Page 8 of Wild Heart

“Your dad’s doing it.”

I looked out into the kitchen and noted that my dad was, in fact, dancing. He had my mom in his arms, and they looked like they were newlyweds, not two people who’d been married for nearly thirty years. “My dad has always danced with my mom.”

“And yet you never picked it up?”

Shaking my head, I replied, “Nope. I have no interest in that. I’d be terrible.”

Her eyes roamed over me from top to toe. “I don’t think you would. I think, with the right partner, you’d be a fabulous dancer.”

I smiled at her, recognizing what she was trying to do, and said, “Sorry. I think I’m much happier watching.”

She sighed, returned her attention to my parents, and murmured, “I don’t think you realize what you’re missing.”

It was the most subdued I’d ever seen Ava. She stayed like that for a beat, and when I made no move to give in to what she wanted, she pushed off the wall and went in search of more desserts.

2

AVA

I wasfifteen years old when I fell in love.

I could remember the day like it happened yesterday. That day had been so monumental in my life. I had been set to perform my first dance solo ever, and yet, my family wouldn’t be there to witness it. My dad had been arrested, and my mom had gotten drunk.

I had been an afterthought.

I always had been.

But that day had been the day I fell in love.

After what he’d done, I’d decided that Tate Westwood was the man I was going to marry.

When I’d finished my solo set and spotted him in the crowd, my belly flipped. Then he smiled at me, and I was a goner.

But it wasn’t that which did it for me. Sure, I’d been caught off guard seeing him there and overwhelmed by his willingness to sit through all the other performances just to see mine. It was what happened after I’d done the group performance and could leave that changed it all for me.

Tate didn’t just drive me back home to deal with the chaos that was my parents. He took Ivy and me out to eat. My best friend had shared the truth with him about this soloperformance being my first, and Tate reasoned we needed to celebrate it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have thought too much about it. He was a Westwood. If there was an opportunity to celebrate something, they’d never miss it.

So, it didn’t surprise me that Tate had decided on a late afternoon celebration. I was certain it was in his DNA to make something like that happen.

It was Tate sitting across from Ivy and me in that booth and listening intently as I poured my heart out about what happened with my parents that morning that did it for me.

He, along with his sister, took it all in—my fears, confusion, and heartbreak. And if there was one thing they did, it was to surround me with love and support.

Ivy had known about my life with my parents for as long as I could remember. Tate was getting the details for the first time. And it was safe to say I was embarrassed by all of it.

Because where my best friend and her brother had parents who loved and adored each other and their children, my parents never should have gotten together in the first place, let alone had me.

I didn’t know if it had always been the way it was between them, but it was all I had ever seen. Dad often stayed out too late, and Mom bitched at him whenever he decided to stroll through the door.

They were always yelling, always arguing. And that day, it had been the worst. Because Dad had gone out the night before, and he hadn’t returned home until well after the sun had come up. He had been drunk, and surprisingly, he’d been responsible enough not to drive himself home.

But Mom saw the car he got out of. Or, more specifically, she saw the woman driving the car he got out of, accused him of cheating, and started an argument.

It was chaos.

He continued to drink. She did the same. But because she refused to stop yelling at him, he eventually lost his cool and yelled back. Things got physical. And when the police arrived because a neighbor had called, my father was hauled off to jail.