Why had anyone thought Ivy staying in Grace’s house was okay?
Obviously, Hollywood had no goddamn problem trampling over her memory.
I wore pulsing temples like a symbol of my fury as I left Ivy behind, staring after me with the gentlest expression I’d ever seen her use.
I felt drunk from the confrontation, like my heart wasn’t pumping enough blood and oxygen to my brain, and yet, she seemed composed. An eerie calm had overcome her in the last moments I’d allowed myself to stand there taking in the vision of her in light pink satin and lace scraps. And if I was honest, that scared me exponentially more than all of her pint-sized rage.
The familiar weather-stained wood of Grace’s front porch under my feet, I moved as fast as I could toward my truck. But I didn’t make it far before the ring of my cell phone in my pocket made me stop. I had half a mind to ignore it and concentrate on getting the fuck out of there, but the cop in me came awake and made me pull it out to look. The chief’s information proclaimed he was the caller.
Without hesitation, I answered. “Chief?”
“Levi, thank fuck,” he rumbled. “Dispatch got a call from Ivy Stone’s sister, all the way in LA, panic in her blood about someone breaking in to Ivy’s house. I’m on my way, but you’re closer. She’s at Grace’s place.”
Ah Christ.
My head dropped back, and my furious steps came to an abrupt stop. “I’m already here.” The admission felt painful. I didn’t have to elaborate for him to know why.
“Tell me you’re not the shit-stain that was breaking in.”
The bite of self-deprecation in my laugh tasted unpleasant. “That’d be me.”
“Well, fuck. I hope she at least put a bullet in your shoulder.”
Some days, I swore that’d make things easier. “No such luck, Red.”
“Have you lost your goddamn mind? I mean, truly?”
“I didn’t know she was staying here,” I protested. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I would have shown up here if I’d known.
No, the truth was far more pathetic.
When the memories were strong and the regret became too much, coming here, to Grace’s home, felt like the only way to get my head straight. Here, I could hear her telling me to stop being such a fuck-up. I could hear her telling me it was time to get over it. I could hear her telling me that a real man smiled when he wanted to yell.
Tonight, however, all I’d been able to hear was Ivy.
She had been screaming, though, so…
I took in a gulp of piercingly cold air and let it back out slowly. “In the future, that might be the kind of information I should have.”
“Yeah, sure, Levi. Next time, I’ll be sure to tell you in between you becoming blackout fucking drunk and getting in a fucking five-foot-three woman’s face, that that same woman is staying at your old—”
“I get it,” I interjected on a grouse.
“Do you really?” he asked. The disappointment of all my failures rang clearly in the words he didn’t say. “I sure as hell hope so. Tomorrow morning, I want the asshole Levi gone and my reliable officer back. You understand me, son?”
For the four millionth time in two days, I gritted the words I’d been saying with ease for the last decade of my life. “Yes, sir.” I wanted to make him proud, but feelings didn’t turn off with a switch. I couldn’t make myself be okay with all of this.
“Levi?” Ivy summoned from the porch. The sound of her calling my name ran through me like a current as the line went dead in my ear. My traitorous body went so far as to like it.
Immediately, every other fiber of me went on the defensive.
I swallowed hard around another knee-jerk reaction, one that would be hurtful and vile and all the things I’d just promised the chief I’d work on, and turned woodenly to face her.
“What, Ivy?” Her name was a snap, but all in all, I’d managed to prompt her for more information fairly normally.
“It’s just…” She looked at me hard, trying to see beneath the surface, but my skin was thicker than that. With the life I’d lived, it had to be. “Is everything all right?”
I forced myself to examine her with new eyes—ones untainted by misery and remorse. Her wild hair was even more untamed than the two times I’d seen her previously, and her face was makeup free. Still, even without the aid of all that armor, her lashes were long and her skin nearly luminescent. And her body, clad in next to nothing, was the kind that made grown men into hormone-ridden adolescents.
I could play the part as though I saw none of it, but internally, in the sincere, lie-incapable section of my mind, I knew she was the stuff of legend.
It was no surprise this woman was followed and mimicked by millions—she was that beautiful.
I had to try a couple of times, the first attempt coming out garbled by the knot in my throat, but eventually, I got an explanation out. “Your sister. Apparently, she called the police.” I pointed to myself with a hook of my thumb. “Police.”
“Oh my God, Camilla!” Back into the house, she took off at a run.
I chewed at the inside of my lip, one of my anxious habits, and weighed my options. I could finish walking to my truck, climb in, and drive away—off to somewhere with a bottle or, at the very least, a bed. Or, I could follow her back into the home of a ghost that haunted me, just to say goodbye.
The smart part of me decided to leave almost immediately.
But the dumb part of me was much more persuasive these days.
I moved quickly to avoid rethinking and headed back up the steps and into the house. But this time, when I pushed open the door, I knocked.
She was pacing the living room, her hair completely hiding her face, but it flipped up and over in an impressive show as she heard my knuckles meet wood.
As she waved at me to come in, she talked. “No, no. I’m fine. It’s fine. It was just a stupid mistake. I know him.”
Her eyes flicked to mine briefly, and a roil of discomfort ran through my chest. I didn’t like the idea of someone talking about me on the other end of that line, not being able to hear what they had to say.
“No, Jesus, would you stop? I told you it’s not like that. I know him from work. He’s one of the cops here.”
She rolled her eyes but looked right at me, clearly repeating her sister for my benefit. “Yeah, Cam. I’m completely aware how ironic it is that we called the cops on a cop.”
Caught off guard by the honest lilt of her self-effacement, I almost smiled.
Christ, I have to get out of here.
Ivy’s eyes widened expressively as I waved my goodbye, but I didn’t see them for long. I turned on my boot and went back out the door before I felt anything else. My manic moods had run the gamut today, and I was tired of living the extremes.
Besides, I’d be seeing her again soon—first thing tomorrow morning.