Page 128 of At First Dance
Her steady gaze meets mine, unflinching. “Recently, they all are.”
That hits me somewhere deep. Somewhere old and scarred.
“You know… your notebook,” I hedge. “Didn’t read the whole thing. Just… a page or two. That song.”
She sets her fork down gently. Her lips press together in something like a smile. “Did it scare you?”
I shake my head. “It wrecked me.”
Silence stretches between us, heavy and intimate.
“I didn’t want to fall for anyone when I came here,” she says quietly. “I wanted quiet. Space. Somewhere to remember who I was before everything got so… loud. Hell, I still need to give Crew his jacket.”
My chest tightens. “Then what now? The label, your mom… your life. All of it’s back in Nashville.”
Ivy takes a breath and exhales slowly. “I don’t want to go back to that life. Not the way it was. I’m thinking about changing the deal.”
“What kind of change?”
“I want to record what I want. Write what matters to me. Maybe start something smaller, on my own terms.” She looks down at her plate. “And I want to help with the camp.”
I blink. “Seriously?”
“Rowan, I saw those kids’ faces. I saw what you built.” She tilts her head, her voice soft. “You used my sketch as the flyer.”
I nod. “It was better than anything I could come up with.”
“It was perfect.” She swallows. “I want to be part of this. Not just as the pop star who showed up once and waved to a crowd. I want to stay. Help. Teach. Sing. Be yours.”
My throat gets tight. “That sounds a hell of a lot like a dream I stopped letting myself have.”
“Maybe it’s time to believe in it again.”
I rise slowly and move around the table. She doesn’t hesitate—just slides off the stool and into my arms like she was made to be there.
I bury my face in her hair and whisper, “I want all of it. Music. Camp. Mornings like this. You.”
She pulls back just enough to look up at me. “Then let’s start planning. Together.”
Chapter Twenty-four – Rowan
The days after the dinner settle into something that doesn’t quite feel like reality, but maybe that’s the point. Perhaps we’ve spent so long surviving, dancing around what we are, that now, in the quiet aftermath, we’re finally living it.
Ivy’s still technically uses the cottage. She insists she needs the space, that she writes better in solitude, but most mornings, I find her curled into my side before the sun comes up, her legs tangled in mine like roots grown into the foundation of this place. Her toothbrush is next to mine. Her hairbrush has claimed a corner of the dresser. And every time she pads barefoot across my kitchen in one of my old T-shirts, I feel it like a shot to the chest—that quiet domestic ache that says this is it. She’s it.
The camp is running smoother than I ever imagined. We’ve got kids from three counties now, some coming back week after week with paint-splattered shoes and stories about the chickens they named.
But Ivy has turned this place into something more than a working farm. She added a music hour. Storytime with Bailey. Little picnic benches shaded by old pecan trees. She strings fairy lights like she’s decorating for a backyard wedding, and I let her, because every time I see her humming under her breath with a strand of lights tangled around her shoulders, I fall in love a little harder.
I touch her constantly. I can’t help it. A hand on the small of her back when she’s walking through a gate. My palm slides across her hip as we pass in the hallway. My fingers brush her neck when I tuck a curl behind her ear. I don’t think she evenrealizes how often she leans into me now. Her body knows mine like second nature.
By midmorning, we fall into the rhythm of the farm like we’ve been doing it for years. She coaxes Butterscotch out of a sulk with the bottle tucked in her elbow while I haul feed. Later, she pilots the Gator with her hair in a messy knot and her laugh echoing off the trees as I jog beside it, tossing salt blocks like a show-off. We restake tomatoes in the kitchen beds—her glove pressed to the stem while I tie a square knot and show her why it holds—and she hums under her breath, some half-finished melody I don’t ask her to name. When the hose kinks, she fixes it and “accidentally” sprays my boots. I retaliate just enough to make her squeal and then pull her in by the waist, water beading on her collarbone, both of us grinning like thieves. We check a creek-side fence, trade sips from a sun-warm canteen, and I realize we’ve talked all day without once needing the right words.
The sky is painted in streaks of soft copper and blush pink, the kind of sunset that makes you stop and stare, even if you’ve seen it a hundred times. Ivy’s sandal-clad foot nudges my boot as we climb the porch stairs. She doesn’t say anything, just laces her fingers through mine and lets the quiet settle between us again.
Inside, the air is cool from the box fan in the hallway. Ivy drops her ball cap on the hook by the door, her sunglasses beside it. She shrugs out of the denim shirt she grabbed from the laundry room, revealing that old concert tee she stole from my drawer and tied at the waist like it was meant for her. She disappears into the bathroom for a minute, and I hear the water run, then silence.
I wait on the porch.
