“This twisted thing between us—whatever it is—it’s over.”
Ivy’s words barreled out of her lips like a bullet from a rifle in the otherwise silent Montana air. They ricocheted, echoing and booming and filling the space around me so raucously the effect nearly brought me to my knees.
My heart clenched so hard inside my chest I thought it might migrate up my throat and choke me.
I wanted to go to her.
I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and kiss her pain away—kiss our pain away.
But we’d proven time and again that kisses couldn’t heal real problems. In this instance, I was certain it would only worsen them.
She so obviously wanted distance from me. If she could have put a thousand miles between us with a snap of her fingers, she would have snapped twice to put two.
I rubbed roughly at my chest with one hand, trying to erase the phantom pain taking up residence beneath my ribs. It wasn’t a turn in health, but an awakening of emotion that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
“Ivy,” I called to her. I had no other words, no explanation, nothing of value that would ease her pain or fix what I’d just broken, but I had a million poor substitutions I was willing to try.
With a mane of red hair blowing in the brisk wind and green eyes harsh with accusations and something I feared was hate, Ivy stared at me from the yard of Grace’s house.
Even tear-stained and raging, she was so beautiful it hurt. And now that I’d let the dam burst, the real, raw emotion I felt for her free to flow, I knew she held the power to destroy me.
God, how in the fuck had I gotten here? How had we gotten here?
Two good people battered and destroyed by a battle to survive one another.
Suddenly, I mourned for the mess I’d made of something I’d never really had.
Pain bit into my skin and forced my eyes closed.
I’d fucked up so bad. Not intentionally, but I’d played the starring role in this. I’d charmed her sister into thinking that kissing me was an option. And I’d spent so much energy trying not to feel something for Ivy, that it was too easy for her to believe I didn’t.
Regret washed over me like long, slow waves on a shallow beach. Each wave was icy cold and sent shivers down my spine. I longed to go back and take a different path, but now that was impossible. The past was irrevocable. I knew that better than most.
I stared down at the ground and found myself envying the pebbles of the driveway, hard and lifeless and unable to feel torment. Unable to bleed and regret—unable to cry as they buried people they loved.
Ivy moved toward her car, but before she could swing open the door, I jumped into action. Hand hard and swift, I planted it into the glass of the driver’s-side window and slammed it the few inches back to shut.
Her green eyes flashed to mine, agony and loathing mixing to make them muddy and toxic.
“Get out of the way, Levi,” she spat.
I shook my head. “No. I can’t let you leave like this.”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Way.” Each word existed in a swirl of defiance behind gritted teeth, but I didn’t falter.
I couldn’t let her get behind the wheel when she was so obviously affected. It wasn’t safe, and if something happened to her, I didn’t know how I’d be able to live with myself.
I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a world without her in it.
She’d become the fire in my veins. The instant she’d stepped her beautiful, stubborn, determined ass into Cold, Montana, she had turned my world upside down. She’d pushed my boundaries, and instead of fading into numbness and oblivion, I’d actually started to live.
I. Needed. Her.
I just wished I would’ve realized it sooner, before now—before I’d destroyed everything.
“Ivy, I can’t let you drive right now,” I said evenly, trying for once to be the calm one of the two of us. She flinched, the change in my demeanor unwelcome and ill-advised.
To Ivy, my late arrival to gentle consideration was an insult to all of the weeks she’d spent trying to evoke it.
“Fuck you, Levi!” she screamed, and without warning, she lifted her hand and slapped it hard across my face.
My skin stung from the assault, tingles and needles dotting the corner of my eye thanks to the new pressure in my cheek, but I didn’t care. I deserved this. I deserved every bit of her anger. And her anger was better than nothing at all.
But my lack of response only urged more rage to boil inside of her.
It spilled over in the form of another slap to my face.
And another.
And another.
I lost count after five. And with each smack of her hand to my battered cheek, her tears turned to sobs.
Fuck. She was broken, and I was to blame.
Thick-throated and disappointed in myself, I gave in. The pull, the want, the need—it was real. I couldn’t let it go on like this any longer. Wrapping my arms around her like a vise, I fought the pressure of her antagonistic body and pulled it to my chest.
For a brief moment, she allowed it, even burying her face and tears into my shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into her ear. “I’m so sorry, Ivy. What happened back there isn’t what you think. It’s the complete opposite, actually.”
Instead of soothing the wound, my words served as a stabbing reminder of my indiscretions.
With a hard shove, she pushed me away, her eyes wet and pained and oh so fucking beautiful I felt it all the way to my bones.
“Your apology means shit,” she said. “I don’t want your fucking excuses or anything, for that matter! I’m. Fucking. Done. With. You!”
Done with me.
I wished I could go back in time, rectify my mistakes, take back all of the cruel and thoughtless things I’d ever done or said to her. But I couldn’t.
Instead, I settled for giving her what I could then. Jaw hard and heart aching, I stepped away from the door of her car and offered it to her.
She stomped around me and swung it open violently, her movements swift and sure. She was pulling away from the pain and building a wall in its place, and I could see it so acutely I felt superhuman.
In reality, I just recognized the signs. I’d been doing it within the walls of myself for years.
Hand to the handle and the barrier of the door at her disposal, I thought that’d be the last word I got to speak. “Just explain one thing to me, Levi,” she ordered, her voice steely as she paused in the space between who we were and who we would be. “Why do you hate me so much?”
My response was immediate. “I don’t hate you, Ivy.”
“Then why do you act like I’m the enemy, and everyone else gets a pass?”
Her question held so much truth that nausea clenched my gut, and without even thinking, the words spilled out of my mouth.
“Because I want to be numb…and with everyone else, I can. But not with you,” I whispered. “You make me feel too much.”
Green eyes searching blue, she looked at me for a long moment, and I silently hoped by some miracle she’d understand. But I knew it was a pipe dream. There was so much she didn’t understand, but it was because she didn’t know—because I hadn’t told her.
A tiny prickle of hope touched the bottom of my spine and locked my body as she moved back out of the door of the car and slammed it shut.
“You need to leave,” she demanded, squashing it with the heel of her boot.
I looked on in devastation as she moved back toward the house, a wide-eyed and confused Camilla still standing on the porch looking down at us.
“And don’t worry, Levi,” she tossed over her shoulder. The coldness in her voice made me cringe. “You won’t have to feel too much anymore because of me. I’m done.”
Done.
I didn’t want to be done. Not with her, not with us. Not with any of it.
It was in that very moment that I made a promise to myself.
I would never be done with Ivy Stone.
Not today. Not next month.
Not ten years from now. Not ever.
I wasn’t going to let her go.
Ivy walked up the steps of the porch and into the house, and with one confused glance in my direction, Camilla followed her sister inside, shutting the door behind her as she went.
I stood in the driveway, the direction of my gaze unchanged.
I didn’t know where to go from here or what I could do that would right the wrongs I’d done to her.
I held on tightly to the fact that I’d be seeing her soon.
Tomorrow morning, in fact. Bright and early for another production day on Cold.
We were going to try this again. Only this time, I’d spend my time proving I wasn’t an asshole.