Page 123 of Off the Edge

He was so English when he got serious. “Okay then. I just wanted to check.”

The fingers of his free hand threaded with mine. “Do you want to exchange symbolic rings as a token of our love?”

I laughed at the memory of his favorite anime, then caught myself. “Wait, is that a proposal?”

He hesitated, thinking. “It could be.”

I smiled nervously, not sure if he was serious. “If it was, then I might be up for that. Just sayin’.”

He flicked his fingers along my jaw and bowed his head for a kiss. “By the way . . .” he said, stopping a fraction of a second before our lips met. “I hope you don’t mind, but I love you.”

Ah, the airport, when I’d dropped that bombshell and walked away. Neither of us was walking away now.

I looped my arms around his neck and pulled him down into a hungry, open kiss that might have become a whole lot more heated if there hadn’t been removal guys moving about the studio.

We came out of the kiss, gazes locked, and my heart so full of love it might burst.

“Hey, Hasegawa, can you dance?” I asked around a playful smile.

He laughed. “I will never forget the moment you asked me that.”

“I figured.”

“Can I dance, Navarro? Do you want to find out?”

“Heck yeah.”

Those two people we’d been, so long ago, afraid to dance with each other, afraid to fall in love. They were not the same people we’d become. And I had Ren to thank for telling me I’d never get to the stars if I didn’t reach for them. Dylan to thank for putting us together, Saga to thank for telling me to win, and helping me take the steps to get there, Zoe for calling Ren when I’d needed him. I had a lot of people to thank for helping me chase my dreams. I’d reached for them, won gold, and found the most perfectly brilliant man along the way.

Not bad for the troublemaker dropout who didn’t belong in ice dance.

Not bad at all.

FORTY-FIVE

REN

Two months later.

I’d spent my whole life not belonging. Wherever I went, I’d never really connected with the people. My home life, pushed into ice dance at a young age, private school, dance academy, the UK in general. None of it had felt like home. I’d been alone for a very long time, even when surrounded by people.

But Saga’s studio, in all of its faded, lackluster glory, felt like home.

I couldn’t have known, when I’d stepped inside it two years ago, that I’d find my future inside its walls. But here I was.

It had taken months to renovate the building. It probably would have been quicker and cheaper to take a wrecking ball to it and begin again. But then it wouldn’t have the history that gave the building its soul. Now, in Montreal’s spring, light and laughter and music spilled from the studio’s open windows.

The new sign still told the world this was Saga’s studio. That hadn’t changed. Inside, we offered everything dancers needed, including electrics that didn’t get overloaded and sprung floors. Of course, Cam was its beating heart. His brilliant personality brought the studio alive, made it a home for others too. Kids who needed somewhere to go and dreams to reach for. Kids like he’d been, who needed someone to believe in them. Cam believed in them. We both did.

I loved him more every day.

And to think, I’d almost walked away so many times. If he hadn’t pulled me back every time, I would have been a much colder, sadder, lonelier person. Today, I was who I was meant to be. No longer afraid to feel. I danced and taught and loved freely with no expectations, save my own. I learned that love was not meant to be conditional. It shouldn’t have a price. It did not require sacrifice. True love was freely given. Cam taught me that.

Every day, he taught me something new about myself, about us.

“This is our song,” Cam said, nodding toward the dance floor.

We’d come to the basketball court club not far from the studio, the same club he’d taken me to the night we’d danced too close to the flame. The night my body had known what my mind would take two years to realize.