Page 107 of At First Dance
He whistles low. “Damn, Ro. You building a wedding venue or just working out your trauma?”
I roll my eyes. “You’re not funny.”
Crew tilts his head. “You really are the emotionally constipated one, huh?”
“Don’t you have sprints to run?”
“I’m on my break.” He studies me for a long second, then sighs. “You could just say it, you know. That you’re in love with her.”
I pause. The stick in my hand breaks in half.
Crew raises a brow. “That’s what I thought.”
“I don’t know what I am,” I admit quietly. “I’ve never felt anything like this. Not with Marissa. Not with anyone.”
“Then maybe it’s real.”
I look up at the stage, at the way the light hits the edge of the frame. “I think it is.”
Crew claps me on the back. “Then finish the damn thing so when she comes back, you’ve got something better than a text full of horse pictures.”
I grunt. “Those weresolidhorse pictures.”
He laughs, walks off, and I stare after him. Then I go back to work because this isn’t just about Ivy anymore. It’s about me being the man I never thought I could be—for her.
For us.
Chapter Twenty– Ivy
The fluorescent lights in the PR building hum like angry bees overhead, and I swear, if one more person asks me to “smile for the camera,” I might climb onto the conference table and scream.
I don’t.
Because that would be bad for brand integrity.
Instead, I sit very still, legs crossed, hands folded in my lap, pretending I don’t feel like I’ve left half of myself behind in a cottage with weathered wood siding and a man who smells like sandalwood and slow Sunday mornings.
“Ivy,” my publicist says for the third time, and I blink back into the room.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “What was that?”
“The new single. The one you teased last month? We need a firm release date, and we need a track. Something we can build a social campaign around.”
I reach for the water bottle and twist the cap, buying myself a breath.
The truth isn’t that I’m empty—it’s that I’m full in ways I don’t want to hand to them yet. I’ve been writing without my usual notebook: hotel stationery covered in half choruses, the back of a boarding pass with a bridge scribbled across the barcode, voice memos at 2:12 a.m. where I hum the hook into my phone so it doesn’t get away. The songs are there. They’re just mine right now.
So why am I still here? Because I choose to be—for a minute. I could have dug in and said Zoom only, and most of this could’ve limped along on video. But fittings for tour pieces need pins in real fabric and hands tugging seams; cameratests for the first video look different in person; choreography tweaks land faster when you’re standing on the tape lines; legal wants signatures, not screenshots. If I stack it all now—two days of wardrobe, a half day of camera and lighting tests, one production meeting, one rehearsal block, a quick brand shoot—I can clear weeks later. Fewer “urgent” trips. More uninterrupted days back in Coral Bell Cove to write, breathe, be.
It’s not that they couldn’t come to me. They could. They’d just bring an entourage and a press leak, and my quiet would be collateral damage. Here, I can herd everyone into three rooms and say no when the schedule grows extra heads. Which I do. I cut the second brand segment. I limit the photo set to one look. I cap the day at six hours. I keep my mornings for writing, even if it’s on napkins.
So I sit through “engagement” and “deliverables” and nod like a professional while the parts of me that matter stay tucked in my pocket—ink-stained fingers, a melody that smells like river water, a verse that belongs to a porch and a man who doesn’t talk unless he has something to say. When the meeting finally spits me back into the elevator, I press my forehead to the cool metal and let the truth unspool: I’m here because finishing it now buys me freedom later. And because the sooner I do this on my terms, the sooner I get to fly home.
I miss mornings with strong coffee and stronger silences. I miss the rooster I never got to meet. I miss Bailey’s little readers and their impossible questions. I miss belonging to something small and beautiful and real.
When I get back to the apartment—my painfully sterile high-rise that smells like someone else’s soap—I dig through my bag for my songwriting notebook, then remember I purposely left it shoved into the couch cushions at Rowan’s. He hasn’t mentioned that he found it, but my nerves bubble to the surfacethinking that he has. All my greatest secrets are scribbled on those pages.
I stare at the blank page on my tablet, fingers hovering over the screen like the lyrics might spill out if I stay still long enough. But they don’t. They haven’t all day.
