Fox (Stone Cold Fox Trilogy Book 3)
Page 3
Sam shook his head and smacked me on the hand like a nun scolding a student. I pulled my hand back and rubbed it with a laugh. “What the hell was that for?”
“For being an ass. You gotta take care of yourself to take good care of her. Number one goddamn rule. Don’t be a jackass and fuck it all up by going into a tailspin of your own.”
I smiled at his frank words and gave his shoulder a thankful squeeze. Sam had always been like a grandfather to me, and I didn’t know what I’d do when I didn’t have him to turn to one day.
“I hear you. I promise. But I’m okay, Sam. All the shit. Everything I saw, everything I’ve been through. She’s alive, and she’s mine. I’m not going to do any-fucking-thing to mess that up.”
My eyes followed my thoughts, straight across the room to the woman of my dreams. Ivy had finished the pasta on her plate and had found a comforting spot in the crook of her dad’s arm. She was a vision, even cuddled up and reflective. Her soft face, her active green eyes. All of it just pointed to the fierce spirit inside of her I really loved.
Of all the places I never thought I’d go, Hollywood was it.
But seeing her with her dad and knowing the horrific grief of her mom, I had a feeling I was going to have to get used to it.
For as long as Ivy needed her parents, and for as long as they needed her, we’d be here to stay.
Everything else could wait.
My job on the force.
My life in Cold.
Everything.
I felt like a bit of a bastard for even having the luxury of a hefty inheritance to fall back on, but I guessed, ironically, it was the one time I could actually feel grateful toward my late father.
But it was my reality, and for once, I really was thankful.
The day before we flew out of Montana, I’d let the chief know I’d be taking a leave of absence. I had no idea when or if I’d be back, and honestly, it was of zero importance to me.
Ivy was my focus.
I needed her, and she sure as fuck needed me.
April 11th, 2016
Choking fear clogged my airway and made it hard to breathe as Boyce wrapped his arm around my throat and put the blade of the knife against my skin.
A little droplet of blood trickled and tickled at my neck, and the first real visions of actual death washed over me.
There was a chance—a horrible, unfathomable chance—that I wouldn’t make it out of this alive.
The only thing grounding me to the moment was the thought of my sister, sleeping soundly in the back room.
She was an innocent bystander, a secondary character on the path of my life that had led us to here. All I needed—all I wanted—was to keep the focus on me and keep it off of her.
“Boyce,” I whispered, breathing shallowly. “Why are you doing this? I don’t…I don’t understand.”
His laugh was maniacal and otherworldly as he sliced the blade across my throat without an answer.
The bed rocked as I sat up abruptly, my breathing erratic and panicked, a silent scream disturbing the air as it tried to make it into my lungs.
My chest thudded wildly, and my eyes scoured the room for something, anything to make me feel better. Unfamiliar linens tickled at my fingertips as my eyes tried to adjust to the overwhelming darkness of the room and bring my heart back to a normal pace.
I wasn’t in the small house I’d rented while filming in Cold, Montana, and I certainly hadn’t been the one under the torturous strain of Boyce’s knife.
The soft sounds of a city teased outside and helped it all come rushing back to me.
Levi and I were at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, and we’d been here for the last week and change. Camilla’s burial had come and gone, and all that was left was me, Levi, a hotel room, and a bottomless well of unresolved questions.
All at once, the agony rushed back, crushing and debilitating to the point that it felt like the actual blade I’d dreamed of.
I could feel the metal at her throat and the fear in her chest, and I ached to make it go away.
I needed air.
I needed answers.
I needed Camilla.
Oh God.
Why? Why did this have to happen to her? My sister. My twin. My best fucking friend in the whole wide world.
My skin itched and my legs danced under the blanket as I tried to calm the race of my heart. I wanted to rewrite history, turn it on its head and relive the night just as I’d dreamed it.
I didn’t want to die, but I would have given anything to do it if it meant I could take my sister’s place.
Levi’s breathing elevated as I thrashed back and forth next to him, and when I looked at his handsome face, it all became too much.
The history. The horrible way I’d treated my sister because of emotional avoidance when it came to how I’d felt about him.
I wanted a do-over. For all of it.
Swiftly, I threw the covers off my legs and jumped from the bed. The room was dark and relatively quiet, and the blackout curtains were meant to keep it that way.
For now, I didn’t mind, eager to escape myself and the feelings crawling under my skin.
Uncertainty was a horrible mask for grief, but it was the only thing I had to work with to occupy the hours. The more questions I asked, the more work I had to do to search for answers, and the busier it would keep me while I waited for the knife of reality to stop twisting.
Our hotel room was a suite, something Levi had insisted on so that security could be with us at all times. There were two bedrooms on the other side of the common living room area where they were staying and a small kitchenette by the entrance. We hadn’t actually used the kitchen at all, but the space had been nice long term.
The irony of having a house here that I wasn’t using wasn’t lost on me, but I’d shared that home with Camilla. I couldn’t even think about going back.
Not wanting to wake anyone else, I left the door to our bedroom shut and moved to the walk-through closet that led to the bathroom. In there, I could turn on the lights, splash my face with water—try to breathe again.
I closed the door behind me with a quiet click before flicking on the light, and I rested my palms against the marble of the vanity top.
Each breath felt wracked and broken, and it took me a while to calm down enough to even turn on the water.
Focusing on the cold tap only, I turned the knob and pooled my hands under the stream to gather some water, and then bent to the sink and splashed the cool, wet relief across my eyes and cheeks.
It chilled my burning skin and soothed the raw ends of my nerves, so I soaked in it, keeping my eyes closed and letting the excess drip into the sink like a song.
Cam’s playful laugh flitted in my mind as she scrubbed off my facial mask, avocado smear on her own in the most comical of self-made skin remedies. I could see her so vividly, no matter that the memory had been formed two years ago, and my chest squeezed.
She was the best sister I could have ever asked for, even when I wasn’t the same to her. Most times, I was demanding and spoiled and, fuck, I’d spent a lot of time chasing success instead of memories. It had been two weeks since she’d passed, but so far, no amount of time was making it any easier.
My hair drifted forward and into the water, so I shoved it back behind my shoulders and stood up straight.
The fluorescent lights were harsh on the lines of my makeup-free, red-streaked face, and my wild hair stood out past my ears. But in the first moments of recognition, in the middle of a mass of red mane, all I could see was Camilla.
Staring at me. Begging me for help and wishing for absolution.
A sob clutched my throat and kept ahold of it as I struggled to get my anxiety under control.
“Your twin,” I heard in my head. “You look so much alike.”
Words from the funeral, words that’d been on repeat in my head, all of them swirled into an angry plague over my heart and threatened to stop its beating.
With her eyes staring back at me and the pain on her face, I lashed out at once, ramming my fist into the hard plane of the mirror and screaming.
For her. For me.
For Grace. For Levi.
For anyone who’d ever been through the torture I felt right then.
With a splintering web, the glass of the reflection shattered, and I cried out into the otherwise silent night as I fell to my knees.
My heart was battered and broken; I might as well have the hand to match.
The jagged, piercing sound of something breaking woke me from a dead sleep.
Startled, I reached out to feel for Ivy, to lay a hand on her to settle her nerves. I didn’t know what had made the noise, but it was the very reason I’d wanted to have security close by at all times.
The bed beside me was empty, and with a brief sweep of my hand, I found the sheets were cool to the touch.
Ivy had been missing for a while.
Panic oozed, suffusing the sinew of my muscles and putting them on alert immediately.
My back cracked as I jumped up from reclining to standing in one swift motion, but I ignored the twinge in my spine and set out searching.
I’d meant to sleep with an ear to Ivy, but the stretch of days, two weeks and counting at this point, of avid attention had apparently rendered night watch impossible.
“Ivy?” I called into the darkness.
She didn’t answer.
But a soft cry from the bathroom was all the indication I needed.
I moved expeditiously, rounding the bed in the nearly blacked-out room and pulling open the curtains at the foot of it. The light from the full moon poured in and eased my way through the giant walk-in dressing room and into the bathroom, allowing me to move faster.
The door was closed but unlocked and swung in easily as I turned the knob.
Perched on the edge of the tub, Ivy was cradling a bloody hand and crying quietly.
“Ivy,” I murmured, the whisper of my voice tortured with the knowledge of what had driven her to this point. Pain, acute and all-consuming, made you feel like anything would relieve the itch to crawl outside of your skin. Even physical harm.
“What happened?” I asked, glancing to the shattered mirror before rephrasing my question to the more important one. “Why did you do this?”
“I can’t stand it,” she declared in an aching whisper. Tears carved rivers down her cheeks, and the slice of her voice cut me up inside.
My chest tightened exponentially.
“Seeing her everywhere I look. Half the people at the funeral commented on how we were…how I’m…” A sob broke from her throat. “No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself from seeing her when I look in the mirror. I can’t stop myself from seeing myself in her place and wishing that’s the way it was.”
God.
Blood trickled down her bare leg and pooled on the floor as she squeezed at her injured hand with the other.
The physical pain was an escape—a shift of focus—but it certainly wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t sit aside and watch her torture herself just because she wanted to take Cam’s place. I understood her drive, but fuck, the mere thought of that reality felt like a cleaver to the heart. I didn’t know where I’d be if Ivy had been the one at the edge of Boyce’s blade.
“Baby, stop,” I ordered softly, forcing her hands to separate with a delicate tug of her wrist. “Let me look at this.”
“No!” she yelled, yanking the carnage back from me. “You have to do something. You have to make it so I don’t see her in the mirror anymore!”
“Ivy—”
“You have to!” she bellowed.
A knock on the door brought my head around as Baylor called through the door, “Everything all right?”
The screaming had apparently finally awoken the other people in the hotel suite.
“Yes,” I called back swiftly, knowing Ivy would want privacy. Baylor was a trusted employee, and I knew he wouldn’t spread any of what he saw behind closed doors around to the media. He’d done a great job of seeing to our privacy for the last two weeks, and for the time we’d been in LA, he’d even sent Hampton to run most of our errands.
Sure, being in the room all the time was a little bit stifling, but I knew Ivy wasn’t ready to have the eyes of the world upon her. Hell, six years after Grace’s death, I wasn’t ready for one set of fucking eyes. Even brilliant, loving green ones. I couldn’t even imagine millions of judgmental ones.
“No,” Ivy called suddenly, defying me. My eyebrows pulled together as I surveyed her face, but she was determined. “I need a box of hair dye,” she called through the door. “Blond.”
“Ivy,” I murmured, knowing the decision to home-dye her hair a completely different color wasn’t the kind of thing you did in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the kind of thing you didn’t carefully pick out yourself, and you didn’t do it in a hotel bathroom unless you were on the run from the police.
“Blond?” Baylor called to confirm.
“Ivy,” I said again, trying to intercede.
“No, Levi,” she protested, shoving me away and getting to her feet. “I’m doing this. With or without your help and I’m doing it now.”
“Let me look at your hand, Ivy,” I ordered, a gravelly need making my throat roll.
“If you dye my hair, I’ll let you look at my hand.” Her face was hard and determined, and I knew I didn’t have any wiggle room at all.
She’d said it herself; with or without me, she would be doing this, and she would be doing it now. But with me, I could look after her. I could do the work so that she could keep a bandage on her hand.
“Baylor,” I called, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath as I dropped my head forward. “Blond dye. Bandages. And a first aid kit. Please.”
His response was immediate, and so was my regret. “Yes, sir.”
Still, there was no turning back now.
I closed the door behind me, CVS bag in hand, and Ivy shifted from her perch on top of the toilet.
While we had waited for Baylor to get back, I’d convinced her to hang her hand over the edge of the sink and let me check it for pieces of glass.
Luckily, she’d listened to those instructions.
Everything else, though? Not so much.
She’d been a terrible patient, grouchy and uncooperative and completely resistant to everything I suggested. But she was talking to me, and after a battle, she eventually gave in.
For as difficult as I had been to manage for the last six years, I thought she was doing swimmingly.
“Hand first,” I decreed, capturing Ivy’s glare and absorbing it without resistance. I was all about making my woman happy, but I’d be damned if I was going to delay any longer in seeing to her well-being.
“Come on and stand up, baby,” I ordered gently. “I need to wash it out.”
She moved without much of a fuss and stood, facing the sink and standing in front of me. I reached around her body, enveloping her with my own and heating the surface of her back with the touch of my chest. She shivered at the contact.
We’d been together since Camilla’s passing, but it hadn’t been without its weirdness. She was either stiff or way too aggressive, and she had a really hard time closing her mind down enough to enjoy herself. I was more than willing to wait for her to get back to herself, but she’d been insistent each time we’d had sex. Still, I was always careful to let her lead, just to be certain she didn’t feel pressured.
Carefully, I pulled the skin of her hand this way and that, searching a final time for slivers and gently washing out the cuts. Her knuckles had suffered the worst of it, but overall, it seemed like she’d gotten pretty lucky.
“This doesn’t look too bad,” I told her, washing each finger free of the stains from dried blood. “I think it should heal without too much scarring.”
Deeply and affectionately, I sighed and shoved my lips into the hollow between her chin and collarbone. She smelled like the woman I knew, but the words said something else.
It’d be a long time before she healed completely.
Silent and thinking, we both went through the rest of the motions without comment. She was lost in her head, and I was trying to let her be. Feelings were meant to be felt, and it seemed wrong to deny her any outlet that didn’t end with her cutting up her hand.
The directions to the dye were fairly simple, so I set out on my task while she stared at the wall.
It wasn’t changing, and maybe that was its appeal.
But knowing something else wouldn’t change prompted me to remind her. To tell her so she knew and always would, that no matter the circumstances, she and I would be in this fight together.
“I love you, Ivy. Red hair, blond hair, no hair, I love you.”
Her eyes closed slowly, and her chin lifted to me. With her lips upturned and her face serene, I took the opportunity and robbed her of space.
Flesh to flesh, lips to lips, everything else melted away.
When I pulled back several moments later, she only had one thing to say.
“I love you too, Levi.”
The next day, Baylor and Hampton flanked my sides as we snuck into the hair salon through the alleyway door.
The front was busy, so no one other than those who knew we were coming noticed our arrival. The owner of Salon Vishon, a woman who’d identified herself as Holla on the phone when Levi had contacted her, ushered me down a short hallway quietly and with a large smile, and she ducked into the back office set up with a makeshift salon chair and wash sink.
“Okay,” she said. “I hope this is okay. Everything in the front is very open space—I was going for a modern feel—so I figured you’d be more comfortable back here.”
I nodded and scanned the small space. There weren’t any windows, and there was a stack of folded towels waiting to be put away in the corner, but overall, it was tidy and organized. It would be the perfect place to keep anyone on the outside from knowing I was in here.