Variation: A Novel

ReeseOnToe: They’re sisters. Hopefully they’ll figure it out. Watching their videos has been so helpful in my own journey.

WendyCook52: Agreed. They’re so inspirational, but they’re human, too.

The Atlantic was fucking freezing.

The cold knocked the breath from my lungs as I fought to the surface, kicking with all my strength, clawing my way through the water.

I gasped when I broke the surface, then swiveled my head, looking for Juniper. It took less than a second to spot her a few yards to my left, sputtering as she treaded water, disappearing for a second as a swell separated us. My heart pounded as I swam, trying to remember two summers’ worth of boating and swimming lessons from over a decade ago.

No time for fear, no bodily resources to waste over it either. I had to be as calm, collected, and decisive as Hudson.

“Allie!” Juniper shouted as I reached her.

“Swim!” I ordered, grabbing a fistful of the back of her dress in one hand and propelling us away from the boat as it passed.

We battled through the water until I counted to ten, and then turned back toward the yacht as the tail end of it went by.

“What are we going to do?” Juniper cried as I held on to her, kicking to stay at the surface while I searched the passing boat.

There. The setting sun cut through the windows of the cabin, silhouetting its occupants, and I barely made out a racing figure darting through the party—Eva. Two seconds later, Hudson and Gavin burst onto the back deck and ran toward the railing.

“Hudson!” I screamed, waving my left arm.

“Help!” Juniper shouted simultaneously.

Hudson lurched over the railing, and Gavin dragged him back, shouting something we couldn’t hear over the noise of the party and the engines as they pulled ahead of us.

“They’re leaving!” Juniper shrieked, her voice so high it threatened to pierce my eardrums.

“It’s okay,” I assured her as everyone on the back deck mobilized.

Hudson reappeared at the railing and threw up his hand, splaying his fingers and mouthing something that looked like five minutes.

“It’s okay,” I said to myself as the boat left us behind. “We’re about to hit the wake, so stay above the surface. Don’t fight the waves, just ride with them.” I turned all my attention to Juniper. “Understand?”

She nodded, and I tightened my grip on the back of her dress, treading water with my other three extremities. The water swelled from the opposite direction of what we’d been fighting, and I kept my eyes locked on hers as we rose and fell with the first wave, and then a second.

The horn blew on the boat, but it continued onward, sailing straight.

“They’re not coming back!” Juniper sputtered, water dripping off her forehead.

“They will,” I promised her as we rode far more gentle swells. “Your uncles aren’t going to leave us out here. We just have to make it five minutes treading water. Can you do that?”

Juniper nodded, treading water like she’d been taught by the best. “I lost my shoes.”

“Me too.” I forced a smile. “Gives us a reason to go shopping when we make it out of the water.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be on the boat,” she admitted.

“I know.” Cold seeped in my muscles, but I held tight to her dress. “And we’re going to have a very long talk about that.”

“That man . . .” Her lower lip trembled, and I hoped it was from emotion and not cold. “He’s my father, isn’t he?”

I nodded my head. It wouldn’t help to lie to her. “How much of that did you hear?”

“I was with some of the other kids on the bow. We’d just come down the stairs when I heard your voice, and when I listened at the door, you were asking him if Lina caught him off guard.” Water tracked down the little lines between her eyebrows.

My heart sank. “You heard it all.”

“Is that what I am?” Her teeth chattered. “A ticket into your company?”

“Not to me.” I shook my head vehemently. “There is no excuse for what other people have done, but I love you, Juniper.”

“Was that what you were doing? Using me to get your part back?” She recoiled, and I held fast, refusing to let her go and risk our separation out here.

“No.” Treading water with only three of my limbs was exhausting. “I went to get him to sign some paperwork that would protect you, that would make it so he couldn’t take you from your mom. My contract had already been printed when I went to confront him.” I left Eva out of the discussion and prayed Juniper hadn’t heard every detail.

Tears welled in her eyes. “They didn’t want me. They didn’t love me.”

My throat clogged. I was so ill-equipped to handle this discussion, but it wasn’t like I had the option of staying quiet out here. “I can’t speak for him, but Lina loved you,” I said, and prayed it wasn’t the wrong thing. “I know she loved you because she chose your mom and dad. She knew Uncle Gavin and Uncle Hudson. She chose your entire family, people she knew would love and protect you, and she placed you where she’d be able to check up on you. She put you in one of her favorite places in the world so you could grow up surrounded by the things and the people she loved too.”

Her tears mixed with the ocean. “You don’t know that.”

“I can’t imagine anyone knowing you and not loving you, Juniper. Your mom and dad, your grandparents, your uncles and your cousins, they all love you. Anne and I love you.” A high-pitched whine sounded from behind us. “And I know that might not be enough to soothe the hurt you’re feeling, and I’m so sorry.”

Her forehead scrunched as the noise grew louder. A boat motor. “Those papers you gave him? Do they mean I have to be a secret?”

My jaw started to shiver uncontrollably. “No,” I forced out. “They mean there’s a few of us who can’t say he’s your father. But you?” I tugged her closer. “You get to say whatever you want, whenever you want to. You have choices. We took the power from him, never from you.”

She nodded. Her lips had taken on a bluish tinge.

I looked over my shoulder as the rescue dinghy approached and nearly sank with relief. “They’re coming.”

The driver killed the motor, and Hudson appeared at the edge of the stern as the small vessel drifted toward us. Fear was etched into every line of his face as the boat slowed, the tip of its bow pointed about ten feet away from us. “Allie! Juniper!”

“We’ll swim!” I shouted before he got any ideas about jumping into this freezer called an ocean. “Can you do it?” I asked Juniper.

“Yeah.” She nodded, and then we swam.

I kept one hand on her dress and moved through the water in a sidestroke, ignoring the cramps that were slowly seizing my muscles as we rounded the stern of the bobbing boat.

Both Hudson and Gavin waited on the small swim deck, Gavin crouched and Hudson on one knee.

“Take her!” I shouted at Gavin when we reached him first, then put both my hands on Juniper’s waist and shoved her up toward the deck, kicking as hard as I could.

“Got her!” Gavin shouted, and I let go, sinking back into the water.

“Allie!” Hudson shouted, and I wrenched my gaze from Juniper’s rising body to Hudson’s outstretched hand, then looked back as Juniper’s bare feet emerged from the ocean. “He has her. Now get in the damned boat, or I’m coming in!”

I kicked, forcing my body left, and reached for Hudson.

He clasped my right hand, then my left, and hauled me out of the water with unthinkable strength, plastering me against his chest before throwing his arms around my back one at a time, leaving my hands to fall to his shoulders as he twisted and set me down on the swim deck. “Are you all right?” His gaze raked over me.

“F-f-fine,” I chattered out.

“Okay.” He nodded, then hauled me into his arms and stood. The boat swayed as he carried me into it, then sat me on the U-shaped bench that took up the stern.

I shook uncontrollably as I searched for Juniper and found her wrapped in a silver blanket on Gavin’s lap a few feet away. Two of the yacht’s crew were on board with us, one at the helm and the other shaking out another silver blanket.

Hudson wrapped it around my shoulders and then crouched in front of me. “Anything broken in the fall?”

“Check her first,” I demanded, my frozen fingers clutching the edge of the blanket.

“She’s with Gavin. I’m checking you.” He studied my eyes, then put his fingers to my wrist, quieting for a moment before he nodded. “Did you breathe in any water?”

“I don’t think so? Maybe? It happened really fast.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Don’t move.” He crossed the small boat to Juniper, then sat beside her and checked her over as the engines gurgled to life.

“Two survivors on board. We’re headed back to the marina,” one of the crew said into the radio. The reply was muffled by the engines, and we started moving, cutting across the ocean in the opposite direction of the yacht.

Hudson returned a few minutes later, and tucked me into his side, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. His warmth trickled into me, and he pressed a kiss to my temple. “God, Allie, you jumped in after her.”

“If you even think about lecturing me,” I shouted over the roar of the engines.

“Thank you.” He tucked my ice-cold forehead against his neck. “Just . . . thank you. But please. Just don’t. But thank you. Fuck, I’m a wreck.”

“Does Caroline know she’s here?” The marina came into sight.

Hudson shook his head. “She thinks she’s at a sleepover, but trust me, she’s about to find out. Pretty sure our niece is going to have an ankle monitor by the end of the night.”

“She knows,” I said, loud enough for him to hear. “She knows about Vasily. She heard the whole thing.” I looked her way, but Gavin had her tucked against his chest, both arms enveloping her small frame as she faced away from me.

“Fuck.” Hudson held me tighter.

That word covered it, so I let the rest go and simply soaked up the heat radiating from his body as we bounced our way back to the marina.

When we arrived, there was an ambulance waiting.

Two hours and a hot shower later, I felt mostly human as I walked out of the kitchen, brownie in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

“You have to stop hovering,” I lectured Sadie as she kept pace at my side into the living room. Gavin had dropped me off an hour ago after I refused to go anywhere near the Haven Cove ER, and Sadie hadn’t been more than two feet away since I came through the door. She’d even sat on the bathroom rug as I showered.

The intuition of dogs was indisputable.

I already had three text messages from Hudson, checking on me, and the tone of the messages was anything but pleased since I’d demanded he accompany Juniper to the ER to meet Caroline. I typed out a response to his latest message and dodged two of the packed boxes Anne had left beside the far armchair.

Allie: Eating. Drinking. Everything is fine.

It was quietly odd yet freeing to be in the house alone. It would be hours until everyone else returned from the reception. “Go lay down, honey,” I said to Sadie, motioning to her fluffy bed at the edge of the living room as I walked through the baggage-strewn foyer that only served to remind me that the summer was over. So was my time with Hudson.

My heart rebelled against the thought as Sadie gave a sigh of resignation, and I looked over my shoulder to see her turn a circle and collapse with a huff onto the bed as I headed into the studio.

I flipped the second light switch, and the wall sconces turned on, illuminating the studio with a soft glow instead of the bright overhead lights that spotlit imperfections when we trained at night.

We. I polished off the brownie as I pondered that particular term. We had trained here. We had been broken and remade. I just wasn’t sure what each of us had been shaped into. Even me.

I hadn’t even called my mother to tell her I’d won my part back.

Putting the bottle on the floor, I moved to Lina’s barre position, searching for any trace of her in my own reflection as I stood barefoot in cotton pajama pants and a tank top. But I didn’t see Lina, or even my mother. I only saw myself, principal dancer at whatever company I chose from the stack of contracts I’d been offered. I could go to Paris, or San Francisco, or I could go back to New York, sleep in the apartment my mother had chosen, work for the company she’d worshipped, and dance the role that had been created for me. I could secure Eva’s position too. I’d have to see Vasily every day, but I could go home.

My chest buckled, and I rubbed my hand over my sternum like I could somehow ease the ache accompanying the simple truth that every choice took me far from Hudson. He was expecting orders any day. At best case, he’d be in Sitka, six hundred miles away from the nearest professional ballet company, and God I wanted that for him, even if it cut me to the quick when we said goodbye.

At worst case, he would remain here, stifled but surrounded by the love of his family, and even if I wanted to be with him, to throw caution to the proverbial wind and let him all the way in, it would kill the career I’d just victoriously reclaimed. The nearest company was in Boston.

The best company was in New York.

There was no solution that even let me ponder keeping him.

Unless he gets stationed somewhere with a company, like San Francisco. But would either of us be happy, knowing our relationship had come at the cost of the very things we’d dreamed about?

A pair of headlights shone through the studio windows, and I turned to watch Gavin’s car roll up the long drive from the main road in the dying evening light. But it wasn’t Gavin who parked in front of the house and charged up the steps like a man possessed.

It was Hudson.

The front door blew open and was shut with the same energy a second before he walked into the studio, collar of his dress shirt undone, tie missing, and hair mussed like he’d ripped his hands through it a dozen times. His eyes held a wild desperation that made my heartbeat trip over itself as we locked eyes.

How was it possible that this was my last night with him?

“I wanted to bring you home.” He strode toward me, his gaze roving over my body. “And you let Gavin?”

“Shoes,” I reminded him, heat flooding my body as I retreated a step for every one he took. “And you’re the one with medical training. It only made sense to send you with Juniper, seeing as Caroline was meeting you at the ER.”

“Fuck the shoes.” He kicked them off. “And you refused to be seen—”

“The EMT cleared me at the scene,” I reminded him, passing Anne’s barre spot and entering the familiar territory of mine, where I stopped retreating and stood my ground. “And I have enough memories of that hospital without making any new ones, thank you very much.”

He flinched, and I immediately regretted reminding him. “Seeing you in that water?” He shook his head, crossing the distance between us. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“It scared the shit out of me too,” I admitted as he reached for me. “Juniper—”

“Not just Juniper.” He cupped the back of my neck and leaned into my space. “You, Allie. You scared the shit out of me. Do you have any idea what you mean to me? You’re my air. And I know you don’t even want to think about going there when it comes to us, that you need things all neat and tidy, but I’m already there. Messy. Tangled. So wrapped up in you that I couldn’t breathe in that ER because I needed to be here with you.”

My heart swelled, beating so loud it almost drown the insidious doubts that shook the bars of their cage, demanding I keep that very heart right where it was, safe within my own chest. I couldn’t surrender it to Hudson, not when ruin was our only possible outcome. But damn it . . . I wanted to.

“Hudson,” I whispered, my hands rising to his chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to push him away.

“I’m the one who needs you.” He lowered his head toward mine. “I need you, Allie. I always have.”