Cold

by Max Monroe

  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.

  “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.

  Antsy and agitated, I bounced my weight from one foot to the other and chewed on the skin inside my bottom lip.

  It was a nervous habit I’d developed as a teenager, and by now I’d all but decimated the fragile skin. But it worked for me, giving me something to focus on internally without having to outwardly admit to any kind of anxiety.

  I’d been on set for an hour and a half, and Ivy and Camilla had yet to arrive. No one else seemed even the least bit concerned over their late arrival, but it gnawed at me like an ant with a left-behind French fry.

  The Lord’s Prayer preached forgiveness of those who trespassed against us, but I couldn’t exactly blame Ivy being slow to the godly order. I’d been trampling all over her feelings since the moment she’d come to town.

  Still, that had never stopped her from being on time for work.

  Normally, I wouldn’t fucking hesitate. I’d have had Boyce Williams up against a wall with a hand to his throat to give me answers. And if he didn’t know why she was late, to do something about finding out and quick.

  But I’d been trying to think first and act later, and something told me Ivy would not swoon over the sight of me holding her producer against the wall by force.

  This is insanity, Levi Fox. Congratulations, the voice inside my head taunted. You’ve earned it.

  I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my phone book to Dane Marx’s number. If nothing else, at this point, I needed to at least assure myself of her safety.

  My thumb hovered over the call button for a long second before pressing it. And then immediately moved over to hit end as a cold burst of wind and a streak of fresh sunlight drifted in from the street.

  The door swept open to reveal Camilla, followed by Ivy, entering the building with faces wreathed in smiles. Ivy looked tired but otherwise unharmed. All of my fear evaporated, replaced by relief.

  I shook my head, dismayed by my inability to think of anything but the worst. I’d been doing it since Grace died, a side effect of the situation, I supposed, but it needed to fucking end already.

  Cautious was one thing; paranoid was another.

  Ivy buzzed by quickly, Camilla chasing after her with important notes she’d somehow already managed to acquire from Boyce, so I faded into the background and watched.

  They appeared to be in rhythm in a way I hadn’t noticed before, finishing each other’s sentences and coming up with answers before the other even asked a question. I’d heard about twins having a kind of sixth sense for one another, but I’d never personally witnessed it. There’d never actually been a set of identical twins in Cold, Montana in the time I’d been alive, and Ivy and Camilla hadn’t really been in sync before today.

  Something that was no doubt my fault.

  Ivy moved to the makeup room, and Camilla ventured back to Ivy’s bag for something. She tossed it up and Ivy caught it without even looking back, and I became even more convinced than ever.

  A rift had been burning through the uncanny connection of the twins since I’d stuck myself in the middle. But today, they’d somehow found their way back.

  The door to the makeup room was still open, and I surreptitiously moved myself closer. I wanted to be a part of Ivy’s chaos, to get a look into everything that went into her day and went into making her who she was.

  That was how I’d spent a whole hell of a lot of the last fourteen days, honestly. She wasn’t big on letting me get close enough to apologize, or more likely, argue, and I was doing my best not to push it.

  After everything I’d put her through, the least she deserved was space to get her head together.

  “Excuse me,” Boyce mumbled as he shouldered past me on his way into the room, eyes set on Ivy.

  “Hugo has some notes for you,” he announced as soon as he cleared the threshold. Several heads swung over at the blaring sound of his voice, and Ivy’s jerked up from where she’d been studying the notes in her lap.

  Her brow furrowed as Camilla stepped forward to take them from Boyce’s hand. “Is he unhappy with something I’ve been—”

  “Read the notes,” Boyce interrupted to order. “Jesus. I can’t spoon-feed you everything.”

  I’d never considered something as innocuous as the absence of sound could occur violently until now, but silence burst through the room like an explosion.

  Ivy did her best to compose herself as the rest of the room pretended to ignore the tension while still keeping an ear to the action.

  I watched unabashedly, my jaw hard and ticking.

  At the undeniable disquiet he’d unintentionally created, Boyce stepped farther into the room and ran a thick hand down the bare skin of Ivy’s arm, leaning into her ear to whisper something none of us could hear.

  Her cheeks pinked slightly, and my spine shot straight.

  Goddamn, I didn’t like the sight of someone else’s hands on her.

  Strain tightening throughout my muscles, one foot moved in front of the other, poising to step inside the room, when a small hand landed roughly on my shoulde
r and a taunting voice played in my ear.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Camilla coached knowingly. I flinched, completely surprised to find her anywhere but inside the room where she’d been before.

  Obviously distracted by the interaction between Ivy and Boyce, I’d lost track of her.

  “Why not?”

  She jerked her head behind us and stepped away, heading across the room to the craft services table, so I followed.

  Camilla moved easily, preparing a cup of coffee in a way it was obvious she’d done millions of times.

  I looked on avidly for lack of anything better to do and tried to come up with the words to apologize. I was sure there were better times and ways to do it, but two weeks of time had passed and I’d yet to have the opportunity. Now had to be better than never.

  “Look, Camilla—”

  “Cam,” she corrected without looking up.

  I nodded and repeated the shortened version of her name diligently. “Cam.”

  She flitted from the coffee to the pastries, surveying the selection with rapt attention. I reached out and touched just her elbow. “Can you look at me?”

  She shook her head without looking up. “I can, but that’ll probably make my aim better when I try to stab you with this butter knife.” She held it up for me to see. “So you probably don’t want me to.”

  I chuckled despite myself. “All right. Maybe don’t look at me, then. I’ll settle for listening.”

  She snapped her fingers and grabbed a chocolate croissant from the back. “Good plan.”

  I rolled my eyes, but one corner of my mouth curled. “I’m trying to apologize, and you’re making it kind of hard,” I said frankly.

  With wild hair and burning forest eyes, she looked directly at me then. “It should be hard, jackhole. You fucked up big-time.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “If you really know, there probably should be more groveling.”

  I laughed and smiled before leaning in close and beckoning her to come closer with a curl of a finger. She did so tentatively, thrown off by my seemingly good mood. “I know I was an asshole. I was scared—”