Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 34

For the MareCal shippers out there, another contemporary lesson is coming soon...

As always, star and comment. Enjoy, my lovelies!

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"You can't see any skyscrapers from here."

"I know," I murmur. "That's what I love about it."

Maven and I walk along a tarred pathway, every type of tree imaginable to our left and a paved street with all sorts of white markings to our right. Though Maven and I walk at a brisk pace, bikers come whizzing past us, vanishing around a curve in the road up ahead.

The lunchtime traffic on the way to Central Park's Seventy-second Street entrance was awful. Not to mention that it's a Saturday. The subway would've been ten times faster, but Maven insisted on taking a taxi. Apparently his trip on the subway to Little Italy was a one-time thing—I spent half of the ride picking on him for it.

But now we're late. It's ten after twelve, and my partner and I are fast-walking toward the Loeb Boathouse sign.

We turn left for another pathway and take a right down it. "Nevermind. I see some skyscrapers over there."

I scoff, glancing over the line of trees where Maven points. Sure enough, a couple of high rises poke up over them, jutting into a pewter grey sky. "It was nice while it lasted."

Maven and I share a sigh and laugh it off. The buildings that we can see from here are west of Central Park, not south like the ones in Midtown are. Still, it feels like somebody's . . . watching us. It always feels that way with the big buildings around, and it seems that I can never get away from them completely.

"Think they'll be mad that we're late?" Maven asks quietly as he leans into my ear. A wrought-iron fence surrounded by shrubs and these spindly trees guards the Loeb Boathouse up ahead, and I can just make out a few glass panels.

"I think they think you're setting them," I mutter, crossing my arms. We come to where the fence transitions into gates, and Maven takes the lead by pulling one of them open. He lets me walk in first, elegant bricks under my boots. "I wouldn't be surprised if they split."

Maven received the letter, after all. He never had to share it with me and could've called the cops to arrest Farley and whoever else is attending this lunch date. But again: I trust him. Farley doesn't, though.

"But it'll be fine, either way. It's the traffic's fault, not ours," I say when Maven doesn't respond.

We make it to the end of the pathway, but before I have the chance to open the black French door, Maven grabs my wrist. He's gentle about it. I have to look back at him.

"I hate him, Mare."

A desperateness lurks in his tone, and beneath that, an anger. With one glance at his face, Maven comes across as perfectly calm, but his voice almost shakes.

"Maven . . ." I can only say his name. He found out the same time I did about his father's criminal underworld, and neither of us knows the half of it. Though Diana Farley's story is enough to make anybody sick with rage.

Maven thought he was a shadow before. Yet it turns out he's been in the dark altogether, blind to what his father really is and what he really does. I saw the pain in his eyes far too many times that night in Little Italy, and I still don't think any of it has fully sunken in for either of us.

I want to talk to him about everything, but I haven't had the chance since the subway station, and we spent that time discussing other things. And last night, I couldn't say anything with Iris around.