Dean burst into the room like there was a fire, his eyes wild and gigantic chest heaving. With a swipe of his hand, his beanie was clutched in his fist, his gaze fixing on Ivy and the baby. His dark eyes filled with tears, and his lips curled in the most reverent of smiles.

A happy sob burst out of Ivy as he floated toward her, and I stepped out of the way, fingertips to smiling lips and tears sliding down my cheeks.

They cried and laughed and hovered over their child. They kissed and held each other, and when Ivy passed the baby to him, he cradled his daughter in his arms with more care and wonder than I’d ever seen a person possess.

They were three, their love creating another, a bond between them that couldn’t be broken. Their lives would forever be full of love, full of joy. Full of pain too, because that was the nature of life, after all. But I knew without a doubt that they would cling to each other just as they did now, with all the hope and love they held in their hearts. Which was a lot.

I was struck again with a longing, a moment of wishing for that other life, the one with the easy Sundays and the abundance of kisses. I added a new daydream to the reel, one just like this.

And there was only one man I could imagine it with.

I felt myself approach a moment, a precipice. A cliff face where I was given a choice. The wind of change whipped my face, beckoning me closer to the edge where I’d have to decide—fly or flee. The life I had or the one I dreamed of.

I knew what I wanted to do, but what would I sacrifice to do it? Could I have it all, the life I wanted and the one I was living? Was there an in-between, a middle ground, or was I destined to have one or the other?

And how much did I even want what I had?

I didn’t know the answer, not yet.

But the wind carried me closer to the edge all the same.

22

Girls Like Her

KASH

I smiled down at my phone where a picture of Ivy and her baby smiled back at me.

“Lemme see,” Luke said impatiently, reaching across the worktable where we’d perched that night, the display I’d been helping him build finally ready for Tess’s finishing touches.

When I passed my phone over, his face went all gooey.

“Man, would you look at that? A baby. Ivy has a baby.”

I laughed. “She’s been pregnant for a year or something. Didn’t you ever figure that was going to happen someday?”