Sidelined

I hung up and stuffed the phone into my pocket and turned to face the cottage. Sam was waiting for me inside.

I climbed the small steps. When I pushed open the door, my breath caught under my ribs. “Oh my God.”

Everything was the same as our first night here. There were flowers and candles, and a crackling fire in the fireplace. It was the same except for the man down on one knee holding a diamond ring between his fingers.

“Before I say anything or you say anything, I want you to know I planned this for you whether or not you made the troupe.”

I nodded, speechless and shaky. I stumbled closer to him. I wanted to hear everything he had to say. I wasn’t about to interrupt this perfect moment.

I lowered to the floor, taking his face between my hands. His gorgeous, chiseled face. The one that had me from night one. I looked into his gray eyes as the tears gathered at the corners of my lashes.

“Don’t cry. I haven’t even started yet.” He cleared his throat.

I laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay. This is what I want to say.” He kissed the center of my palm and held my hand against his cheek as if he needed my strength to get the words out.

“It’s been an incredible year. We’ve had to face some of the hardest defeats in our careers. The Wranglers didn’t make it to the championship. You were fired from the Warriors. That entire media bullshit—that was all my fault.”

“Hey, this isn’t sounding very positive.”

He closed his eyes. “I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.” His eyes gazed into mine. “But despite all of the damn noise, we met. And it didn’t seem to matter that I had rules, or you had rules. We broke through all of them to be together.”

I smiled. “We did.”

“And when your training schedule picked up and mine slowed down, we figured it out.”

I laughed. “Only because you used your bonus to buy an airplane to shuttle me back and forth to Austin. With an on-call pilot,” I added.

“It worked, didn’t it?” His tone was serious.

I nodded. “It did work.”

It was probably the thing that kept us most grounded. With a quick twenty-minute commute, I didn’t feel as if we were ever far from each other. Once I was kicked off the Goddesses, I started traveling when the Wranglers traveled. Sam and I made sure we never spent more than three days apart. That was our new rule—and we’d never broken it.

I realized he had done everything in his power to make me happy. He had built the studio the way I wanted. He had hired a physical therapist to complete my rehab. He had paired me with an astonishingly talented choreographer, despite all my protests. He did what he wanted to do, but it was all because he loved me.

“You know that’s why I’m down on one knee right now. Because we work. We know how to make it work.” He held the ring closer to me. “I want our future to be together. Will you marry me, Natalia?”

I took in the moment. The fire. The flickering candles. The flowers everywhere. And here we were at one of our most romantic spots, where we had spent an incredibly intimate night together. It was the night he let me soak in an enormous tub of overflowing bubbles. It was the night I had told him about my accident. It was the night I knew I was in love with him.

I sighed. “Today is the day I’ve waited for since I fell.” I focused on the depths of his eyes. “And the only reason it happened is because of you. You made me put on those pointe shoes when I’d been scared to for months. You wouldn’t let me stop rehab. You gave me the best choreographer in the business.” I giggled. “And you bought me a plane.

“Because of you, I made prima ballerina today. I have my dream back.” I looked down at the ring. I had been too consumed by his words to really notice it until now. Holy shit, it was the size of Texas.

“So is that a yes?”

I threw my arms around his neck. “In every language. In every way it’s possible to say it. It’s a yes.”

His lips covered mine and I groaned from the intensity of his kiss. It was always like this with Sam. He always made my body feel fire and air at the same time. He made me feel protected and loved. And we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. I sucked at the corners of his mouth, lingering over his firm lips.

“Try it on,” he whispered.

“Oh right.” My body was already moving with his and flush with anticipation. I had forgotten about the ring.

I held my left hand forward as he slipped it over my ring finger. It sparkled in the candlelight.

“It’s perfect.” I admired the stone on my hand.