Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
“If you want to see me in uniform, all you have to do is ask.” A playful smile tugged at his lips.
Warmth stung my cheeks and I quickly looked away. Flirting had been something he’d saved for other girls. “Is Caroline coming?”
“I haven’t told her.” His smile vanished.
My spine stiffened.
“First”—he held up a pointer finger—“I haven’t seen her, and this is the kind of thing you need to say in person. Secondly, she’s been adamantly opposed to Juniper looking for her birth family before she turns eighteen, but I also feel that Juniper has a right to know things like her medical history, so my loyalties are kind of torn right now. Caroline gets one hint that Juniper’s been hunting—let alone actually found you—and she’ll lock that girl down so tight supermax would look like a breeze.”
“Because our family is evil incarnate?” I tilted my head at him and tried not to let the insinuation ruffle my feathers.
“Because she’s been terrified someone would come and take Juniper from the time the adoption agency called to place her.”
I bristled. “We would never—”
“I know that. You know that. But it’s hard to overrule anxiety with logic.” He curved the bill of his hat and glanced down at the designer rug Mom had paid too much money for. “I figured we’d piece together as many facts as possible, then come up with a plan before going to Caroline.”
My phone buzzed on the arm of the chair, and Kenna’s name flashed on the screen. I swallowed my guilt and hit the Decline button. It was the second time today she’d reached out, and as much as I wanted her to stop, I’d probably wallow even deeper into my little nest of misery if she did.
“And then we let her decide if she wants to tell Juniper.” And in the meantime, that little girl would just keep wondering. What a shitstorm. I shifted my weight and grabbed the bottle of Smartwater from the end table on my right like Kenna was in my actual ear, lecturing me about hydration. My ankle was sore from the early-morning workout—I’d pushed hard on the Peloton this morning, then pushed a little too hard by escalating my calf raises to not-quite demi-pointe.
“Have you told Anne?” He lifted his brows.
“She’s . . . delicate.” I ran my finger over the bottle’s label and debated how much to tell him, how far to let him in. How much did someone change in a decade? Had to admit, there was something ironically poetic to be said about how we were forcing ourselves full circle—from confidants, to strangers, and back to whatever this was. “She’s in the middle of a divorce, and her feelings about children and motherhood . . .” I spoke toward the picture of Anne holding Eva as a baby. “It’s complicated for her right now.” Which was why I’d scheduled this meeting knowing she’d be out of the house.
Hudson nodded, looking at the collection of black-and-white photographs in their silver frames on the built-in bookshelves. “You want to say it, or should I?”
I tracked his gaze to a photo of the four of us in tutus in our early childhood. For the last two days, my mind had scrambled over every prospect and come up with the same conclusion every time.
Juniper couldn’t be Eva’s. She’d never been out of my sight longer than a week in those years. Neither had Anne. She’d left for college the same month I’d joined the Company as an apprentice—a full year before I graduated from high school.
“She has to be Lina’s.” As inescapable as the truth was, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it, couldn’t fathom that I didn’t know my older sister as well as I’d thought I had. I ripped my focus from the pictures and found Hudson watching me, waiting for me to finish the thought.
It had always been one of my favorite parts about him. He was decisive, reckless even, when taking action, but he’d always listened to me first, something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing in a house of four kids and busy parents.
“If Juniper was born in May, then Lina had to have gotten pregnant in September,” I said softly, voicing the thoughts that had spiraled through my mind the last thirty-six hours. “Which is when she’d joined the San Francisco Ballet Theater.”
“The one you wanted, right?” he asked softly, rising from the couch and walking toward the bookshelves.
I pressed my lips between my teeth to keep from denying it.
“You did.” He glanced over his shoulder, picking up a silver frame that held a photo of Eva and me from the Haven Cove Classic when I was sixteen. “You told me once that you didn’t want to dance in someone else’s shadow, and since your mother had danced in Paris and London, San Francisco was your number one choice.”