Chapter 10
Elodie
I'm in the kitchen doorway in his old gray sweatshirt watching him crack eggs one-handed without looking at the bowl. A coffee mug is waiting at the end of the island like he heard me wake up.
"Sleep okay?" He turns around, so handsome in his bare chest, a pair of gray sweats.
He’s incredible. The hint of gray at his temples. I don’t even see my father’s face anymore. Just…daddy.
"You know how I slept." I smirk, each step a reminder of how violent this man can fuck and how much I loved it.
Especially when he tied my hand to the hook he installed above the headboard and introduced me to another kind of bar.
A spreader bar. Not for wrists.
"I meant the second time."
"Fine." I wrap both hands around the mug. "I slept fine the second time."
"We need to call your parents today. I’m going to tell them."
I set the mug down.
"Both of them?" I try.
"Yes."
"At the same—"
"Together. Today." He plates the eggs, slides them across the island, looks at me. “This is the only thing I know how to cook that will end up edible. Now eat, then we are calling."
I eat three bites and try to construct a reasonable argument.
My phone lights up before I can try anyway.
Anna: girl. GIRL. Jeremy is outside your house and I am outside your house ARE YOU ALIVE
Anna: also we brought donuts
Anna: also Jeremy knows about Patrykov because Maggie from Play and Pizza has a cousin who—anyway. ARE YOU OKAY
Anna: the donuts are getting cold
Rye reads it over my shoulder with the expression of a man who has already emotionally prepared.
"Tell them an hour."
One hour. Do not come in.
Three dots.
Anna: ...the call.
Anna: JEREMY. IT'S THE CALL.
I put the phone face down.
But, he picks it right back up, standing next to me.
Dad's face fills the screen first, mom comes in over his shoulder.
He looks better. His color is back. He smiles when he sees me. Then his gaze moves just past my shoulder and the smile does something complicated.
"Rye."
"Brother."
The silence that comes next lasts four thousand years. Somehow, I sense, Dad knows.
It’s a twin thing.
"Elodie." Dad looks back to me. "Are you—"
"Safe. I'm okay."
"I know what happened with the trial at the house." His jaw moves. "Rye texted me after you were asleep."
I look sideways at Rye. He does not look at me.
Of course he did.
"Scotch." Rye leans slightly into frame. "I need you to hear me before you say anything."
“What?” He’s not happy, but this needs to happen so I take a long breath and hold it.
"Your daughter is the most important thing in my world.
That was true before this week and it will be true until they put me in the ground.
I should have come to you before it came to this.
" Rye doesn't pause. "I won't apologize for what I feel.
But I am asking you to trust me when I tell you I have never put my needs ahead of her. Not once. I never will."
I'm holding the edge of the island like I’m going to float away.
"If she'd come to me at seventeen," Rye says, "I'd have deported myself to another continent." His voice drops. "But, she's eighteen. She's extraordinary. And she deserves someone who will move the actual earth for her." A pause. "I intend to be that."
My father is quiet his eyes not meeting mine and my heart cracks in my chest.
"You're my brother," he says.
"I know."
"I need time, Rye. You’re as asshole."
"That I am. Take whatever you need."
Dad's eyes come back to me and soften in a way that does something to my throat. "You okay, baby?"
"Yeah, Daddy." I feel Rye's heat next to me. "I really am."
"Okay." It’s a door cracked open at least but it needs time to open all the way. "Okay."
Then my mother swings into frame.
Arms folded. Controlled-breathing. The performance is not going great.
"Elodie Christine."
"Mom." I lift my chin. "I need to say something and I need you to listen."
She opens her mouth but I keep talking.
"Dance matters to me. But principal dancer at the Ford Center is your dream, not mine.
It's been yours since you put me in my first ballet slippers.
" Rye's hand settles at the small of my back, invisible from the camera.
"I want to dance. For the rest of my life.
But not like this. Not counting grams and weighing myself twice a day.
I want to dance because it makes me feel alive.
I want to figure out what that looks like. "
My mother stares, her unmoving face hard to read.
"Patrykov was going to exploit that desperation," I say. "And I almost let him."
The silence stretches long enough that I hear a car pass on their street.
"I only ever wanted—" She starts but I override any excuses she might make.
"I know what you wanted."
She looks at Rye.
"Take care of her," she says, and he nods. "She is everything."
"We agree on that," he says. "Completely."
A long beat. "I need to go lie down," and walks out of frame.
Dad watches her go. The corner of his mouth moves. "She'll come around."
"Tell her the diet shakes are gone," I say.
His eyes go wet. He laughs. "Love you, baby."
"Love you, Dad."
Rye ends the call.
He turns me by the shoulders, tilts my chin up.
"You did good."
"You coached me."
"You didn't need it." His thumb traces my jaw. "You've known all of that for a while."
His mouth finds mine and he kisses me slow, like he has all the time in the world and has decided to spend it here.
The doorbell rings.
Then, through the door: "The donuts are getting stale.”
"Jeremy, she might be—"
"She’s fine. Uncle Rye…open the door, I have feelings—"
Rye pulls back. Looks at the door. Looks at me.
"Your friends," he says.
"My friends," I confirm. “They’re early.”
“Shocker.” He shakes his head, dropping his forehead to mine. “I love you Elodie. I always have.”
I sit, silent as he turns and stomps to the door, swinging it open.
Jeremy launches through it before it's fully open, pink-frosted donut box in hand, and wraps himself entirely around Rye, who endures it with the frozen dignity of a man being consumed by a golden retriever.
"I knew it," Jeremy announces into Rye's shoulder. "I called this in the limo—"
"You absolutely did not," Anna says, and goes directly for me. Both arms around my neck, chin on my shoulder, squeezing hard. "You okay?"
"Yeah." I squeeze back. "I really am."
She pulls back, does the scan she's been doing since second grade and nods.
Jeremy has released Rye and is studying him with both hands on his hips like a man appraising expensive art. Rye crosses his arms and waits.
"Okay," Jeremy says. "Yeah. I get it." He turns to me. "No further questions. Where's the kitchen? Everyone in this house is having a donut."
"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.