“And if you owned your own studio, if you could start with dancers at the beginning of their journey…”
“I could make real change.” I lit up at the thought, my chest fluttering. “And I’d be in the community, showing what’s possible when one of us stands up and does things differently.”
Marcus smiled. “I think you’re right. Braden did come into your life for a reason.”
I squeezed his hand, and then he pulled me into a hug, one that Darcy jumped in on at the last moment.
“We get to dance together again!” She squealed with delight. “Come on. Let’s take some selfies before line up.”
Darcy tugged us both into frame, and I pasted on a smile for the camera, angling my face just right while Marcus threw up a peace sign and kissed my cheek.
To anyone looking at the photo later, we’d look exactly like we were supposed to. Glittering. Happy. Electric.
But the second Darcy dropped her phone and we started toward lineup, that ache in my chest returned with a vengeance.
It was one thing to finally understand what I wanted.
It was another thing entirely to realize how much it terrified me.
Because Marcus was right — and so was I.
For my entire life, I’d kept one foot out the door. Whether it was a job, a city, a relationship, even my own dreams… I’d never fully been in any of it.
I had always known how to leave.
I knew how to tell myself not to get too attached, not to need too much, not to build a life around anything that could be taken from me.
And now, somehow, I had done the one thing I’d spent years trying not to do.
I had rooted myself.
In Seattle. In a version of my future that finally felt right.
In a life that suddenly looked less like proving something, and more like living it.
And worst of all, maybe, I had rooted myself in him.
In Braden.
The man who had let me all the way in just to step back when I finally stopped pretending I didn’t want to stay.
Maybe it was my own doing, the way I’d pretended like it was so casual. I’d acted like I hadn’t felt that connection between us from the start, like I hadn’t longed for his friendship just as much as I’d longed for that first physical connection.
It’s just a little fun,I’d sworn.It’s just a sexy little bucket list.
But I’d known better. I’d felt an inescapable pull to him, like the universe realized well before I did that he was the one I’d been on this long and drawn-out journey to all along.
Finally, she’s found him.
Finally, she can stop running.
That was the part that made fear curl icy fingers around my spine.
Not just that I loved him.
But that I loved him enough to imagine a life around him, enough to realize I didn’t want to keep drifting through my own life anymore, pretending movement was freedom when really, most of the time, it had just been avoidance.
I wanted to stay.
