“Move your ass, Ivy!” Cam yelled from her spot next to the front door. She’d been camped there for the last ten minutes, and this was far from the first time she’d yelled.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I muttered back, in no way loud enough for her to hear me, but I didn’t care. Courtesy for others was normally a priority, but my priorities had recently gone to shit. Maybe I’d care more about not making my sister wait or being early to work when I actually got some sleep again.
I scooped a random change of clothes into my bag and tied my hair into a wet knot on top of my head.
Dark circles lined the lower curve of my eyes, and my bones felt weighted with sand. Last night had been the tenth in a row where my sleep felt like more work than being awake, and my body was starting to show the effects. I was lethargic and bloated, and despite not having any time for it, I couldn’t fathom going to work without showering off the thick film of sweat.
I grabbed my script notes off my dresser, slung my bag over my shoulder, and charged out of my room with way more energy than I felt. It was an act born of desperation since I really didn’t want Camilla to start asking questions about my current disheveled state.
“Are you ready?” I asked without looking up, opening the handles of my bag enough to shove the script inside.
“Am I ready?” she scoffed. “That’s funny, princess. I’ve been ready for ages.”
I rolled my eyes at her drama, dropped my bag to the floor, and shoved my feet into the pair of boots at the door. In an ensemble of a sweater, yoga pants, and the snow boots that had finally arrived from Amazon’s wilderness branch, I should have been at the height of comfort. Instead, the shoulders of my sweater pulled at the seams, and my pants cut into my abdomen. The boots felt too tight, and a cold droplet of water poked at my neck from the tip of a loose piece of hair.
I was uncomfortable, and everything felt off.
With gritted teeth and a smile, I pulled my bag back onto my shoulder and cocked a hip. “Let’s go.”
Camilla’s eyes surveyed the wasteland of ill-fitting clothing and bruised under-eyes and narrowed her own. “What’s going on with you?”
Just like with the conversation two sisters who’d been fucked over by the same guy desperately needed to have, I did my best to avoid getting into it.
“Nothing. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
“Horseshit,” Cam murmured.
I rolled my eyes again and reached for the door handle, but I only got it open an inch before Camilla slammed it shut.
“We need to talk.”
I shook my head and grimaced. “We really don’t.”
“We do,” she insisted. “It’s been two weeks since that night, and all I’ve managed out of you is an I don’t blame you, Cam.”
I shrugged. “Well, I don’t.”
“Great,” she breathed. “I’m so fucking relieved. I won’t worry at all then about you looking like shit and not sleeping at all and about the reasons why you both looked like you’d been gutted with an especially big serrated knife even though you’d never even really talked about him.”
Her sarcasm was potent, but so was the pout in Levi’s eyes every time he turned them on me. And I’d had fourteen straight days of it. I was getting really good at ignoring things.
I reached for the handle again and forced the door open despite her hold on it. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
She scowled, but Camilla was a rule-follower if nothing else. I played on her weakness for punctuality. “If you don’t let me walk out the door, we’re really going to be late.”
“Fine,” she acquiesced, giving up. “But I’m driving.”
My shoulders sagged at the relief associated with her offer. If she drove, maybe I’d be able to sleep. “Works for me.”
Happily settled into the passenger seat of my rental car, I closed my eyes and tried to find peace. Away from the turmoil of Levi’s and Grace’s characters, away from the heartbreak I felt from the real Levi Fox.
I was painfully close to the sweet solace of sleep when I heard the car slow to a stop and the locks sound. Surely, we couldn’t have made it to the set yet, right?
Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes and surveyed the surroundings. A massive tree stood ominously just two inches from my window.
Camilla, the witch, had trapped me in, fucking engaged child safety locks and all.
My neck twinged as I swung my head to my traitor sister and glared. “What the hell?” A simple demand but one that required an answer.
Camilla, as it was, didn’t think so. Instead, she dove right into an interrogation.
“What’s the real story with you and Levi?”
Pressure built in the clench of my teeth as I did my best not to shatter them. “There’s no story.”
Camilla laughed, rich and rotten all at once, a sickening sound of hurt and disbelief. “There is a story. You wouldn’t be this messed up if there weren’t. You wouldn’t be avoiding talking to me. You wouldn’t be holding me in this goddamn purgatory of unrest! What do I have to do to get you to forgive me?” Her volume had risen to a shout by the end, and the percussion pounded in my eardrums as though I were hungover.
The rubber band in my head stretched and thinned, and after a harsh bout of hell trying to avoid the truth again, it snapped.
“I forgive you, okay? Does that make you happy?” I yelled back, turning in my seat to face her. I could feel the contortion in my face as it all came rushing back and bled through the surface. Levi’s lips on mine. Levi’s lips on hers. A sob hitched in my throat and threatened to bring my heart up right along with it.
Her eyes flared. “Not even a little.”
“Fucking great,” I declared. “We can both be miserable, then!”
Her eyes turned shiny, tears pooling in the corners and spilling over onto the smooth, creamy surface of her cheeks nearly instantly.
Regret tasted like sour milk.
I reached forward and swiped the little rivers from her face with the back of my hand and ignored the piercing pain in my chest. It was screaming and twisting, an attempt to ward me off from confronting my feelings I was wholly familiar with.
But I had twenty-eight years of being familiar with my twin—twenty-nine, if you counted the nine months we’d spent inside of our mother’s womb together—and I’d be damned if I was going to be the reason for her upset—sadness she hadn’t earned and a whole barrel of guilt she didn’t deserve—any longer.
“Stop crying, you big baby,” I told her softly.
Her tears mixed in with her laugh and resulted in a snort. I shook my head.
“Ah, fuck,” I sighed, slamming my body back into the support of my seat and raising a booted foot up onto the fabric. My thigh pressed into my chest, and my knee made a good resting place for my chin as I stared out the windshield at the snowy Montana back road.
Camilla was silent as I gathered my thoughts. The abandoned wilderness felt peaceful and welcoming as I lost myself in my mind and traveled back through the whole tortured story.
“Levi Fox gave me a speeding ticket on my way into town,” I finally started.
I glanced her way to find her eyes wide but her mouth shut. She was riveted, as anyone hearing our sordid tale of woe would be, but she was also resolute. She would have all the goddamn answers, even if she had to sit in perfect silence to get them.
A caustic laugh. “Man, that really was the perfect beginning.”
I glanced her direction once more and smiled. “I hope you’ve got a good excuse worked out. If I’m gonna give you the whole story, we’re gonna be fucking late.”
She didn’t hesitate to grab her phone and type furiously to whoever needed the message, and I took the time to settle in.
Work, for today, would wait.