed to count as something for the pain? From the panic soaring through her veins at the doctor’s minimal movement of her arm, ibuprofen isn’t sufficient in the least. It’s not doing nearly enough to manage her pain—or her newfound panic.

But he hasn’t bothered to hear what exactly Monica gave her; Vivian’s assent is sufficient. He continues on, “I’m going to rotate your arm, and we’ll see if that shoulder can slip right back in.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Vivian’s never dislocated her shoulder before. Hell, she’s never dislocated anything before. She’s suffered her share of bumps, bruises, rolled ankles, sore muscles, scrapes, and cuts. But never a dislocation. Do shoulders slip in and out the way the doctor’s implying? That doesn’t sound safe.

“If we can’t maneuver it back, we’ll have to consider applying pressure or more imaging.”

Vivian isn’t interested in more imaging. She wants to get out of this hospital and back to rehearsal. She sure as hell doesn’t want to find out what “applying pressure” means.

“Yeah, okay,” she mumbles.

Despite agreeing to the closed reduction, Vivian finds that everyone in the tiny, curtained area of the ER is simply staring at her. Monica, the ER doctor, and even Julian, are closely watching her.

“What? Let’s do it already. I have to get back to rehearsal.” She’s getting impatient. Shouldn’t the magical ibuprofen have kicked in by now?

“We’re going to need to talk about rehearsal—” the doctor says.

Julian is quick to cut him off. “You have to give him your arm, Sugar Plum. He can’t fix it if you won’t let him touch it.”

Vivian didn’t realize, but in the time that the doctor was telling her about imaging and pressure, she’d managed to pull her legs up onto the exam table, propping her injured arm between her chest and bent knees. Her bent legs form a protective cradle, and she’s curved her entire body around her injured arm without noticing. Her shoulder and arm are still throbbing despite Monica’s pitiful ibuprofen, Julian knows she lied to Ellapond about her age, and now she’s supposed to hand her injured shoulder over to this doctor for whatever the hell a “closed reduction” is?

Nope. No, thank you.

Tears well in the corners of her eyes, and a tickle ricochets in her throat. Vivian sniffles, staring vacantly down at her arm. This is the most embarrassing moment to get emotional.

She hears the soft rumble of Julian’s voice asking, “Can we have a minute?” before the flimsy curtain around the exam table is opened and re-closed. The fastenings of the curtain clang together sharply.

Warm, strong fingers wrap around her ankles and tug them gently away from the tight ball she’s made of her body.

“You’re fine. It’s only a dislocation. There’s no fracture and you’ll only need a sling for a few days.” Julian notably does not mention Ellapond or rehearsal. “But the longer it’s out of place, the tighter and angrier your muscles and tissues are getting. You know that inflammation makes everything worse. You need to let him put it back.”

“What about . . . ”

She can’t say it. It’s one thing for Julian to have discovered her lie, but it’s another thing entirely for her to admit it aloud. Again.

“We’ll talk about it later.” His expression is neutral and impenetrable.

Vivian wants to scream. She wants to cry and scream and throw a tantrum like the child he thinks— thought —she is. It’s not fair that Alex dropped her, and it’s not fair that she had to lie about her age just to get on that stage. It’s not fair that now that her dreams are within her grasp, Julian, of all fucking people, will be the one to rip them from her. Not Ms. Renee, who could tell her that she’s just not good enough. Not Kelsey, who’s been working toward a principal role since she could walk. Not any of the assistant choreographers or Ellapond employees. No, it’s him. Him and his stupid hat, demanding rehearsals, beautiful jawline, and effortless grace.

If he’s not going to give away his next move, then neither is she.

“Fine, get the doctor back in here.”

He doesn’t move though. His warm hands are still branding her ankles.

“You gonna need me to hold your hand, Sugar Plum?”

Vivian scoffs, desperately wishing she could agree. Yes, please hold my hand or my ankle. Hold anything you want.

“Get the doctor back in here before I fix this damn arm myself.”

It’s all bluster, and she knows that he knows it too when he snorts before pulling open the curtain.