Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 89

Welcome back, everybody! I hope you all are having a nice holiday break---I've had a terribly busy semester, but it's been a good time overall. I'm glad to have some time over break to do a little bit of writing for you all. :)

As always, enjoy! 

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Beside me, Cal releases a sigh.

The air that he breathes is heavy and angry.

He doesn't say anything this time, finally stopping with his pleas and accusations. His father already pulled Cal from the room just before he started arguing with one of the policemen.

"This is fucked up," Cal mutters to himself, to me.

In his dad's grand office room, I sit with criss-crossed legs on one of the opulent leather sofas. My hands are folded in my lap, and I stare straight across at the space ahead. Every time I swallow, I'm too conscious of how my throat must bob. I hate how my face feels hot.

Before now, I thought I had seen what Cal in a state of turmoil looked like. Now, I can't say that I had.

I've been here for hours. It feels like days.

Cal never let them touch me. Instead, he pulled me from the studio, more or less using his own body as a shield while telling the police over and over again that he was taking me to his dad's office, that Evangeline's accusations are a cosmic misunderstanding, and that we would all sit down and talk through things.

He kept apologizing to me, over and over again, telling me how awful Evangeline is and how she would do something exactly like this. Ptolemus held Cal back when the head officer politely told him that I could wait in the office with two of the officers. He only relented when two lady officers stepped forward to do the job. Then I sat and sat and sat in Tibe's office room, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with the officers while murmuring every so often that I didn't do anything.

Detaining a girl in a ballet company office room can hardly be legal.

Evangeline must have meticulously outlined her suspicions to the Calore family. I swear I waited in here for over two hours before the whole gaggle of officers and the Calore family returned with Evangeline.

She's making this into a spectacle.

"What did I do again? Can you tell the story again, please?"

That's what I asked the first time Evangeline yelled at me, demanding that I explain myself. She almost lost it when I did that. Then she spent the next half hour narrating her investigation, her speculations again.

Now, Cal and I sit together on his dad's couch. The skin that covers his knuckles has gone permanently white, his pretty bronze eyes cold and dark. His body, usually so relaxed, has barely moved in the past fifteen minutes. I swear he's only remembered to breathe once or twice since he got here.

What a mess I'm in.

For whatever reason, Evangeline's photographs haven't come up yet. Her PI watched my meeting with Shade, Farley, and Tyton, but she hasn't brought that up either.

I know the officers still eat up everything that Evangeline says. But they're desperate for a lead and might take anyone they can get.

Aside from the mass of officers, few people linger around the office. There's Tibe on the chair adjacent to us, and Elara stands quietly near the closed door, arms crossed and brows raised.

It's a family affair.

The last hour or so has consisted of Evangeline trying to coerce the truth out of me, Evangeline retelling her theories, Evangeline blaming me for her accident—the brakes on her car were cut, after all—and everybody else sitting in silence.