High Pointe

High Pointe - Episode 17

"That doesn't mean I know where she's been," Lily replied dismissively. "She's not even in the corps. She's just some wannabe who practices in the same building I do. I haven't seen her at all since your party, Ezra."

"That's the problem," the young man said, looking furious as he loomed over Lily. Both of them remained completely unaware of me standing off to the side, fists clenching as I began to put the pieces together about just who they were talking about. "I haven't seen her since that night either."

"Maybe she got sick of you pawing at her all night and decided to find somewhere new to -" Lily started to say, but Ezra's expression darkened and she cut herself off, hands going up in surrender. "Or not."

"If you see her, if you hear anything about her," Ezra said, shaking his head. There was real worry in his voice and I hated it. It wasn't difficult to figure out who he was talking about. There was only one dancer at Précis Pointe who hadn't shown up at least once in the past two weeks, after all. He pulled a card out of his back pocket, handing it to Lily, who took it with the tips of her fingers like it was contaminated with something she doesn't want to touch. "Anything at all that could lead me to her, and I'll give you twenty percent off your next score."

"I'll see what I can find," Lily assured him, clearly interested in cashing in on that kind of deal. "But she's not here right now, and frankly I don't blame her. I have places to be, Ez."

She turned and walked past him towards the locker rooms. He turned the other way, heading back out the front doors, and I was left standing in the dark hallway with my hands balled into fists as I stared after him, seething.

"I don't keep tabs on your little girlfriend." That's what Lily had said, wasn't it? She had called Sophia his girlfriend, had seen them together at a party where he'd put his hands all over her. He'd probably done a lot more than that, too. He'd touched what was mine and now he was going to the trouble of tracking her down. I couldn't have that. Not at all.

Storming towards the front doors, I pushed them open with the intention of following him back to whatever rock he'd crawled out from under to make sure that he stayed there. Sophia was mine. She'd agreed to my lessons, accepted my gifts, had begged me to fuck her. She was mine, and this - 

I stopped short at the sight of him standing on the sidewalk beside a police car, leaning into the window to talk to the officer inside.

He wasn't just looking for Sophia, he was getting the police involved.

Fuck.

The officer was saying something, and Sophia's boyfriend nodded and waved back at the studio. He was still talking, hadn't seemed to notice me, but with both of them looking in my direction, I couldn't keep standing there forever.

I turned to the left and calmly walked to my car, my mind racing. No one could prove what I'd done, there was no reason to suspect me of all people. Dancers went missing all the time, after all. The number of amateur dancers who gave up on their dreams and moved back home was high enough to assume that's what Sophia had done as well.

Just because this Ezra fellow knew that Sophia practiced at Précis Pointe, that didn't mean he knew that was where I'd taken her. There were no cameras along this street, no whitenesses to what I'd done. As far as anyone knew she left the studio late that night like she did every night, and had never met me in her life. 

Except, Lily had called Sophia his girlfriend, and that implied a level of attachment and determination to find her that could come back to bite me in the ass.

And Sophia hadn't said a word about this guy, either. She'd gone along with my training, had succumbed to my authority and played the perfectly obedient student, all the while biding her time. Had she been waiting for this fucker to figure out what happened to her all along? 

Of course she had. She'd known that a rescue was possible, that this Ezra character was coming to save her and yet she had sat there next to me eating the food I'd bought her, listening to my experiences and instructions, accepting my gifts.

Begging me to take her.

And none of it had been real. She'd been waiting, that whole time. Just waiting for her knight in greasy hair to come crashing through the door and save her from my wicked ways. 

I sat at a red light, those thoughts chasing each other through my mind as I fought the urge to blow through the intersection in order to get home sooner. Instead, I let out a guttural scream as I slammed my hands against the steering wheel once, twice three times, unable to stop myself from imagining that little punk showing up at my house, finding Sophia there, putting his imperfect hands all over her perfect body.

Taking her from me.

I couldn't stand it.

The light turned green and I slammed the gas.

Sophia Hawkins was mine, and no one was going to take her from me.

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Oh no! Now that Victor knows about Ezra, what do we think he'll do to keep Sophia with him?

And with the police involved it's only a matter of time before she's found, right? 

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