Page 40 of The Dancer and the Dark
“I’m the luckiest devil in the world,” he muttered.
“You’re sure a presumptuous one.”
His lifted one eyebrow. “Am I?”
She smiled again. “Maybe.”
He reached down and drew her right leg up and over his knees as the plane started to move. “Iamthe luckiest devil in the world.” He patted her knee and turned back to the paper.
Instead of responding with the quip he expected, she was silent. He looked up and saw her staring into the distance as the plane took to the sky.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Did I tell you my father was thinking of going to my performance at Lincoln Center?”
“You did.” She’d probably told him a dozen times. “I’m sorry he missed it, dove. You were brilliant.” He squeezed her knee. “You always are.”
She was looking at him. “You never miss my shows.”
“There was the one you did for your friend Carrie that I missed because it was just the one night and I was in Spain.”
She blinked, but the smile she offered him was brilliant. “You remember the single show you missed. One single show.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“To everyone else, my father was the most honorable man they knew. Always thinking of his community, always giving to charity, always there to advocate for the disadvantaged.” She looked out the window, staring at the starry night as they broke through the clouds. “And hewasall those things. But for the people closest to him—my mother, me, his own family—he was kind of a stranger. He was cold and rigid. I could never be good enough for him, not even by performing at Lincoln Center.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was never good enough.”
Gavin wanted to punch the dead man, but that wasn’t possible or helpful. “You are more than enough, Chloe Reardon. You don’t have to change the world to be enough.”
The plane leveled off, and the low rumble of the engines melted into a dull white noise as the flight attendants began to prepare an evening meal for the human passengers.
Chloe looked back at Gavin. “To everyone else, you are a calculating, ruthless businessman. Never taking sides. Neutral to the point of being an opportunist.”
He never took his eyes from hers. “And to you?”
“You’re the man who never misses a show. The man who brings me tea in bed. The man who rubs my knee when it’s sore and puts up with my mother’s passive-aggressive insults. Plus you talked me through my trauma when I made the mistake of cutting bangs last year.”
“The fringe really wasn’t a bad look for you, dove. I will never understand why you reacted to it so violently.”
She smiled, and he saw everything he’d ever wanted in her eyes. Love, yes. Respect. Acceptance.Trust. She’d seen the darkness, and she hadn’t run away. She hadn’t even blinked.
“My father was a man who had all the appearance of goodness but none of the heart. He wanted to impress the world, and he did.”
He folded his newspaper and set it on the table. “I don’t give a fuck about the world’s opinion; I only care about yours.”
“I know.” Her eyes watered up. “Don’t you see? That means to you, I’m the whole world.”
He swung the table back, lifted the armrest between them, and pulled Chloe into his arms. “Will ye marry me, Chloe Reardon? I promise I’ll always bring you tea.”
She turned and kissed him slowly. Then she smiled, and it was everything.
“Yes.”
Two months later…
Chloe watchedArthur’s face bobbing on the small phone screen as he walked up Seventh Avenue in New York and she walked down First Street in New Orleans. Audra, still wary from Chloe’s abduction in LA, walked beside her, keeping off camera so Arthur couldn’t see her.
“So how is life in the Bayou City?” he asked. “Drew is threatening to come visit if you and Gavin don’t come home soon.”
