Page 121 of Off the Edge

“I don’t believe that. Can you ride?”

“Horses, no.”

“What else⁠—”

“I can cowgirl,” I said brightly.

He chuckled. “I walked right into that one.”

Later tonight, maybe soon, I’d remind him just how well I could cowgirl. I scooped his hand into mine and squeezed. Weeks apart had been too long, but now he was back, almost anything seemed possible again. The future? Maybe we could talk about it, and see where it took us?

We were heading toward Saga’s studio, and as Ren had just arrived, I didn’t have the heart to tell him not to bother. He talked about the flight over, and about seeing Dylan a few days ago. She had a new pair of dancers to coach, who were as hopeless as us and argued more than we’d done in our early days, apparently.

The panel van was still outside the studio. We stopped behind it, a few steps back from the studio door.

The windows were still boarded up in places, and the garage door still didn’t open or shut properly, so it was sort of half wedged just high enough to duck under.

I sighed and leaned against him. His arm came around me, like I’d known it would.

“How long are you staying?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“A while.”

A while was good, better than a few days, but why was he being vague? “How long is a while?”

“Well, I live here now, so mostly forever, I suppose.”

I blinked. “Live where?”

“Here.” He nodded at the broken garage door.

It took me a second to grasp his meaning, because Hasegawa anywhere near Saga’s place had always seemed like one of those impossible things that didn’t happen in real life. Hasegawa didn’t belong in a place where the AC didn’t work and the ceilings were stained.

“Wait . . .”

The van, the people going back and forth, not moving items, putting furniture inside. Those were his people?

My eyes widened at about the same time my heart tried to choke me. “You bought it?” I slapped a hand over my mouth and stepped back, mumbling. “You bought it.”

He pulled Saga’s big lump of rattling keys from his coat pocket, half of which nobody knew what fitted where.

My hand stayed over my mouth. My gaze went from his face to the studio, and back to his smiling face.

“The sign is coming down to refurbish it, not to remove it permanently,” he said.

“Refurbish?” Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I staggered in place. Ren grabbed my arm. “You’re keeping it as a studio?”

“Yes, I thought . . . perhaps . . . I could teach?”

No, wait, this was too much. “You wanna teach?”

“Are you alright, Cam?”

“I need to sit.” I dropped onto the curb to try and stop my head from spinning.

“You don’t think I can teach?” he asked, crouching beside me.

Ren teaching? He was terrifying. I smiled, but felt my bottom lip wobble. This was too much.