Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
"You don't live here," Rye says.
"Not yet," Jeremy snorts.
I'm halfway through a glazed donut without a flicker of guilt when Rye sets down his coffee and gives me that look.
The one that means he's about to do something I don't see coming.
"I have someone coming at two," he says.
"Okay." I knot my brow, listening to Anna and Jeremy chirping and laughing as they give themselves a tour of the house.
"Interior designer."
I stop chewing.
"Top firm in Detroit. I've used them for the clubs." He holds my gaze. "I want you to walk every room in this house with her and tell her what you want."
The house goes quiet. Jeremy and Anna freeze in the doorway leading to the hall.
"Rye, this is your house—"
"It’s yours. Everything I have is yours. Every room. Whatever you want. No budget." His jaw sets. "And one room, whichever you want, gets rebuilt as a dance studio. Proper floor, proper barre, mirrors. Sound system. Somewhere you can move however you want. No one counting anything.”
I stare at him.
"And a ball pit," he adds. "If you want one."
Anna makes a sound that is half laugh, half sob. Jeremy has both hands over his mouth.
"You spent eighteen years being someone else's idea of perfect." He crosses to me in two steps, takes my face in both hands. "You get to be whoever you actually are. In whatever color you want the walls."
"Yes," I say. “I love that. I love you.”
"Good."
He kisses my forehead. Steps back. Reaches into his pocket and produces a small dark box, opens it without preamble, without kneeling, without any of the theatrics because that is not how Rye does anything.
The diamond catches the light and throws it across the ceiling like a small, quiet explosion.
Old cut. Simple band. Chosen with complete certainty and zero input from anyone.
"I'm not asking if you want this," he says. "I already know you do." The corner of his mouth ticks up. "But I'm asking anyway. Because you deserve that."
My face is wet before I can stop it.
"Marry me, Dautie." He clears his throat and tries again. “Will you marry me, Dautie? Be my little girl forever.”
Behind me, Anna makes a noise that constitutes a full physical event. Jeremy grabs her arm. Neither of them breathes.
I look at the ring. I look at him. That face I've had in my heart since I was old enough to understand what longing was has been a fixed point in every storm.
"You're impossible," I tell him.
"Yes."
"You just decide—"
"Elodie." Warm and immovable. "Say yes."
I exhale.
"Obviously yes."
He slides the ring on before the word is finished. His arms come around me and I press my face into his chest and feel him exhale, the deep one that means he's right here with me.
Then Jeremy absolutely loses his mind.
He launches himself at both of us, drags Anna with him by the wrist, and for one chaotic coffee-spilling moment it's all four of us in the kitchen, Anna laughing into my hair, Jeremy announcing to no one in particular that he called it, he called it in the limo, history will vindicate him—
Rye endures all of it with his chin on top of my head and one arm still banded around my back.
I tilt my face up. He's watching me with that quiet, absolute look.
I hold up my left hand between us. The light scatters across the ceiling again, across his face, across the whole ordinary gorgeous wreckage of this crazy situation.
"No budget on the studio?" I ask.
"No budget on anything," he says.
Anna laughs. Jeremy is already photographing my hand.
Outside the robins are doing their thing and somewhere in this house there is a room that doesn't know yet it's about to become the place where I finally learn what it feels like to dance just for me.
Rye's arms are still around me.
I squeeze my left hand into a small, quiet fist and smile into his chest.
I’m Daddy’s good girl. Forever.
EPILOGUE
ELODIE
Five years later
Five years of photographs and he still doesn't know how many I have of him.
I'm cross-legged on our bed, the late afternoon sun cutting across the duvet, scrolling back through years of snaps and secret files.
It started as a bad habit with the first phone I got at twelve. Now it's something closer to a documented life.
Rye in this kitchen the morning after he put the ring on my finger. Shirtless, frowning at oven instructions like they'd personally insulted him.
Rye at the Ford Center the night of my modern dance debut, standing in the back in his black coat, arms folded, eyes tracking only me. Rye in the maternity ward chair, our daughter asleep on his chest, his massive hand curved around her entire back like a shell.
He doesn't know that one exists yet. He doesn’t like his own pictures. Only ones that I’m in.
Downstairs the particular rhythm of his footsteps I could pick out of any crowd, plus the smaller set that shadows him everywhere now.