Chapter 271: Penny
4 years later
The house is quiet in the kind of way that almost feels… reverent.
Even with half the boxes still stacked in corners and our clothes draped haphazardly over chairs, it already has a heartheat of its own. A pulse under the floorboards. A kind of soft, subtle rhythm that mirrors the rise and fall of my breathing as I walk barefoot across the newly sanded hardwood floors.
Asher isn’t home.
He left earlier, for something – he didn’t say what. He just kissed my temple, pressed a hand to the small of my back, and whispered, “I won’t be long, baby.”
He’s said that before. He always keeps his word.
So now, it’s just me.
Me and this new chapter we’ve stepped into.
I’m kneeling in the upstairs hallway, sifting through boxes labeled in Sharpie with quick scrawls like “BOOKS + STUFF” and “LINENS PROBABLY?” because even now, four years later, Asher’s handwriting is just as chaotic as his sense of labeling. I find a stack of pointe shoe ribbons near the bottom of one of my dance boxes. They’re frayed, stained with years of sweat and rosin and something that might be blood. I don’t even remember which performance they’re from, but I hold them to my chest for a second and close my eyes.
I used to dream about nights like this.
Soft lamplight across the walls. My own studio at the back of the house, windows wide and open to the lake. Music humming low from the kitchen, candles half–burned on the table, my feet sore from a day that meant something. Not survival. Not obligation. But choice.
Love.
Living.
And now it’s mine.
This house–our house–is tucked just outside the city. The perfect compromise between silence and reality. I can still
teach and rehearse without having to drive two hours each way, and Asher’s base isn’t too far either. We can breathe here.
Grow here. Maybe even raise a family here someday.
I move into the kitchen, set down a small ceramic vase, and fill it with water from the tap. There’s a single flower from the garden earlier – bright yellow and wild. It sits crooked and awkward in the vase, but it makes me smile.
Asher was promoted last year. He oversees the deployment of new units and weapon systems now, a position with weight and long hours – but he’s made it his mission to change the landscape too. After everything he lived through in the Navy, the things he never really says out loud, he’s been pioneering new mandatory psychological programs. Support for soldiers. Trauma care. Grief counseling. Post–mission decompression units. Preventive protocols that should’ve existed decades ago. And the craziest thing? The men under him love him. They respect him, sure, but they love him.
Chapter 271: Penny
I’ve never seen him to himit
The kettle Bisses in the backgrond. I paid the bawy, stretch my legs, and w
light–filled and warm, with copper light fixtures that Asher pretended tx to care a we The breakfast nook is my favorite part: deep seafoam cushions touted under a wall of pillows and books and little succulents I keep forgetting to water.
I pour myself another cup and take a second to breathe.
Four years ago, everything changed.
ed
After the Spring Gala, doors opened that I never thought would even crack, I danced in Paris. London Tokyo Smatter cities
ones with stages that felt less intimidating, more human. I did interviews, Sat across from women I one and listened to them speak like I belonged there.
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I did.
But the thing about ballet… is that it’s cruelly finite.
I’m twenty–three now.
Still dancing. Still performing sometimes. But my knee hasn’t been the same since the tear last year. A double fouetté that didn’t quite land. One second of distraction one painful second- and I’ve never spun quite the same.
I teach more now. Assist in classes at the studio. And I know Madame Loretto is watching me with those sharp, eagle eyes of hers. Retirement is looming for her, like a cloud creeping closer. She hasn’t said anything yet, but I feel it. In the way she lets me take over warmups more often. In the way she says “You remind me of myself at your age, Penelope,” with something heavy and thoughtful in her voice.
If she asks me to take over the studio… I think I’ll say yes.
Teaching. Sharing. Becoming the kind of guide I needed back when I was sixteen and afraid of everything.
I pull my hair up in a loose bun and walk slowly through the house. Every room hums with possibility. The back sunroom is filled with stacked canvases and empty bookshelves. It will be my studio. I already bought the mirrors. I plan on painting the floorboards white this weekend, the same way Loretto’s studio used to look like moonlight beneath your
feet.
–
In the breakfast nook, I settle onto the bench seat and draw my knees up to my chest. I’m still in one of Asher’s oversized t–shirts. The scent of him lingers in the fabric. It smells like pine and laundry detergent and a hint of something darker. Something warmer.
God, I miss him right now.
Not in the desperate, aching way I used to when he was deployed.
But in the way you miss sunlight when you’re sitting in shadow.
He should see this
the way the house looks right now. The way the light hits the windows. How peaceful the water is outside, the slow glide of it like glass stretching into forever.
I lean my forehead against the windowpane and whisper, “You’d love this part.”
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Chapter 271: Penny
There’s a little bluebird on the railing outside. Tiny and brave and soft.
It feels like a metaphor, but I’m too tired to chase it.
I press a hand to my knee, the one that aches when it rains or when I try to go too hard in class. A reminder. Hot of failure but of transformation. Of growth. That pain isn’t always a stop sign. Sometimes it’s a detour.
I open my journal, the one I started the day after the gala four years ago, and add a single sentence.
This is what home feels like.
I close the cover and smile.
He’ll be back soon.
And when he walks through the front door and sees me sitting here, barefoot and quiet and full of a thousand soft thoughts, I’ll tell him everything.
How I think I’m ready to teach.
How this house already feels like a chapter we’ve been writing for years.
How, even though the stage might be behind me… I’ve never felt more like a dancer in my life.
Because being a dancer, being me, was never about the audience.
It was always about the music. The movement.
The love.
And I am surrounded by it now.
In this house. In this stillness. In this life.
Chapter Comments
Visitor
lovely chapter. wish I’ll live a life like this one. so beautiful
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