Mascara streaking her cheeks along with the tracks of the rain, Ivy stood her ground in the torrential downpour and faced me down.
She was beauty and agony and fury all in one; but she wasn’t apathetic.
Just like the arguments of our past, the viciousness of her words and the passion of her yell were rooted in something. I knew.
Since the moment we’d met, when I’d been screaming at her, I’d been doing it to keep myself from saying and doing the things I didn’t want to admit. I’d been scared of what could have been in the future, and I’d been scared to confront my past.
She didn’t trust me, now more than ever, and her reasons were clear.
But the reasons for me to fight it were even clearer.
I’d spent weeks being gentle with her, trying to tiptoe around the wide circle of space I’d thought she’d needed. But gentle wasn’t how we’d started. We hadn’t eased into each other’s hearts. No. We’d gotten under each other’s skin, inside one another’s souls because we’d fought our way there.
And that was exactly what I needed to do now.
I needed to fight. For her. For us.
“Go ahead,” I told her. “Scream this fucking place down. There’s no one out here to hear you anyway.”
My house was secluded the way Grace’s old property was, only more so, thanks to the wealth of my father and his desire to flaunt it. He’d wanted more property, more influence, a bigger house—anything he could wield over someone else.
Water clung to Ivy’s shirt and forced it tight against her skin, the heat of her body steaming into the cold surrounding air. She was shivering and drenched, but this—this argument with me—was important enough to ignore it.
“Is that a threat, Levi?” she challenged, turning the line of my jaw harder. She was instigating, poking at my weakness by suggesting I was the kind of man who would use all of this space and privacy to take advantage, I knew, but that didn’t stop it from smarting.
“I don’t know,” I shouted back over the roar of the sheeting rain and wind. “Sure seems like you’ve decided it is.”
She charged, closing the remaining distance between us and shoving me in the shoulder. I rocked, but by and large, her push wasn’t enough to make me move.
“Don’t you dare,” she gritted, pointing an angry finger right in my face, “turn this back on me.”
I grabbed her finger quickly, forcing it down and hooking an arm around her hips.
She was too easy to move, her weight far lighter than that fucker of a producer pretended it was, as I tossed her over my shoulder and clamped an arm across her legs.
“Hey! Put me down!”
I ignored the yells easily, so she kicked and fought instead. Tenderness pooled under the violence of her fists on my back, and the toes of her boots connected more than once with my thighs, but I didn’t slow.
Across the drive and through my door, I listened as she railed against every angle of my character she could manage.
Apparently, I was a bastard with no respect for women, an egomaniac with no regard for others, and a sadist with no sense to move on from these arguments between us.
She swore up and down that she was different, that she’d moved on from this twisted thing between us, and it was time for me to do the same.
When I made it to the second floor and down the hall to my room, I turned on the tap to the shower and dumped her in, fully clothed, before the water even began to warm.
Montana weather in the dead of winter was frigid at best, but add an unexpected rain shower into the mix and it might as well have been a recipe for frost bite.
Not only did Ivy need to warm up, she needed to calm the fuck down. Her panting, erratic breaths and the thrumming, hard pulse at her neck were evidence of her current chaotic state.
“Just get over it!” she yelled, raw and ragged, her voice tiring from all the yelling even if she wasn’t. I turned my back on her, intent to leave her to it, but she didn’t want to be left to herself. She wanted a battle, and she wanted it with me.
“Me and you aren’t a thing. We’re nothing. You’re nothing.”
The insulting word froze me for a fraction of a second, and then…I wasn’t frozen at all.
In three short steps, I crossed the ornate tile back to her, stepped under the spray and trapped her against the shower wall.
The tile was cold, and the raining water steady as I pushed my body closer to hers and put my hands to the wall at the sides of her head.
She shook in the small space—whether it was from the cold or the closeness was anyone’s guess.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, my voice low and deep.
“Yeah,” she spat back, testing my limits and daring me to be the one to give in to the misplaced sexual tension.
We fought as a means to fuck when the other person wasn’t willing to give in. So seemingly opposite, but so obviously established in the same thing—passion.
I smiled and embraced the feelings of uncertainty and hope—thrived in the same mess that’d sent me running in the first place. The difference in then and now was so finite in its simplicity.
This angry, desperate version of Ivy was a mirror of me, held up for my scrutiny as I studied the reflection and learned what I looked like from the outside.
She was teaching me perspective. And in the end, when she finally understood the symmetry of our journey to one another, she would comprehend true empathy.
“I’m not the one who drove all the way to my house and practically challenged me to a duel, honey.” I leaned in closer, just skimming her lips with the wet skin of my own. “I think maybe you care a little more than you let on.”
“I cared,” she contested. “I stupidly let myself care about you, about how you were coping, about getting to know you…” Her lips shook, and an angry tear escaped, mixing with the droplets from the shower and disappearing forever. “I cared. You didn’t. So, now, neither do I.”
Fierce and cutting, her distinction was effective in all the ways she wanted. It broke down the reserves I’d built for this fight and left me hollow, and all there was left to do was give her the peace I’d so desperately wanted when I was in her position.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly when I freed it of the weight of my own and cleared the spray of the shower. It’d warmed to a steamy temperature now.
“I’ll leave some clothes on the bed,” I murmured. The lines of her face were warped as she tried to shroud what lay beneath it from me.
She didn’t want me to see the sadness. She didn’t want me to see the conflict. She didn’t want me to see the pain.
All of those were weapons better wielded in secret, and I owed her the luxury.
My clothes stuck to my skin as I tracked water into the closet and set about replacing them. I didn’t consider or choose, rather grabbing the first shirt, underwear, and pants I came to. But when I was through and the task was undeniably changed, so did my behavior.
Carefully searching drawers and hangers, I scoured the entire closet to find the best outfit to suit Ivy’s size and comfort. My oldest Cold PD T-shirt, my favorite forest green sweatshirt, boxer briefs, pants, and a pair of warm socks. I gathered the stack of it and made my way back into the bedroom to set it at the foot of the bed.
Water slapped at the glass door of the shower, and I closed my eyes against the urge to look back. The bathroom door was wide open, an oversight on my part, and her wet clothes, violently discarded, no doubt, straggled their litter all the way into the bedroom.
Carefully, I coached myself against the onslaught of want and temptation and gathered the clothes in my arms, intent to launder them so she could have them back and hopeful that the wait would be reason enough to keep her here.
“I’ll be downstairs,” I called over my shoulder as I exited the room.
I didn’t wait to hear her response.
Frankly, I had a feeling it wasn’t really something I’d want to hear anyway.