Aw hell, what did it matter? He had spent his whole life wishing for what could've been.
As Rachol would say if he were here, Nykyrian had two choices. He could either continue to wallow in his useless self-pity or he could try to see Kiara. Neither option seemed promising at the moment. Sighing again, Nykyrian went to refill his glass.
*
Lights flashed in Kiara's face, blinding her. She turned her head away and made a few quotable responses to the reporters as she pried her way between them to her dressing room. After her brief, mysterious disappearance, she seemed to be the hottest topic in the media. Well let them gossip. What did she care anyway? Just wait until they learned about her baby, then they really would swarm her for juicy tidbits.
With a weary sigh, she fell into her room and closed the door against the overzealous reporters. Leaning against the door, she took several calming breaths.
She wondered how she had ever enjoyed dancing, and if she would ever enjoy it again.
All the back-biting politics and eager young dancers out to bring a perform er down, all the two-faced promoters who wanted to make a sola with one hand and shove the other down her dress. She was tired of it.
Pushing herself away from the door, she grabbed a towel from her dressing table and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
"Kiara?"
She froze, knowing the voice that continued to haunt her dreams. Nykyrian stepped out of the shadows. She stared at him, noting the dark circles under his eyes, the tenseness around his lips. Stubble lined his handsome face as if he hadn't shaved in several days.
Despite her anger and pain, her body throbbed with desire. How could she still want to make love to him after what he had done to her? He had abandoned her and their baby without so m uch as a good-bye!
"What do you want?" she snapped.
He reached his hand out to touch her, then drew it back. "I wanted to explain."
She turned away and jerked the zipper down the back of her costume, cursing as it caught in her hair and ripped out several strands. "I don't want to hear it!" she snarled, facing him. "You let me think you were dead!"
As expected, his face was impassive.
Tears coursed down Kiara's cheeks at the memory of his supposed death, and her temper flamed even higher. "I thought you were dead because of me! How could you do such a thing?"
He looked away and brushed his hand through his hair. "Don't you think I suffered?" His voice was a faint, impartial whisper that barely reached her. "I almost did die."
"I wished to God you had!"
His jaw twitched, but he showed no other reaction. Without a word, he disappeared through the open doors of the balcony. Kiara told herself she was glad he was gone. She didn't want to see him after what he had done. He had left her. Her heart didn't listen.
"Nykyrian!" she called, running to the balcony, but it was too late.
The street below was as empty as her soul, her life.
A light breeze rippled through her hair while she stood there trying to find him, reminding her of gentle fingers that used to play there instead.
*
Kiara took a deep breath, relieved to finally be finished with the talk-show interview. Her father and Tiyana walked down the station's glaring white hallway by her side, chatting away about the success of her return to the theatre, their feet tapping a solemn rhythm on the gray porcelain floor.
Kiara rubbed the chills from her arms. What she wouldn't give to go back to the solitude and peace she had at Nykyrian's. She missed making love to him with the stars twinkling over them.
"Are you all right?" her father asked, his voice warm in concern.
Her father had becom e much m ore understanding in the last few weeks, but he still refused to call the baby anything more personal than "it." Kiara had ceased to be angry with her father. Now her anger stayed focused on another source, one who had gorgeous blond hair and dimples, one she would really like to kill.
"Just tired," she said, shifting her cloak around her shoulders.
Kiara caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned just in time to see the blaster level at her chest. A scream rippled up through her lungs as her father pushed her out of the way. Pain, intense and throbbing, burst across her arm as she fell on the floor.
More shots fired, but she couldn't tell what was going on from her position under her father. Shouts filled the hallway and someone ran past her.
"Kiara?"
She blinked at Nykyrian's voice, the pain of her arm forgotten.
Her father rolled off of her with a snarl. Kiara tried to push herself away from Nykyrian, but he reached out and grabbed her arm in a steel hold she couldn't break.
"Release her!" her father roared, trying to pry Nykyrian's hand from her.
Nykyrian shook her father away and hauled her to her feet by her arm. With a feral curse, her father moved back towards them.
"Don't," Nykyrian said, leveling his blaster at her father's chest.