Elliot drove another fifteen minutes before turning into the parking lot of the Ashgrove Community Center. I blinked.
This wasn't a hotel. Not a restaurant. Not even an office building.
A banner near the entrance read: THURSDAY BALLROOM SOCIAL.
Ballroom?
This wasn't a hotel.
I almost smiled despite everything. Elliot couldn't dance. At our own wedding reception, he'd stepped on my shoes so many times my maid of honor had joked about adding steel-toed boots to our first anniversary gift.
He parked near the side entrance, gathered the garment bag and the rose, and disappeared inside. I waited one minute. Then two.
I should have left.
Instead, I climbed out of the car.
I should have left.
Music drifted faintly through an open window — a piano, slow and gentle. I followed the sound down a quiet hallway until I found a narrow window looking into a large studio.
Then I froze.
Elliot stood in the center of the room. A woman rested one hand on his shoulder, their other hands clasped together. They moved across the polished floor in careful, deliberate rhythm.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
They moved across the polished floor in careful, deliberate rhythm.
She smiled at him. He smiled back. She reached up to straighten the front of his shirt, then laughed at something he said.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Inside the studio, the music stopped. The woman clapped her hands. "No," she said, amused. "You're getting there, but your timing's still off." She reached for his hands again. "Let's try it once more."
How many times had they already done this?
How many "late nights" had actually happened right here?
How many late nights had actually happened right here?
I took one step backward. Then another. I couldn't seem to get a full breath.
Nine years. Nine years of believing I fully knew the man I loved.
I turned toward the hallway, desperate to get out before he saw me.
Then another voice stopped me cold.
An older man's voice. "I don't think I can do it."
I looked back through the window.
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