Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“Unless you’re uncomfortable with that,” I hasten to adjust my suggestion. “I just thought I could try.” Suddenly, I backtrack, wanting to rewind my words. I wasn’t trying to get too cocky with her.
“No, it’s . . . no. You never make me uncomfortable. I mean, actually, you do . . .” she trails off, and I stiffen. “But only because I care about you so much. It’s like the good kind of being on edge, you know?” Her hands paint the air between us.
I grab them, bringing them close to my chest so she can feel the way my heart is pounding just for her. “I do know.”
Ivy’s grin is worth the honesty. “So, I trust you.” Her voice fades as she turns mid-sentence to face the empty auditorium, her delicate yet muscular back now facing me.
“I’m going to jump up . . .” She spins back, her face coming into view again.
“Actually, wait, do you want to lift me over your head or dip me?”
I can’t imagine either of these scenarios happening in the way she is probably thinking, and I’m racking my brain to try to remember an instance in the YouTube videos I’ve watched in which I’ve seen a man lift his female partner in ballet. “Um . . . ”
“You know what?” She scrunches her nose in concentration, and I’m struck by how much the expression resembles one I’ve seen Emmy make.
“Let’s try the dip. So, I’m going to jump up, your right arm will wrap around my waist, and your left hand will reach underneath my thigh, and then you’ll dip me forward. Got it?”
“Um . . .” Once again, words fail me as I imagine all the ways this could go terribly wrong. “I can try.”
Ivy nods. “On the count of three: one, two, three!”
She jumps up, and I move my right arm to wrap around her waist, but I forget to catch her left leg when it extends.
Instead, I grab near her knee. Thankfully, I don’t drop her, but our choreography is less than graceful.
The effect sends us off balance. Ivy’s body lands at an odd angle, like a beautiful fairy trapped midair.
I see her wince when her right foot hits the floor, and she lets out a hiss.
Instantly, my adrenaline spikes. I spin her midair until she’s fully facing me.
She’s wrapped in my arms with my left arm under her knees, and my right arm is around her back and waist, holding her close to my chest. With a dazed expression, she looks around as if she’s trying to figure out how she got in this position.
“How did you . . .?” Her eyes are wide, her mouth slightly open as her gaze meets mine.
“Did I hurt you?” The tension in my voice causes her to lean in quickly, a hand moving to rest on the side of my face.
“What? No? It was just an awkward transition, and I shouldn’t have put my foot down . . .”
My chest heaves, the adrenaline starting to move out of my system now that I know she’s okay. But the grimace on my face betrays me.
“Hey, Jace, it’s okay,” she reassures me. “You’ve never done this before. But you’re doing amazing. You are amazing. I can’t even believe you’d want to do this with me.” The genuine awe in her smoky voice sticks to the edges of my brain.
“But I could’ve hurt you.”
“However, you didn’t.”
The adrenaline feels as if it’s ramping up. “What if, because of my lack of experience, you couldn’t dance anymore? I don’t know how I’d keep moving through life if I hurt you again, Ivy.”
When I grit out her name instead of using her usual nickname, her eyes narrow, searching me deeply.
“Put me down, please.” A fierceness enters her words, a rare glimpse of her determination rising to the surface of her skin.
I set her down as softly as possible and straighten to my full height.
It’s quickly becoming clear that this was a terrible idea.
She’s angry, and I feel the weight of her frustration crushing me.
Closing my eyes, I turn toward the backdrop, deciding how I’m going to pack up the paint as quickly as possible and silently praying the roads are now plowed so we can put this night behind us.
“Where are you going?” Her voice stops me in my tracks.
Slowly, I close my eyes and count to three before opening them again. “Just headed to pack up.”
“You don’t want to dance with me anymore?”
The doubt in her voice makes me turn so quickly that I nearly get whiplash. “What?”
Her chin lifts slightly. “You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to.”
“That’s what you think this is? That I don’t want to dance with you?” I motion between us, the tension in my frame building. The pressure of it stacks against the vertebrae of my spine, threatening to collapse from the weight of the lies that have been crushing me.
“Well, you were just walking away.”
“I’m not walking away; I’m protecting you.”
“How are you protecting me?” She throws her hands out to the side. “To do that, I think you need to stay near me, no?”
I clench my jaw, my brain inconveniently reminding me of the tension in her shoulders when she thought I almost dropped her. While I would never intentionally do so, it’s clear she’s not convinced of that yet. “Ivy,” I begin.
“Jace,” she retorts. “What’s going on? If you don’t want to dance with me, it’s fine.”
“I already said that’s not it.” My teeth are nearly grinding together from my anger over her ever believing that I wouldn’t want to hold her.
“Why are we fighting right now?” Her arms are now crossed, her head shaking.
“Because.”
“Because . . . Why?” Her eyes are on fire, their intensity staggering.
In three steps, I’m back in front of her, but she doesn’t flinch, even though my frame towers over her.
“Because you don’t know how beautiful you are.
” My voice becomes low and lethal against the fears that I realize are lacing themselves within her mind.
“Not want to dance with you? I never want to dance with anyone else for as long as I live.”
Her eyes widen. Her hands drop to her sides, and she looks like the air just left her lungs. But I know I have to get my truth out.
“You’re so mesmerizing that you’re impossible to forget. You make me believe that maybe there is some sort of magic in the world, if only because I’ve seen your face. Ivy, you look at me, and I want to freeze time. But I can’t because it just slips through my hands.”
Tears now stream down her face, dripping along the curves of her leotard at the delicate line of her collarbone.
But she doesn’t speak. And because I’m nothing if not intense, I keep going.
This woman is going to hear me loud and clear, if only to shine the brightest of lights on why she should believe she’s the most stunning woman in the world.
“When we met,” I continue, “in those life-changing hours, you made me believe that there could be a love just for me. And when I couldn’t get to you .
. .” My breathing is heavy, and my ribs feel like they could crack from the pressure of all I’m holding back, but I don’t relent.
“A piece of me died, Ivy . . . a piece of me that wanted to believe. So, I tried everything and anything to get over you, never thinking I’d see you again.
And I hate that I made the choices that simply took me farther from you. I own my mistakes.”
Ivy wipes the tears from her face with the back of her hand and inhales twice. Just that alone is enough to make me want to reach for her, but I convince my body to wait.
“And then I saw you again. We’re back in the same place. My daughter is learning to dance from you. We’ve reconnected. We’re kissing. I’m able to touch you. And suddenly, I’m seeing possibilities again. It’s like you reminded me why I believed in dreams in the first place.”
“Then why do you keep drawing close and then pushing me away?” Ivy’s words are knives, slicing away the protective layers I’ve forged around my heart.
“Because I don’t know if I’m really what you need. But I also don’t want to let you go.”
“Impossible,” Ivy whispers, and the hint of possibility in her tone makes me both frustrated and unnerved.
“No, Ivy, you don’t know,” I say, hearing the pain caught in my throat.
“What don’t I know?” she demands.
Dread settles in my stomach, the realization hitting me that it’s finally time to give her what I haven’t been able to give her before now. “Jenna—” Just the name makes Ivy’s jaw clench, and it’s enough vindication for me to keep going. “She told me . . .”
This is the part that is the hardest to reveal because even recalling the words makes me feel emasculated. I know my ex’s cruelty shouldn’t affect me, but it does. The words have lingered for years.
I clench my fists. “She didn’t want me to touch her anymore.
Near the end of our relationship, she said she hated how it felt when I held her,” my voice cracks.
“After she had Emmy, she told me that she regretted ever being with me. It disgusted her to have me touch her. She also added that anyone who told me differently would be lying.”
Ivy gasps. I extend my palms to make a point, looking at my callused fingers, willing them to become more than I’ve regarded them as for the past few years.
“I believed her. Because of that, if you ever . . . if you didn’t want me to . . .” And that’s all I can get out. I’m emotionally exhausted, the weight of what I’ve shared enough to sap my strength.
“Hear me loud and clear,” Ivy says, her voice startling me. Without warning, she jumps into my arms.
Immediately, I wrap my arms around her and hold her as her legs wrap around my waist. Her warm, elegant hands curve around the bottom of my jaw, her thumbs extending toward my cheekbones.
“Here’s the truth of it, Jace.” Her breath hitches. “Whatever happens between us, I never want another man to touch me again. I never want to dance with another man. Do you hear me? It’s only you. It has to be you.”
A tear leaks from my eye, but I don’t wipe it away. I’d rather it fall than to put her down. I won’t let her go. I’ll always hold her if she wants me to. Even so, I can hardly believe her words.
“Ivy . . .” A second tear leaks out.
She wipes it before motioning for me to put her on the stage.
Holding my gaze as she stands, she reaches for my hands, turning them until my palms are facing up, her fingers tracing each one as if she’s memorizing both my fingers and my calluses.
Her eyes close as she explores, and the flush in her cheeks is enough to undo me.
And then I am undone when she pulls my hands around her waist once more.
“Hold me, Jace,” she says softly.
Tentatively, I pull her close to me, and it strikes me anew that just one of my hands is large enough to cover most of her back and shoulders.
She reaches up, pushing her fingers into the hair behind my neck and pulling me down toward her.
When our mouths are merely inches apart, she traces each of my features with her eyes before they trail up to mine.
In their depths, I see a warmth I’ve never seen from her before and a fire of determination that I already knew burned within. It’s now aimed fully at me.
“Your hands only. Do you hear me?”
For a moment, I let her words sink in, willing them to be true.
Her statement burrows into my heart, and I wonder: Maybe what’s most important to our lives isn’t the people who leave us or scar us but the ones who heal us.
Maybe we should focus on the ones who find as much magic in being near us as we do in being near them.
For the truth is that it wasn’t that I couldn’t hold someone well.
For so long, I was just holding the wrong things, the wrong people.
All along, Ivy is the woman meant to be in my arms. And if she wants me to stay near her, then nothing else matters.
Without another word, I eliminate those final inches between us and kiss her like she’s the one I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
I kiss her like there’s a piece of heaven that can be found on earth within her love.
I kiss her as if, in doing so, I’m conveying how much I missed her and how much I never wanted to give up. I kiss her like I believe her.
And with my hands wrapped around her delicate form and my heart securely in her grasp, she kisses me back the same way.