Chapter Twenty-Four
TREY
“My hair hurts,” Adeline stops in her tracks as the three of us walk through the middle school auditorium that the ballet school rented for the night for the recital.
Vivi turns back to see Adeline putting her hand on the top of her head.
She takes the few steps back toward Adeline and crouches in front of her near a row of perfectly lined folding chairs, chairs that I already anticipate will kill my back tonight.
Vivi’s fingers move sure and gentle while girls in tulle and glitter shuffle by like nervous swans.
“Too tight?” Vivi asks.
“A little,” Adeline admits, breathless, eyes bright with the kind of nerves that are half terror, half rocket fuel.
“Okay, ballerina. Hold still.” Vivi eases a pin, smooths the hair that’s already perfect, and somehow makes it more perfect. “How’s that?”
Adeline blinks, tests a head tilt. “Better.”
I’m useless with bobby pins. I carry the garment bag, the emergency snack pouch, and the water, and I try not to breathe too loud because every breath feels like it might knock the whole night off course.
I’ve been to every practice, every dress rehearsal.
I’ve tied shoes and fluffed skirts and pretended to understand what a tendu is.
But this—the small, quiet know-how of fixing a too-tight bun without making her feel wrong—is the kind of magic I don’t have. Vivi has it. She just…has it.
“Hey,” Vivi says, tapping the tip of Adeline’s nose. “Look at me.”
Adeline does. Vivi lowers her voice like she’s sharing a classified brief.
“You go out there and you have fun. If you forget a step, smile. If you trip, smile bigger. If you feel scared, look for us…we’ll be right there.
” She tips her head toward me, and the way she says “us” lands so deep in my chest I can physically feel her words. “You’ve already nailed it.”
Adeline nods like she’s swallowing hard. “Okay.” She points a serious finger at me. “No yelling. You promised.”
“I don’t yell,” I say, even though apparently my supportive clapping counts as “too loud.”
Vivi stands, brushes glitter off her emerald dress that’s pooled all around her.
Tight fitting to show off her killer curves, but not too tight that it’s too revealing for a little girl’s recital, then reaches for my hand without looking, like it’s obvious and natural and not the kind of touch that makes the whole hallway sharpen into focus.
I curl my fingers around hers and feel something settle that’s been rattling in me for years.
This last week has been…I don’t have the word for it.
It wasn’t perfect, because life isn’t. But it was the closest I’ve been to feeling like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Morning coffee and her bare feet. Practice and texts that make me want to skate faster.
Adeline’s laugh in the truck, Vivi’s head on my shoulder at midnight.
The helicopter. The rooftop. Her saying I need you into my mouth like a vow.
I’ve already decided that I’m going to ask her to stay, and tonight, after the recital, I’m going to ask her to pick me.
It’s selfish. I know it is. But I keep seeing the future, and it looks like this: Vivi leaning over to fix Adeline’s bun, a hand finding mine in a crowd, the three of us eating pizza too late on a school night because we forgot how to be strict.
If she wants this too, I can’t let her go without asking.
I’ll live with the regret forever if I don’t.
“We need to find our seats,” Vivi says. “Five minutes to curtain.”
Adeline does one last skirt sweep, then she’s off with her class, a flutter of tulle swallowed by the stage manager and a mother with a headset who looks like she’s about to launch a space shuttle.
We find our seats. Middle row, aisle, the good ones you get when you’re the person who refreshes the ticket page at exactly a minute after twelve a.m. on a weeknight, on the on-sale date, and is willing to fight a lawyer from Bellevue for the seats.
The auditorium smells like dust and hairspray.
The air hums with “shh” and the thump of tiny feet backstage.
Vivi’s hand finds mine again the second the lights dim. It stays there. Her thumb strokes once against my knuckle when the curtain rises.
There she is. My kid, center left, eyes scanning the dark like she’s looking for a lighthouse. I lift our joined hands slightly. Vivi wiggles her fingers. Adeline spots us, beams, and I feel my throat get tight. She turns back to the audience, chin up. The music swells. They begin.
She’s not perfect. Her fourth position is a little too third, and in the second phrase, she loses the count for a breath and then finds it again.
But she is fearless. Grace and guts all mixed together—a mixture of Tommy and Sarah…
and maybe now, a little of me. At the end of the choreography, she nails the turn she has been practicing in the kitchen for two months, lands it clean, and the little grin she tries to hide is a dead shot to my heart.
Vivi is all in beside me—applauding quietly, whispering “you’ve got this” to a child who can’t hear her and somehow will anyway.
She leans forward when Adeline crosses the front of the stage, the kind of lean you only give when a piece of you is up there.
Our shoulders touch. And right then I know—if I let her walk out, I’ll never forgive myself. I have to ask her to stay.
The last pose hits, music fades, applause starts. I’m careful. I clap the way she taught me. Enthusiastic but not Trey at a playoff game. Vivi laughs under her breath, squeezes my hand. “Proud of you,” she teases.
“Of who?” I ask, but my eyes are on Adeline, who’s soaking in the noise like sunlight. She was born for an audience, and I know she’ll thrive in this world.
The curtain drops. The house lights bump up.
Parents surge for the aisle in a way I have no interest in getting involved with.
We hang back, let the rush flow. I turn to Vivi, and she’s already looking at me.
Whatever’s been weighing on her since yesterday…
It's softer now. Softer, not gone. I almost say it.
I almost say, “Come home for good. Pick us.”
Then the doors at the back creak open. I shouldn’t be able to notice such a small change in the room considering the two hundred people moving around the auditorium and the chatter happening all around us, but I do.
I was trained to notice suddenly, and the way the air shifts when danger is nearby pricks my senses.
I can feel in my bones when a bad hit is coming, but my eyes find the motion immediately.
A man steps inside, pausing in the shadow of the doorway like he’s late and trying not to draw attention.
Jameson Holiday.
He’s not in a tux. This isn’t a gala entrance.
He’s in navy slacks and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and every woman who passes by him stares a little longer than they should, especially with their husbands at their side, but I know there’s no threat for them.
Because Jameson Holiday is only after one woman in this room …
Mine.
He doesn't look rested. Not the kind of rested you’d assume two months in an oceanside honeymoon suite in Santorini would make you feel.
He scans the room once, taking his time, and when he sees us, sees her, he lifts his chin a notch like a man walking into a negotiation he expects to win eventually.
The decision I made—to ask her to pick me—slides out from under my feet like bad ice.
He’s here.
And everything I think I can give her, and everything I want to give her, comes with a cost she’ll have to pay every day for the rest of our lives together.
It’s not just her company. It’s a family trust, a board, siblings.
Generations. Adeline can’t be the reason she loses all of it.
I can’t be the reason she loses all of it.
I can’t live with her regretting me, the decision she made to give it up to live a simpler life than what she was born for, just like I can’t hold Adeline back from the star she’s destined to be—and I won’t.
If Adeline were ever in Vivi’s shoes, and she asked for my advice, I’d never let her pick the man in my shoes. The war vet who lost part of his soul the day everyone he loved died. The man who’s struggling to keep it all together. A man with no family ties besides Adeline.
I’d tell her to pick the man in Jameson’s shoes. The man who can give her everything she deserves. A family of means and influence, but at the very least…for good or bad, an archaic trust fund trying to marry off its generations to further gain…but still a family.
A family that understands how Vivi grew up. What she needs. What she deserves. And will take her and her business further than I ever can.
I’d tell Adeline to pick him. Because I love her…and I love Vivi.
Bitterness scrapes up, ugly and hot. I shove it down so hard my chest hurts.
“Vivi,” I say discreetly.
She follows my gaze. Color drains from her face and then returns in a controlled flush like she put it there on purpose. Her hand tightens in mine. That one squeeze tells me everything—she doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay. God help me, I want to let her.
“Go talk to him,” I hear myself say.
Forcing the words out of my mouth no matter how bitter they taste.
Her eyes snap to me. “Trey—”
“It’s okay.” It isn’t. “He came a long way. You should hear what he has to say. We knew this was coming.”
She shakes her head, tiny, the kind that means “please don’t make me.
” People are watching. Dance moms with big hair and bigger opinions have started clocking the joined hands, the domestic lean, the way we walked into this gymnasium earlier tonight as a family of three and will leave, broken.
They see a story they want to tell later in the parking lot.
“It’s too early. He wasn’t supposed to come back yet,” she pleads.