you wanted to go, you decided that you might prefer another. You were the most determined child I’d ever encountered. While my friends’ children were getting into trouble, with drugs and sex and all the rest of it, you never wavered. Ever.”
“I’m wavering now.” Though really, the only thing wavering was my voice. “I guess if professional ballet is a game of chicken, I lost.”
“Nonsense.” And this time, when my mother’s brow rose, I felt that she was doing it for me, not at me. “Ballet might be rigidly hierarchical, but love is not. Or it isn’t love. It expands. It changes when necessary—that’s called growth. And so will you.” She even smiled. “I will look into season tickets for your new company at once.”
And in case I thought that she had been body snatched, when my tears welled up she looked aghast, produced a tissue from her bag, and told me to pull myself together.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so at peace after an interaction with my mother before. I walked back to my apartment afterward, feeling…solid. Connected. I would dance out the rest of my contract at the Knickerbocker. I would nail my audition. And I would start a whole new chapter of professional dancing.
I would grow. This was growth. It was good.
The only thing stranger and more dizzying than not getting what you wanted, I was discovering with every step, was actually getting it.
I was going to have to figure out a way to be all right with center stage for a change.
I thought of Sebastian then and sighed. But I refused to let myself dwell on the things I couldn’t change. On the man who loved me—because I knew he loved me, so far as he was able—but couldn’t admit it.
And when I came around the corner of my street, I was so busy not dwelling that I almost slammed into the person standing there. Standing still in the middle of the sidewalk, as a matter fact, which should be illegal on New York City streets. Everyone knew that.
“Sorry—” I began.
But I knew that blue gaze, bright and beautiful.
And this time it was real, not a dream.
It was Sebastian. Live and in person and in the glorious flesh. And he took my breath away as surely as the periodic gusts of frigid wind rushing in from the East River. He cut through me that easily. He turned me inside out without laying a finger on me or saying a word.
“You can’t come back here and do this to me again,” I threw at him, hoping I sounded fierce enough to hide the sharp kick of longing inside.
“Quiet,” he told me, bossy and stern the way I liked him, though he wore an expression on his face I’d never seen before. “This time, little dancer, I’m going to do it right.”
And then, to my astonishment, he sank down onto his knees. Right there on the dirty, frigid February street.
It took me a long moment to realize that he’d reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. A small box in a recognizable shade of blue. He cracked it open, momentarily blinding me with the manic sparkle of the ring within.
A ring.
“Darcy James,” he said, dark and certain and still delightfully bossy. “I’m an idiot. I don’t deserve you, but I can’t seem to manage without you. I can’t think of a single reason why you should marry me, but I’m hoping you will all the same.”
I wasn’t sure my heart could take it. It was the hope that about killed me, swelling up inside and making my eyes tear up.
“I already told you why I can’t.” I wanted to touch him. I wanted to love him, forever. It was possible I already would. And did. But I wanted everything. Everything. I couldn’t stop loving myself, the way I knew I would if he didn’t love me back. “I just can’t—”
“I love you,” he said, low and urgent. “Of course I love you. You electrified me the moment I laid eyes on you in Paris. I would have paid six times what you took from me for another taste. I love you, Darcy. Madly. Impossibly. There’s no point to any of this without you. You don’t just make me wish I was a better man, you’ve already made me one.”
“Sebastian…” I whispered.
“Marry me, because I’ve never loved anyone else,” he urged me. Ordered me. “And I have the feeling I have a lot to make up for. I can’t promise you that I won’t drive you crazy. I’m sure I will. But I can promise you that the makeup sex will always be fantastic.”
“I love you,” I said helplessly. “I can’t help it. And I love that you keep showing up here and making these sweeping pronouncements. But a big, dramatic showstopper isn’t real life. If you want a ballerina doll of your very own, you should know that I can’t do that anymore. I’m not that person. I’m quitting the Knickerbocker.”
“I don’t care if the only place you dance is naked, for me,” he growled at me. “In fact, I encourage it. You look fierce and happy, and that’s what I want our life to feel like. You don’t have to be ready to marry me today. Just give me someday, Darcy.”
He took the ring out of its box and slipped it onto my finger.
A key into a lock.
It fit my finger the way we fit together. Perfectly.
“I want it all,” I whispered. “I want everything. With you.”
His smile broke my heart again, smashing it into pieces, then knit it back together again.
“Then everything is what you get,” he promised me.
He rose then, pulling me into his arms, and it was like coming home at last. I was vaguely aware that we’d drawn a crowd, but I didn’t care about them. I couldn’t even see them.
What mattered was Sebastian. He was all I could see. All I wanted. The two of us together and the life we would build, one brick at a time.
It was most important dance of my life, and it started now.
And unlike every other dance I’d ever learned, this one would last forever.
Sebastian
THE THEATER WAS FULL. There were the sounds of soft conversations, programs rustling in people’s hands and the orchestra—or perhaps, more properly tonight, the band—tuning their instruments.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself so much as the faintest hint of nerves, but this was different. This wasn’t something for me to win or lose. This was Darcy’s debut in her new company.
I was a wreck, though I would die before I’d show it.
Darcy’s parents sat to one side of me, cool and polite, as ever. We had gone up to Connecticut to celebrate our engagement with them, after a fashion.
