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“Are we doing cookies now?” Aly asked in excitement, walking around and touching everything.
“Not tonight,” Isaac said. “It’s your bedtime. Let’s get you changed and brush your teeth. I’ll read you a book, and then it’s time to sleep.”
Aly pouted. “I’m not ready for bed.”
“If you don’t get a good night’s sleep, then we can’t make cookies tomorrow. Peyton would be really sad about that.”
I stuck out my bottom lip and nodded along.
“Fine,” she grumbled.
Isaac went to get Aly ready for bed, and I made up the couch with sheets and a pillow for Aly. By the time she was passed out, I’d popped open a bottle of red wine, poured it into two glasses, and gestured for Isaac to follow me into the bedroom.
I took a seat on the windowsill, looking out at the fire escape instead of up at Isaac and whatever was about to happen. I was suddenly nervous. Having him here felt…inexplicably right.
It made no sense. Isaac wasn’t New York in the slightest. He had been born and bred West Texas. He said y’all and drove a pickup truck and worked on construction sites. And somehow, even here in this space, he fit in my world.
“Thank you for letting us stay after I ambushed you,” he said with a laugh.
My eyes flittered back over to him. He took a sip of the wine. He’d discarded his tie at some point, and he stood in slacks and a button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He didn’t seem nervous. Rather the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his lips and the steady gaze all said that he was confident and prepared for this.
Unlike me.
“I wouldn’t want you staying in a tiny hotel when you could stay in a tiny apartment for free.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I guess I do,” I said, sipping my wine.
“We should probably talk.”
“Probably.” I bit my lip. “Is this where you try to convince me to come back to Lubbock?”
He cocked his head to the side in confusion. Then, he set the wine down on a dresser and came over to stand before me. He held his hand out, and I took it, letting him pull me to my feet.
“Peyton, have I ever given you the impression that you should have to give up your dreams for me?” he asked cautiously.
“No,” I whispered.
“I’d never ask you to leave New York or the ballet,” he confirmed. “But I didn’t agree with you when you left Lubbock so abruptly. I’d been considering how we could make this work, but I didn’t really put it together until you were gone.”
“And what did you decide?”
“That I can’t live without you.”
My breath caught. “Isaac…”
“Not just that, but I don’t want to. We deserve our happiness, Pey, not just our dreams.” He drew me in closer until we were only inches apart. “I’ve figured out how it will work. I’ll come up on the weekends with Aly. You can come down between performances when you have time off.”
“Wait—”
“No, let me finish. And then once I can, I’ll request a transfer to move up to the New York office. It’s smaller, but Wright is everywhere. They’ll find a place for me when they can.”
My jaw dropped open. “You’d move to New York?”
“For you?” He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my fingers. “Anything, Peyton.”27IsaacPeyton had tears in her eyes.
God, I hoped they were happy tears.
I’d meant every word of it. After Aly had fallen asleep on me on Christmas, I’d decided that I couldn’t sit by and let this happen to me. If Peyton was what I wanted, then I couldn’t let her be the one to have to make the sacrifices. Happiness was a two-way street.
So, I’d booked the first flight to New York for me and Aly, held my nose as I paid the insane hotel price, and purchased tickets to Peyton’s show. I had no idea how it was all going to go down. But I didn’t think Peyton wanted to give our relationship up any more than I did, and if that was the case, then I had a plan to fix what we’d broken.
“We can make this work,” I assured her again. “I really think that we can.”
“What about Aly?” she gasped.
“It’ll be harder,” I admitted. “I can’t lie about that. New York is so much more expensive than Lubbock, and I wouldn’t have the support I’m used to with my parents and Annie. But she’s five. I think she’d adjust just fine here. She’d learn to love the city like you do. And we’ll fly her back to see everyone when we can.”
“Isaac…I don’t know.”
“Look,” I said, pulling the picture Annie had given me at Christmas out of my pocket that I’d saved from the trash can.
She took it from me with trembling hands. “I remember giving this to you.”
