His swagger was this undefinable way he had to take the challenges set in front of him and overcome them like the effort was nothing. But behind that boldness, the cool, confident man the world saw, there was someone else. Something darker. I’d seen a hint of it that night he’d barged into the studio calling me a liar. His anger had been real, a stinging bite that had shoved back any composure my introverted mind told me to put on display. He’d pissed me off with his shouting and put me into a rage when he called me a liar. No one, not even Ransom, could quell my temper when it had been stoked.

So that night, it was my anger, my irritation with myself at not perfecting the dance and his attitude that kept me from shying away from him. At his parents’ lake house, the first time we’d sung together, I didn’t have my anger pushing me to lash out. I went in utterly unprotected.

Keira was amazing, a determined woman who, in my mind, could tackle anything and usually overcome it. She was fierce, but then she’d have to be to endure a life on her own, raising a son when she’d barely been more than a kid herself.

She and Kona welcomed me, trusted me to look over their son, take care of their home and I felt humbled by their determination to make me comfortable. The woman even helped me with my voice lesson, gave me advice on stage presence and pitch and everything seemed normal to me then, easy. I liked Keira and Kona, respected how much they’d endured together and instantly fell in love with Koa when I first met him. The day should have been relaxed, being there, getting first rate advice from a Grammy winner. And then, he walked through the door, larger than life, engulfing the empty space between me behind that piano, and the path he blocked for an escape. There would be no running, not with him watching me the way he did. So, I shot for subtle, casual, hoping I could make myself small enough that he’d continue on not realizing I existed. But my wrong-note singing had caught Ransom’s eye.

It made him want to help me.

He’d played that guitar like it was a lover he’d forgotten he could touch. With every note, Ransom poured whatever he kept to himself, all the things he would not say to the world into each strum. He played with confidence, and with joy. I’d been powerless, scared, sure, but entirely powerless to keep from watching him. The deflection was there, but when he touched me, put his hands on my stomach, that mask began to crumble. He taught and I listened, with the eager need just to hear him play, for him to keep his hands on me.

I’d been so caught up in him, the way he sounded when he hummed that melody, the way his gaze focused on me, me of all people, like no one in the world could hear him but me, that I imagined he stared too long, his gaze lingering on my mouth.

He’d looked hungry, predatory, and I’d wanted to offer my entire body to fill him up. I’d settled for the voice lesson and the soft brush of his fingers against my arm while he played.

That almost kiss after the fundraiser? Yeah, that wasn’t a figment of my imagination. He’d brushed my lips, made me think impossible, desperate things. Make wishes I was convinced would never come true. Not with Ransom.

My fear, my awkward bumbling that I’d tried to hide from him since the day I met him, had sort of disappeared the more time we spent together. Usually, on the weekends, he came to visit his family and though it was my day off and I’d assured her I was completely fine, Keira insisted that I have Sunday lunch with them.

“Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches isn’t a meal, Aly,” Keira had told me when I feigned having a pantry full of groceries. “Besides,” she’d said, “Ransom can help you with your audition song.”

The woman wasn’t as slick as she thought she was, but she’d begun to feel more run down than normal, the preeclampsia diagnosis bothering her more than she let on and though I didn’t know if it was having a possible nap that made Keira insistent, I’d found myself spending Sundays at the lake house with Koa on my lap, telling his brah that I was his girlfriend and Ransom strumming his guitar, not telling me how badly my singing voice sucked.

I kinda fell in love with all of them.

Well. Maybe not Ransom. Not yet.

Sunday afternoons we’d practice for my upcoming audition and Leann had managed to sweet talk Ransom into three nights a week at the studio helping me work on the Kizomba number. Tommy would be back in a couple of weeks and when he returned, there would be a smooth transition from one partner to another.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

That thought brought me back to my Skype chat with Tommy, the night that Ransom had been a no-show.

My ex’s stupid flirting had only put me in foul mood and that mood stayed put the more he tried flexing in his webcam.

Tommy Diez was a tall, beautiful man I’d somehow entangled myself with at seventeen when Leann held a mini-camp and Tommy picked me out of a crowd of eager, flirty girls to help him demonstrate routines. He was a professional, spending summers touring with pop stars and falls teaching a few classes at CPU for the freshman dance students. He was a nice guy, funny, very talented. He’d been a horrible boyfriend.

I hadn’t bought his weak attempts at flirting, had even laughed at those attempts because they were so weak. Tommy’s charm had worn thin with me by the time I turned eighteen, but still I allowed him to distract me from my silent stalking of Ransom.

“You still pining over that linebacker?” he’d asked, sitting back in his chair with a half empty bottle of Corona in his hand.

“You still chasing everything that wiggles right?”

“Touché.”

That obnoxious jerk got under my skin, and then Ransom flaked out on me and didn’t explain where he’d been until two days later when Keira watched us as he sang in front of the piano.

“I got caught up,” Ransom had lamely explained and I’d caught the distant attitude from him immediately.

“Too caught up to let me know?”

Ransom had snapped his gaze to mine, frowning like he wanted to yell at me, but then Koa climbed onto my lap and that attitude disappeared. “I’m sorry, Aly. I won’t miss another one.” And he hadn’t, not for a couple of weeks, but there was something missing from him now. He didn’t smile quite like he had that day he walked me to the Armada from the locker room and there had been no blissfully close calls of him touching me, looking at me like he had the night of the booster fundraiser. Seriously, that shit had me reeling for a week afterward.

There were fleeting moments, yeah, but not nearly enough for me. Still, the sparse moments when Ransom played the guitar or piano kept me feeling that maybe there was more to this than my own one-sided infatuation.

A touch of his arm against mine when he played, his fingers pushing up my chin while I sang so my “vocal chords would stretch,” that one I doubted was real. Even the strength of Ransom’s partnering as we practiced the Kizomba late into the night when the studio was dark and empty. All those small moments collected in my mind, adding into something that I wasn’t sure how to define. Ransom was a good person, very sweet, if not a little sad and when he looked at you, well. You damn well knew it.

I guess that was the problem. With him, with this new distance, I didn’t know what to make of the looks he gave me.

Like tonight, the way he’d been watching me as I danced—I’d catch him in the mirror, gaze on my neck when I bent into a dip, on my cleavage when I put my cheek against his chest, and it had seemed like something Ransom did unconsciously.

Of course, that was probably wishful thinking. I’d managed to keep distant, to not put too much thought into the way he watched me and rely on the detached attitude that had kept me protected from the world my whole life.