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“She’s not you,” I snarl.
“But she wants to be a dancer,” she groans. “Shewantsto, Charlie! Who better to lead her there than me?”
“Yeah, well… I’d have agreed with you four years ago, back before you fucked away your career, and destroyed your life and our marriage. But to this day, you refuse to acknowledge your role in your own downfall.”
“You’re punishing me because you’re bitter!”
“No! You’re punishing us all, becauseyou’rebitter. Because you screwed up but want everyone to forget it. I can’t do it. Now, you’re buying our little girl clothes that are too small, and telling her to change her life to make them fit.”
I stalk closer, so our noses almost touch when I look down at her, and I taste her breath on my tongue. Worse, I remember when, in happier days, back before all the shit happened, I would lean just a little lower and take her mouth with mine, as she looked up at me with her perfect stare like I was the best man she’d ever known.
I was her god, and she was my goddess. We were all we ever wanted.
Until she wanted more.
Until she threw it all away for cheap thrills.
“Your mother fucked you up,” I tell her, almost on a murmur. “She bred you to be an athlete, beat you till you conformed, starved you until you fit her idea of perfection, and then… you became exactly what she wanted. The perfect ballerina, wowing crowds of thousands.”
Tears form in Jada’s eyes and chip away at the anger surrounding my heart. The wall I must keep up, or risk slipping back into the romance she wants for us.
“It’s not your fault she treated you like that, Jada. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right. But that bullshit has to stop with you. Youhaveto break the cycle.”
“Charlie…” Just like Mia, she looks up at me with tears in her eyes and a jaw quivering with heartache.
“It’s your mission to do better than your parents did,” I say firmly. “Just as it’s mine to protect Mia—even if her enemy is you.” I take a step back and break the current pulsing between us.
That was always our weakness. The electricity that beat from her skin to mine is an addiction we both craved.
If I were to think logically on everything we are, I would admit that we’re both junkies.
We were each other’s hits for more than half of our lives. Then we ended. It was fiery and horrible, a crash worthy of the newsstands. But where I replaced my addiction with work, friends, and women, Jada fed hers with actual drugs and other poor choices.
Honestly, I’m no better than her. No more noble. There’s nothingmoreredeemable about me than there is about Jada.
But I’ll be damned if I slack off now and let my daughter pay the price of a couple of idiot grownups who can’t get their shit together.
“Straighten yourself out, Jada. Be the mom you wish you had.” I turn on my heels with a shake of my head and meet Penny’s gaze; she appears apologetic, like she thinks she has something to be sorry for.
But she was my baby’s champion tonight. Fighting for her when I wasn’t around to do it.
I spin back and stare deep into my ex’s eyes. “If you ever again tell my daughter that she’s anything except perfect exactly the way she is, then you can fuck off and stay gone. Zero contact. I won’t let you break her the way your mother broke you.”
“You think I’m broken?” she whimpers, desperate and pathetic.
“I think you’ve been damaged,” I clarify. “Now you’re weak and unable to deal with the harsh reality of being a regular person and not a famous dancer. You’re no longer a sought-after ballerina whom the world thinks is perfect, and without that pedestal holding you up, you spiral down and try to find that same high in drugs, alcohol, and men who tell you you’re pretty.”
Looking for my own high, I search my living room for my daughter, only to remember I sent her away.
Because I suck as a parent. Because I’m hardly better than her mother.
But I’m trying. I’m working on it.
And that’s more than I can say about Jada.
“Stay away if you need to.” I stride to the apartment door and swing it open. But I don’t walk out yet. I don’t leave. Instead, I glance back to Jada and wish things were different. Wish we could have been happy and content and still together.
But that’s not who we are anymore.
