Page 14 of At First Dance
“She’s already crying somewhere,” I say through a second bite.
We eat like people who worked for it, knees almost touching, shoulder to shoulder, but not quite. That hum comes back—the one that feels like it starts in the chest and lives in the wrists. His free hand rests on his thigh, fingers splayed, and I have to look away because the very idea of those fingers on me makes my blood do tiny irresponsible fireworks.
After dinner, he rinses the plates. I dry. The domestic choreography would terrify my PR team and thrill my therapist. When the last fork clinks into the drawer, the power blinks—not off, just a hiccup—and the house sighs.
“Storm later,” Rowan says, glancing at the window. “You hear it in the way the air sits on the trees.”
“You got poetic about geese,” I remind him. “Now the trees, too? Dangerous.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” he says, lips tipping.
We step onto the porch just as the first rush of wind rattles the oak. The air is heavier. The world feels like it’s inhaled and is waiting to decide what to do with the breath. A strand of my hair whips into my mouth, and I laugh, tugging it free. Rowan reaches out—impulse, instinct—and tucks another behind my ear with a touch so careful that my knees consider giving out on principle.
“Thanks,” I say, breath not fully back.
He drops his hand like he remembered himself half a second too late. “You, uh… You need anything tonight? I can leave the truck if you want to run down to town in the morning.”
“I’m good,” I say. “Bailey said she’ll abduct me at ten for something called ‘market triage.’”
“Sounds legit.”
A flicker of lightning threads the clouds far off, silent for now. We watch it. I think about the woman who couldn’t hear herself think in a glass apartment high above the noise, and about this one making lists that include tomatoes and records and learning the weather by the way a tree’s leaves turn their bellies up.
“Rowan?” I say, before I decide it’s a bad idea.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you. Not just for the big stuff. For… the little ordinary things. The coffee. The Post-it. The hoodie. The fence. The sandwich. Those feel…” I search for a word that isn’tlike oxygen,because that will get me sent to a feelings monastery. “They feel like anchors.”
He goes still in that listening way he has. When he looks at me, something unguarded crosses his face and stays. “You’re welcome,” he says, like he means it from his bones. “You can keep the hoodie, by the way.”
My heart does the irresponsible thing again. “Dangerous offer.”
“Figured it’d save me a trip to the hook.”
We stand there until the first rumble makes itself known, a low roll that feels in my feet before it reaches my ears. He steps back like he doesn’t trust himself to stay put if he stays close. I step down because I don’t trust myself either.
“Good night, Rowan.”
“Good night, Ivy.”
The walk to the cottage is short and a little wild—wind playing with the ends of my hair, leaves whispering, and air electric with maybe. I close the door behind me and press my back to it, then grin into the dark like a person who has accidentally stumbled into her own life. I drop the needle on “Landslide” and crawl into bed with a book I don’t read.
Outside, the storm thinks about it. Inside, I do, too.
It’s only the second day. I am not supposed to feel this… full.
But I do. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t apologize to myself for it.
Chapter Three – Rowan
The storm breaks around midnight and walks all over the roof like it’s got a grievance. I lie there and count the space between flash and rumble until the number gets big enough to let my jaw unclench. When it moves off toward the bay, the dark turns plush. Crickets pick up where thunder leaves off.
The first light is clean and silver. The world smells washed and edible.
Coffee, boots, barn. Same order, same pace. Horses blow steam at me like criticism I can live with. The roof still ticks, letting go of the last of the rain. I run a palm down Duke’s neck, and he leans his whole soul into it. We all want proof we’re real at dawn.
On my way back across the yard, I look at the cottage without meaning to. A curtain moves. It’s a small thing, but it lands. The porch light’s off—good. She slept. A sliver of navy at the window tells me the hoodie never made it back to the hook. Somewhere between reasonable and reckless. I like that.
