The metal frame of the sign hung over the entrance, only stabilized by two, ivy-covered pillars, and beckoned visitors inside.
Cold Cemetery, it read.
As a kid, I’d liked coming here. Strolling the plots and acquainting myself with all of the people who had passed. Sometimes it was someone I’d heard of, someone I’d known through my family, but other times, it was a stranger. Someone’s life I knew nothing about but could surmise—all from the things their loved ones had written about them in permanent block letters.
Cemeteries weren’t known for being welcoming places, but to me, this was one of the only places all people seemed good.
Loving wives and nurturing mothers, no one ever wrote about how hollow-hearted or self-centered their relatives were. And some of them were. They had to be. I had the proof in the parents I’d been given to show for it.
Lazarus Fox. In life, he’d been an egocentric prick with little to no fatherly abilities. But here, I could almost believe he was a father, a son, and a well-respected townsperson, just as his grave proclaimed.
I moved past his headstone without pausing and through the little gate in the middle. When we were wild teenagers, Grace and I would often sneak out of school and eat lunch on one of the stone benches beneath a big oak tree. She’d loved being there almost as much as being anywhere else, and I’d pushed her mom to get her a plot as close to that tree as possible after she’d died, instead of next to her father’s grave, way on the other side.
Phil Murphy had died when she was just a toddler, in a drunk driving accident.
He was the drunk.
Grace hadn’t wanted anything to do with him or his memory. Grandpa Sam had been all the father figure she’d needed.
And now, what was once our secret spot, under the shade of an old oak with life-filled leaves and roots to Cold, a place only the two of us shared, had become the one and only place I could go to see her.
Irony at its finest.
My boots crunched in the ice-covered snow as I made my way to her resting place.
Today, there was no weather; no wind, no clouds—just subzero temperatures.
The path glistened like white quartz, mere ice crystals and snow on weary concrete.
Beauty and glitz over everything dead.
The small bouquet of white roses felt weighty in my black-gloved hand.
A few feet from her headstone, I paused, and my breath rose in visible puffs.
It’d been a while since I’d come here, to her resting place. Most days I couldn’t stand the quiet. To be alone with my thoughts was the complete opposite of what I found desirable in my quest to be numb. The rug was always heavy when I lifted it to sweep pain and the past underneath it, but I’d never been able to consider leaving it down to trudge over. Using the bristles to wipe away the stains and blood and heartbreak that had dirtied me in the first place.
But years of sticking to the old hollow strategy had brought me here—to a place where I avoided my own emotions and hurt people in the process. To a place where I needed Grace’s wisdom about a new woman in my life.
I hoped the proximity to the remains of my best friend and the gift of flowers would close the gap between us for a moment, even if it was so very brief, because I desperately needed her advice.
Grace Elizabeth Murphy, her headstone read.
Loving daughter, granddaughter, friend.
True to her name, Grace was in her every step, heaven in her eyes, and in every gesture: dignity and strength and love.
Unlike some of the others, the words carved into her eternal resting place were true.
“Hi, little gem,” I whispered in the still, frigid air. The sensation of the nickname leaving my lips felt foreign, and my eyes widened in surprise.
It’d been years since I’d said those two words.
Years since I’d been a goofy nine-year-old boy, with a special interest in letters and irony. Years since I’d noticed that the pretty girl with the fire-red hair had initials that spelled the word gem.
I’d found it amusing, and secretly, I’d agreed.
It hadn’t taken much for anyone to realize that Grace Murphy was a gem. A truly rare, special human being with a heart bigger than the state of Montana.
That nickname had stuck, and even when she was a full-fledged police officer, the woman who wore a badge just like mine, the one who’d proven she’d give her life to save someone else, she was still a gem to me.
“Right now is one of those times I wish you were here to talk to,” I whispered and ran the tips of my gloves over the edge of her headstone. “It’s bizarre, I know, coming to you about another woman, but I also know you’d probably know all the right things to say.”
I inhaled a deep breath and looked out across the row of headstones.
“I fucked up, Grace. I fucked up, and I hurt someone I now know means a lot to me.”
Kneeling down beside her final resting place, I felt the material of my pants start to grow damp and moist from the snow-covered ground. But I ignored it, desperate to be closer to her.
“You’d like her.” I laughed to myself. “Especially right now, since she hates me. I know no one knows how big of an asshole I can be better than you.”
I set the bouquet of white roses down, resting them gently below her headstone.
“It’s been seven days since it all went to shit. My God, Grace, you would have been horrified.” A small smile curled my lips as I pictured Grace finding out what I’d done with Ivy’s sister. “I’m not sure where to go or what to do, for that matter, and I could really use some help here.”
I could practically hear Grace’s voice and the words she would’ve said had she been able to respond.
You really are a son of a bitch, Levi Fox, she would’ve said. Her sister?
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, it was seriously fucked-up, I knew.
But my goal had never been more than a teasing flirtation with her sister to get under Ivy’s skin. The full-fledged kiss that Camilla had placed upon my lips had been the very opposite of what I’d intended.
My heart twisted and turned inside my chest as if it was trying to escape from a vise.
The onslaught of memories was nearly too painful to process.
Camilla kissing me.
The way my mind had come to a screeching halt, trying to process what in the fuck was happening.
And when I’d finally realized how very wrong it all was and ended what Camilla had attempted to start, the look on Ivy’s face when I’d locked my gaze with hers…
Her expression, the sadness and shock and pain resting behind her big green eyes, had mirrored exactly what I had felt in that moment.
Devastation.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” I asked on a near whisper, my gaze focused on the engraved epitaph of Grace’s headstone. “Where in the hell do I go from here?”
Work, she would have said. Work hard to be the man she deserves. Give her the space she needs, but stop being an asshole! I know the good version of you, and no woman can resist that man. Be him. All the rest will follow.
A soft chuckle left my lips at the absurdity of my thoughts, thinking of what Grace would say if she were still alive.
But no matter the ridiculousness of it all, the words I’d imagined were true.
Seven days since I’d had to look directly into the eyes of Ivy Stone as pain oozed from every cell inside her body until it had coated her in nothing but agony and hurt.
Seven days since I’d fucked it all up.
Seven days since she’d last spoken to me.
One week of hell.
Grace was right. I had to do my best to prove I was something other than the asshole I’d been.
In the meantime, I’d just have to get used to the heat. I’d have to deal with all of the rage and cold silence Ivy decided I deserved to feel.