Page 51 of At First Dance
She slips her glasses back on. “I’ll assume it is. Charming. Picturesque. Not permanent.” The smile she gives me is TV-warm and ice-cold. “Five o’clock, Evangeline. Don’t make me send someone to fetch you like a child.”
She turns, her heels finding every rock in the drive and punishing it, then slides into the back seat. The sedan glides away like the whole visit was a commercial break.
Silence rushes in. The porch smells like coffee and last night’s rain. My hands shake.
I pick up the envelope but don’t open it.
And for the first time since the sedan appeared, my lungs remember how to do their job. Slipping back into the house, the screen door snapping behind me as if it’s just as angry about my mother’s arrival as I am, I hover in the kitchen.
I press my palms to the counter, grounding myself. I’m not the girl in the sequined dress anymore. I’m not twelve years old and scared of the electricity bill or the sound of my father’s truck door slamming outside the shack. I’m grown. I’m free. And maybe completely freaking lost.
A soft knock comes at the door. I don’t answer. It comes again, followed by the gentle creak of hinges and Rowan’s voice, low and rough from the field.
“Ivy?”
I turn slowly. He steps inside, filling the doorway with his quiet presence. His hat is gone, hair mussed from the sun. Dirt streaks his forearms, and his boots are caked with red clay, but he looks steady in a way I desperately need.
He takes one quiet step closer, slow enough that I could move if I wanted to. I don’t. His hand comes up, rough palm warm against my cheek as his thumb sweeps away the tear I didn’t realize had escaped. His eyes are flint around the edges, soft in the middle—angry that someone put salt in my eyes, careful not to add to it.
“You okay?” he asks, voice low and steady, like walking barefoot through warm grass.
I open my mouth, shut it, then try again. “No,” I whisper, because lying feels like the wrong kind of hard tonight. “Shejust… showed up. Said I need to fly back. Meetings. Photos. ‘Reset the narrative.’ Smile on command.” The words scrape my throat on the way out. “It’s the machine, Rowan. And I don’t know if I can climb back on without breaking something I finally like.”
Rowan doesn’t speak. I look at him, expecting judgment. Coldness. Distance. What I get is his quiet understanding. Something deeper than pity.
“She says I still owe her. That I signed over my life when I was eighteen and scared and dumb. Back when I was Evangaline Quinn and not this Ivy product I’ve become.”
He steps closer.
“She’s not wrong,” I add bitterly. “But she’s not right either.”
“You’re not dumb,” Rowan says quietly.
I laugh. It cracks around the edges. “You don’t know me.”
“I know what it looks like when someone’s trying to keep you small.”
The words hit too close to home. I look down, blinking hard.
He’s beside me now, not touching—just close. Present in a way that settles something inside me even as it stirs more up.
“You going?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
Rowan nods, like he understands the weight of not knowing. Like he’s carried that, too.
I reach up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and my fingers shake.
Without a word, Rowan reaches out and gently takes my hand in his. Rough palm against trembling fingers. Ground and air.
It’s not romantic, not exactly—no flowers, no speeches—but the look on his face is steady enough to make my throat burn.
“You don’t owe anyone your peace,” he says, low and certain, like he’s telling me which way the tide will turn.
I swallow. “And if I go anyway?”
He nods once, no flinch. “Then go because you chose it. And know this place will be waiting when you’re done—same porch light, same coffee, same quiet.” His mouth tips, the smallest almost smile.
