That night had been so still it felt like something was wrong.
I'd just come out of dance class when I found Oliver slumped against the dumpsters, soaked in blood, a photograph of a woman crushed in his fist so tight his knuckles had gone white.
He was hunched over, gasping like each breath might be his last.
I saved him.
I only learned later that it had been the anniversary of the woman in the photograph—his mother. She'd given the Vance family one son in all her years of marriage, and that alone was enough to condemn her: she'd failed to carry on the line, broken the rules. Then his father's mistress started coming for her, again and again.
His mother had a breakdown and took her own life.
Oliver always said the Vance family's rules killed her.
He used to watch me through the studio glass while I danced, just standing there, lost.
All that dazed panic in his eyes would go quiet the moment I nodded at him, then flicker back to something like hope.
Soon after, the family took him back.
And then strange accidents started happening to me, one after another.
When I asked why, his face went hard, but all he said was not to overthink it.
After that, I barely saw him.