They slowly came back to themselves, to each other, and she found her feet. Her skirt settled around her ankles, and she regained her balance. Dane tidied himself up, rebuttoned, and picked up her belt. Their eyes remained locked.
His were the only eyes she wanted to look into from thispoint forward. Dane, seeming to hear her unspoken thoughts—just like he had heard her silent plea earlier to kiss her—curled his hand around her neck and rested his forehead against hers.
“Let’s figure it out, Wren,” he murmured.
She nodded, her hands on his chest. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
* * *
Dane and Wren sank to the wooden floor, her sitting in a cross-legged position in the middle of the studio. Her feet were bare, and her ankle bracelet glistened in the low light coming in from the streetlights outside on Main Street.
Sitting opposite her, Dane wished he had a bottle of wine, a beer, something to lubricate his suddenly tight throat. Overwhelmed by emotion, unable to believe that maybe, just maybe, happiness was within his grasp, he swallowed and rubbed his throat.
Wren looked around and placed her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. “Why here, Dane? We could’ve gone to your cottage.”
He met her eyes, and saw the trace of anxiety in hers, and heard the wobble in her voice. Like him, she was a little overwhelmed, and she looked like she was ready to bolt. There was no way he was going to let that happen.
He glanced around—the scuffed floor, the mirrors, the bench, and the stereo system—and let himself smile. “Because I’ve had the best time with you in this studio,” he said. “Whether I was trying to dance, or just watching you dance, or talking to you after you danced, I just love being here with you.”
Wren leaned back on her hands, head tipped toward the window. To Dane, it felt like the night, the stars seemed to be holding their breath, all deeply invested in their love affair. There was magic in the air…
Dane placed their wishes-and-regrets notes on the floor between them.
“You didn’t throw yours into the fire?” she said.
“I figured it would do me more good if you saw what I regretted and wished for.”
He wasn’t wrong. She picked up his note, reading his regret, then his wish. When her eyes met his, he caught the sheen of tears turning her green eyes luminous. Yeah, they’d keep these scraps of paper, one fire-scorched, forever.
Wren picked up her note and frowned. “I thought I threw this into the fire,” she said, puzzled.
“It blew out and landed on my foot.” He held up his hand and shook his head. “Don’t ask me how. I have a theory, but you won’t like it.”
Then she read hers—I wish for someone who will always love me, who’ll stay … and never leave—frowned, and read it again. “Hold on…”
He looked at her, not understanding her confusion. He peered down at the note. “Please don’t tell me I picked up someone else’s note after all this.”
She shook her head, now a bit pale. “No, it’s my note. But it’s not the one I wrote tonight.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me,” he said, a little scared by her reed-thin voice.
Her eyes, when they met his, were a combination of shock, laughter and exasperation. “I wrote this note when I was a kid, shortly after my dad told me I couldn’t live with him and that I had to live with Luna. I threw it into the bonfire on Halloween night fifteen years ago.” She pointed to the tiny heart above thei in will. “I used to put hearts over my i’s when I was a teenager. Besides, this wasn’t what I wrote earlier.”
“What did you write?” he asked, his heart in his throat.
“It was similar, I wished that you’d choose me and stay.” She bit her bottom lip. “Both my present and long-ago wishes came true.” Her brow furrowed and he knew what she was about to ask next. “But God, Dane,how?How did this note come back?”
He took the note, laid it on top of his, thinking it would be a reminder of this night and how they came together. “Let’s not go down the ghost, paranormal, how-come-weirdly-fantastical-shit-like-this-only-happens-in-H-Town rabbit hole,” he suggested. “We can spend the rest of our lives trying to work the mystery of how your note came back from the past.”
She looked like she was racking her brain trying to find a rational explanation, and she sent another puzzled look at the notes. Then she nodded.
“I’ve loved every minute of this summer spent with you, Dane,” she told him, sounding too serious. “I didn’t realize how much until now.”
He echoed her stance, stretched out his long legs, and tipped his head, unable to look at anything but her. He thought he’d start with the easy stuff, work their way up to the hard. “You did well today, sweetheart. With the kids. It was brilliant.”
She smiled at his praise, and he spoke again. “Slightly harder question. Alex? You done?”
“Called him, told him. He wasn’t that surprised, to be honest.”
