Page 12 of Wicked Knight

She’s getting ready to practice. She’s currently doing the summer show for the New York City Ballet. It’s her first big break.

Unbeknownst to her, I watched her perform on opening night. Then I got hookedon herand saw a few more shows that week.

We may not speak anymore, but I’ve made it my business to know everything I can about her.

Every time I see her dance, she seems to get better and better. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when she never believed she would be able to dance. Or that she was the worst in her class.

I’m instantly stolen away from my thoughts when her body flows into each movement with the grace of swans gliding across a lake.

There’s a desperation in the way she moves, a sharpness, a rawness, yet she still manages to maintain the delicate elegance of a ballerina. Every line of her body is a story, each spin and stretch a secret she’ll never tell.

That’s her talent. The ability to summon and control every emotion with her dancing. With just one sequence of moves, she can make you feel everything. Even things you never thought you could feel. And that’s just from watching her. Touching her is a different story altogether.

The thought of touching her makes the knots inside me tighten with lust.

Lust from the kiss we never got to have.

I was supposed to kiss her on the night the world changed.

Haunting memories of the past slither into my mind with that thought.

Depending on who you ask in our families, they’ll tell you the reason for the feud was Tommy’s death and the suspicion that Mackenzie’s father killed him.

But the real reason for the feud was her.

It was suspected that Tommy kidnapped her. That suspicion was instigated by me.

Tommy was a raging psycho I could never figure out, but like me, he seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with Mackenzie.

Weeks before he died, it got really bad, and he started taking inappropriate—virtually naked—pictures of her that he’d show me. He always taunted me about kidnapping and raping her.

I never knew if he really was obsessed or if he was just fucking with my mind, because that’s what he was like. At the time, he was nineteen, had a girlfriend, and I couldn’t imagine him wanting to be with a fourteen-year-old girl.

But when she went missing and he did, too, I assumed the worst.

When they didn’t turn up for four days, I told her father about Tommy’s obsession, doing so against my father’s wishes. Back then, I had no power, but I had enough resilience in me to get help where I thought I could.

My father ripped into me, but raising the alarm gave us more clues on where Mackenzie had been.

I was with him when he tracked her down in a deserted cabin in the woods. A deserted cabin that Tommy had been using. She was unconscious and covered in blood.

But we weren’t the first to get there and find her.

We found Tommy next. He lay not far from the cabin with Adrian hovering over his body with guilt written all over him.

And that’s where everything fell into the gray area. We don’t know what time he got there, and my father didn’t trust Adrian’s alibi.

I can’t say one way or the other if I do or don’t.

And the worst thing? Mackenzie doesn’t remember anything. Not one damn thing.

Whatever happened to her knocked it out of her mind. She said she fell and hit her head. That was the only relevant thing she remembered. Everything else was from days before when she was around people.

The truth that could give us answers is locked away in her mind.

The truth my father and I believe has been the only truth we’ve held on to.

It was too logical for it not to be true that Adrian must have found Mackenzie and killed Tommy for taking his daughter. But he maintains that’snotwhat happened.