Part Three
The dance instructor noticed me first, her eyes widening slightly. Elliot turned. All the color drained straight out of his face.
"Dana?"
Neither of us moved for a long second. His gaze dropped to the watch on his wrist, then back up to me.
"You saw the message."
I nodded, stepping into the room. "I thought—"
"I know." He closed his eyes for a moment. "I should have told you I was helping someone learn to dance while I was learning myself. I should have told you enough that you never had a single reason to doubt us."
I should have told you enough that you never had a single reason to doubt us.
He didn't defend himself. He didn't ask why I'd followed him. He just looked, plainly, disappointed in himself.
"I kept telling myself I was protecting Gordon's privacy," he admitted quietly. "But every week he got a little braver, and I'd come home dying to tell you about it — about helping an old man work up the nerve to ask his sweetheart to dance, after fifty-eight years of never doing it. Then I'd remember I'd promised him I'd keep it quiet."
He let out a slow breath. "The worst part is, I hated walking through our own front door with something wonderful sitting right there in my chest, and not being able to tell the one person I actually wanted to tell first."
The one person I actually wanted to tell first.
Something inside me finally gave way. Not because he'd been innocent exactly — because he understood precisely where he'd gone wrong.
"I stopped asking you questions," I admitted. "I just answered them myself, in my own head, all morning."
He nodded once. "And I made that far too easy for you to do."
The instructor stepped forward, smiling apologetically. "I'm Naomi, by the way. And I'm also the idiot who sent that message."
I blinked. "You?"
She laughed. "After every rehearsal I text all the volunteers the same thing — last night was perfect. It's just my way of saying thank you for showing up."
Elliot groaned. "I completely forgot my watch mirrors my phone notifications."
I couldn't help it. I laughed too, the sound surprising even me.
"I've genuinely never caused this much trouble before," Naomi said.
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