One Last Encore (The Coast To Coast #2)

Chapter 1Ingrid, Present

INGRID, PRESENT

"That stage is your canvas. The way you move is paint, stroke by stroke you create a masterpiece. I was powerless to look away. You are an artist and I am unworthy."

"Have you been eating carbs?"

Aimee’s voice was light, almost sing-song, but her eyes were hawk-sharp, zeroed in on Ingrid’s legs as she held a plié so deep it might have qualified as an Olympic squat. Her form was flawless. Her patience, less so.

"Of course not," Ingrid said, too fast, too tight, her grip on the barre bordering on violent.

Liar, liar, elastic waistband on fire.

Because yes, she had been eating carbs. All the carbs.

If it grew underground and came in golden, greasy forms, she’d devoured it.

French fries at midnight. Mashed potatoes eaten straight from the container.

A love affair with tater tots so intense it bordered on scandal.

She was one bad rehearsal away from snorting powdered cheddar off a Pringle.

Aimee made a low, thoughtful noise, still staring like Ingrid’s thighs were concealing smuggled pastries.

Oh, bite me.

Once, that comment would’ve gutted her. Sent her spiraling into a week-long juice cleanse that left her hallucinating. But that was eight years and several mental breakdowns ago.

Now, she had bigger things to worry about like the mutant rat she’d had to hurdle over in the subway this morning, or the scalding coffee that had baptized her leotard in front of an entire car of MTA witnesses. New York City, where dreams go to suffer mildly humiliating deaths.

"I think your legs look incredible, actually," a voice offered from across the room–low, confident, and unmistakably French.

Ingrid didn’t even have to turn. Louis was leaning against the wall, all smug smirk and resting flirt face, like a man born to be insufferable. His gaze slid down her body with the ease of someone who knew he was hot and thought that made him interesting.

She turned just enough to glare, eyes narrowed. "Don’t you have a mirror to go make love to?"

He grinned. "Why bother, when I have you to look at?"

Her eye-roll was so aggressive it could’ve thrown out her neck.

God, men were exhausting. Especially lately.

There was Trent, who invited her to join his competitive frisbee league as a date activity. Frisbee . Because nothing screams "soulmate" like chasing flying plastic across a patchy field and dodging sunburn.

Then there was Pierre. Tortured artist, permanent cigarette breath, and a poetry boner so aggressive it probably had its own journal. He called himself an "intellectual nomad," like that was a flex and not just code for "chronically unemployed."

Riley was the closest thing to promising. Polite. Gainfully employed. But his laugh? Yeah, it was definitely not made for human ears; it was somewhere between a dying hyena and a squeaky door hinge.

And that was the current state of the dating pool. She wasn’t the problem. They were.

Her phone buzzed under the barre, mercifully dragging her away from Louis the Lech and her internal scream.

The screen flashed Eden. Thank God. Ingrid grabbed the phone, already smiling. If anyone could pull her out of the morning’s spiral, it was her best friend.

"What’s up, Eden?" Ingrid answered, already bracing herself. Conversations with her best friend were rarely uneventful.

“Did you know you’re not supposed to pet police horses?” Eden blurted. No greeting. No context. Just immediate chaos.

“Yes,” came Ronan’s voice in the background, equal parts exasperated and emotionally defeated. “That’s why I tried to stop her.”

“Okay, but how was I supposed to know that?” Eden huffed. “It was just standing there being majestic! Next thing I know, the cop’s yelling at me and some elderly man at the crosswalk actually clutched his chest.”

Ingrid snorted, already visualizing Eden causing a minor civic disturbance in real time.

“So what happened?”

“Ronan had to apologize while I backed away like I wasn’t just trying to hug a working animal. The cop almost forgave me. The grandpa definitely didn’t.”

"Sounds like a relaxing honeymoon," Ingrid said, grinning.

Eden and her husband, Ronan, had been honeymooning for weeks now, ping-ponging across continents and collecting travel mishaps like tourist magnets.

It still blew Ingrid’s mind that her chaos-goblin best friend had voluntarily signed a legally binding document tying her to another human being and done it without fleeing the ceremony or faking her own death.

Then again, it had taken a mildly famous, frustratingly hot director making a documentary about her music career for Eden to finally say I do.

Of course, Eden would turn a work project into a rom-com.

"Oh, super relaxing," Eden deadpanned. "I flashed a peace sign at Blarney Castle and some Irish grandma nearly beat me with her umbrella. Apparently, that means ‘screw you’ there. Ronan had to step in and explain that I was just stupid, not offensive."

“You’ve been international for like five minutes and already offended a whole culture. At this rate, you’re going to get banned from the EU.”

"It’s part of my charm."

Ingrid leaned back, warmth creeping into her chest. Eden was still Eden–unfiltered, chaotic, and always one slip-up away from being an international headline.

They hadn’t lived in the same city since college.

Eden had been in L.A. chasing a music career since graduation, while Ingrid stayed in New York, wrapped in the world of ballet.

But distance had never dulled their friendship.

Same chaotic energy. Same inside jokes. Same certainty that one day Ingrid might have to wire her bail money across an ocean.

"Careful," Ingrid said. "I can’t afford to fly out and spring you from jail in Ireland. Not during Swan Lake season."

"Right, right. You’re too busy being the prima ballerina," Eden teased. "But if I do get arrested, please make it sound glamorous in the press release."

"No promises," Ingrid replied with a smile. Over the past year, she’d held the title of prima ballerina in several New York City Ballet productions. But Swan Lake was different.

This was the role. She would take on the dual roles of Odette and Odile, innocence and seduction, light and shadow.

It demanded everything: strength, precision, emotional control.

Every ballerina dreamed of it. It was a rite of passage.

The pinnacle of her career so far. And the weight of it thrilled and terrified her.

She’d danced Swan Lake once before, back in her Juilliard days, but calling that a “performance” was generous.

Catastrophe? Artistic trainwreck? Take your pick.

The memory of that night still burned in her mind and not in the triumphant, spotlight-glory kind of way.

More like a slow-motion car crash set to Tchaikovsky.

Eden must’ve sensed the wobble in her silence. Her voice dropped, softer now. "How’s the practice going?"

Ingrid’s smile faltered, just for a second. It had been five years since Swan Lake, the performance that had sent her life spiraling into an emotional dumpster fire. Eden had witnessed it all firsthand, and though it felt like a lifetime ago, the sting was still fresh.

“Good,” Ingrid said, the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

“You’re going to kill it, you know,” Eden said, her voice oozing with dangerous levels of optimism. “No one deserves this more than you.”

Then came the pause. Ingrid tensed. That pause always meant doom. And then, as casually as if she were announcing she’d adopted a pet iguana, Eden lobbed the grenade:

"Today is moving-in day."

Ingrid’s stomach did a freefall. Shit .

She knew this was coming. In theory. She’d been mentally prepping for weeks.

Distracting herself with work, podcasts, and a concerning amount of pastries.

Her freezer was now a croissant graveyard, and she’d eaten an entire baguette on the street like a sad French aristocrat in a breakup montage.

Denial had been a beautiful, buttery place to live. Too bad she was getting evicted.

Because here it was: Beck Gershaw.

The ex. The heartbreak. The one who had shown her what love could feel like, only for it to dissolve so suddenly and completely that, on bad days, she questioned whether it had been real at all.

But no, it had been real. And her body remembered it before her brain could object. Her grip on the phone tightened. Her pulse fluttered like a caffeinated butterfly trying to escape a mason jar.

Memories flooded her mind like an uninvited guest at a party she’d spent weeks curating. The laugh she had once loved. The late-night conversations that felt like entire universes unfolding. The way her name sounded in his mouth like it held a meaning only his voice could give it.

She’d spent years building an emotional fortress, one strong enough to withstand judgmental ballet instructors, punishing rehearsals, and the ever-looming threat of bunions. She did not crack. But now? She was cracking like cheap drugstore foundation in July.

And the worst part was that Eden had orchestrated this entire disaster.

In a city of over eight million people, the odds of running into Beck should’ve been nonexistent.

But Eden, sweet, well-meaning, possibly-possessed Eden, had given Beck the key to move into the apartment right next door to Ingrid.

Eden owned both units—the one Ingrid lived in and the one Beck was moving into today. She’d bought them as an “investment.” Now, she was using her real estate portfolio to ruin lives. Diabolical .

"Eden, why?" Ingrid groaned into the phone.

Eden and Beck were in the same band now. And somehow, they were friends . Which, considering everything, was strange on more levels than she could count.

They had all met at Juilliard. But after junior year, after Ingrid and Beck’s breakup, their paths had violently, spectacularly diverged.