Page 192 of Top Shelf

Joyride.

For a suspended second, I am back in Solvik. Watching my father hold out his hand to my mother in the meadow. I am watching Heidi understand the song before I tell her. I am dancing badly with my wife beneath a sky that refused to get dark, my heart in her hands and every word I was too afraid to say sitting between us anyway.

Heidi hears it too, and her mouth curves through tears.

“You put this on the playlist?” I ask. “Why?”

She laughs, but it breaks in the middle. “Because I had this very stupid idea that maybe my husband would dance with me tonight.”

My chest pulls tight. “Heidi.”

“On the second-best day of my life.”

I do not breathe. The words find places in me I thought the last week had already ruined.

“Which was first?”

Her eyes crinkle. “Marrying you.”

Everything in me stops. There is only Heidi. My wife. Choosing to hand me another piece of a future I nearly obliterated with my own fear.

My voice comes out rough. “First time or second time?”

Her smile breaks wider. “The second time was when I knew better.”

I close my eyes, but it’s no use. The tears fall through my lashes anyway, and when I open them, she is still there.

“Will you come dance with me?”

She laughs out a sob. “I thought you didn’t dance?”

“I know. It’s very brave of me to ask, and I will definitely step on your feet. But it is for wife reasons.”

Her hand slides down my arm and threads through mine.

“Yes, Viktor,” she says. “I wanna dance with you.”

I take her hand, and when we open the door, the studio is bright and full and alive. People turn, but Heidi doesn’t flinch. Zoe sees us from near the reception desk, her expression sharpening first with warning, then softening when she sees our joined hands. Carina lifts her brows, and Mila stands beside Rhys near the reformers, arms crossed, watching us like she might still intervene if I breathe wrong.

Good. Heidi deserves an army.

The song plays louder out here, full of every mile between Denver and Solvik. It fills the studio she built, bouncing softly off mirrors and windows, threading itself into the space. I lead Heidi to the edge of the floor, place a hand at her waist, and then we move. Badly.

She lets out a light laugh. “Still terrible.”

“I have other strengths.”

Her smile is wet and light and real enough to make my chest ache. “You do.”

My eyes remain on our feeting, trying to avoid stepping on her, but she catches my chin with two fingers, lifting my face back to hers.

“Stop looking at your feet.”

I freeze as the words move through me, carrying the cold bite of arena air, a puck sliding over ice, her body in front of mine while I taught her how to aim higher. Her lips twitch, and her eyes are glossy again, but she doesn’t look away.

“Look where you want to go, Karlsson.”

I look at her. I will never stop looking at her. This woman who built her own name and then made space in it for mine. My hand spreads at her back, and I draw her closer.