Chasing Ivy (Oak Hill, #1)

by S. J. Sylvis

  If I died right now, I think I’d be okay with it. Wet house and all.

  “What the hell happened?” Dawson asked, walking up to my porch and heading back into my house.

  I followed after him, my wet feet slapping on the slippery floor.

  Before I even made it into the living room, I’d slipped and fallen. I almost wanted to say “Ta-da!” after I fell because that’s how graceful the fall was, but the sudden tear of my groin muscle had me spewing a line of curse words instead.

  Dawson flipped around quickly, his eyes wide. I fell onto my back, stunned because I was pretty sure I heard the ripping of my muscle.

  Loud laughter came from behind me and I tilted my head back, my hair sliding on the floor. I stared up at my sister, who was laughing so hard her face looked like a freaking tomato.

  “Shut up,” I grumbled, trying to sit up. A small grin formed on my face and before I knew it, I was laughing too.

  Mia had one of those laughs that resembled a hyena (that was, when she truly thought something was funny. I’d heard her laugh in front of a cute boy before and it did not sound anything like it did right now). I reached my hand up, still laughing, and let Mia pull me to my feet.

  “Seriously, that actually hurt. I think I ripped my vagina muscle.” My eyes grew large because with my back turned, I’d forgotten that Dawson was only a few feet behind me.

  Mia’s mouth gaped and then she laughed even harder, her entire body shaking in front of me.

  “How is it possible that you’ve become even more clumsy over the years, Ivy?”

  I slowly turned around, still embarrassed, and smiled innocently up at Dawson.

  “It’s a gift.”

  The apples of his cheeks lifted as he threw his head back to laugh. I stared at him, basking in how my heart lifted at the sound of it. He had a nice laugh. Like you didn’t even have to know what he was laughing at to join in.

  “Okay, before I ask what the hell happened to your house, are you okay? I wouldn’t want to overlook the fact that your vagina muscle may be injured.”

  My face flamed.

  Was he flirting?! God, this is taking me back to high school when I couldn’t decipher between him flirting with me and him just being… Dawson.

  I coughed, clearing my throat. I nudged Mia with my elbow when she snickered. “I’m fine, and I don’t know what happened to the house. I came home and water was everywhere.”

  Dawson rolled his eyes and then mumbled, “Fucking idiots.”

  “Who?” I asked, following him back to the bathroom.

  The floor was the worst in there. Soaked wasn’t even an adjective I could use to describe it. The entire thing was up in shambles before, and now… it looked unsalvageable.

  “I had the guys come over here to get some measurements for the pipe… this one right here.” Dawson’s bare foot stepped into the no-longer-there shower and then he pointed to the pipe that had water droplets slowly dripping off it. “They must have hit it or something on accident and it burst, causing your house to look like a fucking lake.”

  I pursed my lips as I looked around my destroyed bathroom.

  “It’s fine. I’ll just use the other bathroom until we can fix it. How much will it cost? Do you have a ballpark figure?”

  Dawson’s head snapped over to mine, his eyes blazing right into me. “What? You’re not paying for this! Are you crazy?”

  I shot back a little. “Huh?”

  His eyes crinkled. “Ivy, you’re not paying for this. I wouldn’t let you pay for this even if I didn’t own the company. But standard protocol calls for us to pay for the damages and repairs since it was something we did.”

  That was a sudden relief. The only thing I could think when I had first seen the water gushing through my house was how I would have to do some serious skimping to afford it and Mia’s next tuition bill.

  “Oh.”

  I glanced over to the right when I saw Mia walking down the hallway. “I managed to save these, where do you want them?”

  Ugh. The stupid flowers with the stupid note tucked inside (that I still hadn’t opened). “I don’t care,” I answered, backing out of the bathroom and toward her. I needed to be worrying about how the hell I was going to get my house dry so I could walk around it without my toes shriveling up like raisins, not about flowers. “Give them to the bees if you want.”

  “Who are those from?” Dawson asked from behind me.

  I knew who they were from, Eric, duh, but I suddenly felt awkward telling him and with my sister’s cocked eyebrow, I really didn’t want to answer.

  I lied. “I don’t know.”

  “Well then let’s just open up the note. Oh, and hi, Dawson. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” Mia called back as she walked to my somewhat dry kitchen.

  “I know, kiddo. How ya been? You’re going to St. Joseph’s, right?”

  She smiled when she turned around. “Yeah, I love it. I just came from there… I was gonna stay with my sister tonight, but…” she gestured toward the living room, “I think I’ll head back and let you two deal with this…” Then she laughed.

  Before I could say anything, she started to rip open the small card that was tucked into the flowers, which were lying on the counter looking much more wilted than earlier. I hurriedly walked over to her to snatch the card out of her hand, but she lifted it high above her head, out of my reach.

  Mia got my father’s tall genes, whereas I got my mother’s short ones. She was much taller than me and she was totally using that against me right now.

  “Stop, just throw it out.”

  She squinted her eyes. “Why don’t you read it? We both know who it’s from.”

  Because suddenly, since moving back, I couldn’t care less about Eric.

  “Who is it from?” Dawson asked, leaning his still-naked torso against the wall. His arms were crossed over his chest, making his pectorals look that much more delicious.

  “Give it to me!” I shouted, jumping up on the balls of my feet and reaching my hand to snatch the card out of her hand. My sore groin muscle protested, but I kept at it.

  Mia formed her I-can-get-anything-I-want smile and then jolted around me, past Dawson and out to the front porch. While running, even on the slippery floor, she pulled open the card and started to read it.

  I was only a few steps behind her, and I noticed that Dawson had also followed us, as if he really cared what the stupid note said.

  “Ivy-cakes,” Mia had started. There goes my face, fifty shades of freaking red. “Please forgive me and call me back. I want to talk to you and I’m sorry for my hasty reaction to you moving away. I love you.”

  Ugh! I ripped the card out of her hand, fuming not only from her reading it aloud in front of Dawson (why do I even care? I don’t know), but also pissy because Eric was becoming more annoying with each passing day.

  Did I miss him? A little, but only after Dawson had told me we couldn’t be friends.

  Was I still hurt by Eric’s rapid decision to break up because I was moving to Oak Hill? Kind of.

  But I definitely didn’t need anyone knowing that, and I definitely didn’t need to call him back so I could hear him ask me to move back in with him again. He wanted me to cave in to his sweet calls and notes, and I wasn’t going to.

  I had too much going on to deal with that.

  “He’s not going to give up. You know that, right?” Mia said, raising her eyebrows at me.

  “Don’t you have, like, a paper to write or something?” I asked, crossing my arms over my damp shirt.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Yes, and I was going to bum off your Wi-Fi while you made me that ‘hearty’ meal, but I didn’t bring my bathing suit.”

  I laughed out loud. “Well, just go back to campus and come stay next weekend. Hopefully it’ll be dry by then?” I turned and looked to Dawson at that last sentence. He was grimacing, looking from me and then to Mia’s hand (still clutching the stupid note) and then back to me.


  “It’ll take at least the weekend, if not longer, for us to clean this mess up. It’s best if you go stay at campus, and then…” His eyes pierced right through me. “You can just stay with me.”

  I wanted to throw my hands up in protest. Stay with him! What!?

  “What! No! I’ll stay with Becca.”

  Dawson’s eyes narrowed. “And you’ll spend, like, an hour driving to work on Monday. That’s stupid. Just stay at my house. I don’t bite, Ivy.”

  This is what I pictured about staying at Dawson’s (aka replica of my old house…a little issue upon which I would most definitely have to touch base if I stayed there): Breanna coming at me with some type of weapon (in my head it was a very, very sharp pair of tweezers that she had previously used on her stupid, skinny eyebrows) and plunging them into my eyeballs, trying to scratch them out. No, thank you.

  “No. I really don’t want to be roomies with you and your girlfriend, Banana...” I cleared my throat. “I mean Breanna.”

  Mia laughed from behind me and it caused me to grin.

  Dawson didn’t laugh. Instead, he wore an expression one might if they’d seen a monkey talking. "What? Breanna doesn’t live with me.”

  Oh, thank the freaking Lord. I almost couldn’t handle the thought.

  “Oh, well, still. I don’t think she’ll like it if I’m there, Dawson. I’ll stay with Becca or at the motel down on Curtis Ave.”

  “EW! No,” Mia shrieked. “I can hear the cockroaches crawling from here!”

  I ignored her and looked back up at Dawson.

  “You’re staying with me, and that’s final. It’s the least I can do since my guys were the ones who destroyed your house.”

  “Dawson, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Seriously, Breanna hates me.”

  His cheek lifted up on one side as he pulled out his phone. “You leave Banana up to me, Ivy. You’re staying and that’s final… Come on, it’ll be like old times.”

  I bit my tongue so incredibly hard that it could have fallen off.

  Dawson didn’t take his eyes off his phone. “Now, I’m going to go make some calls about this. Pack some stuff.”

  Then he turned around, naked torso and all, and stormed back into my house.

  I looked back at my sister, who was grinning like a Cheshire cat while holding up Eric’s note. She took her fingers and ripped it in half, allowing the paper to fall onto the floor. “Bye-bye, Eric.”

  I gave her a knowing look, but the truth was…I didn’t know anything.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dawson

  What in the ever loving fuck was I doing?

  I just told – no, I demanded – that Ivy stay with me, at my house, for the entire weekend until we could get her house fixed. If I thought that Breanna was pissed at me before, now she was likely to actually grow horns and kill me. She’d probably send me straight to hell, but my heart had spoken before the rational part of my brain could catch up, and now I was stuck.

  Not that I was really complaining.

  Ivy and me, at my house, like old times…yeah, I was more than eager.

  When I opened my door earlier and saw her standing on my front porch with wet hair and clothes clinging to every curve of her body, I almost passed out. My dick all but jumped to action and my mouth was as dry as the Sahara Desert.

  She was beautiful, but also looked so sexy that she could have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Her brown locks were darkened and framed her heart-shaped face; her emerald eyes were wide and pulled me in so fast that I couldn’t have held onto anything to keep me from being swept up in their twinkle. My eyes traveled down her frame and I could see every single round curve of her body. I could see the color of her bra through her soaked, sheer blouse, and the skirt she wore…it was hugging her hips like a boa constrictor cutting off someone’s circulation. Gorgeous tan legs led down to her cute bare feet with toenails painted purple…she was adorable.

  She was this perfect, beautiful, sexy woman who was standing on my front porch, soaked from head to toe.

  I wanted to wrap her in my arms and drag her back into my house and never leave again.

  Once I’d snapped out of my daydream, I managed to climb back into rational Dawson’s body and figure out what the hell was going on.

  Which is what I was still doing.

  Sure, I had a moment of relapse when I’d asked her to stay at my house, but I sent her on her merry way so I could get some of my employees over here to set up fans and start cleaning up their mess.

  If I was jerk, I’d fire the men I’d sent to take measurements earlier, since they were the ones who’d made this mess, but I wasn’t an asshole.

  They’d have to work after hours to fix the problem, but I realized that everyone made mistakes and that everyone deserved a second chance, so their jobs were safe – for now.

  “Okay, I’m going to head back home,” I yelled back to the guys wringing out sopping wet rugs and angling fans towards Ivy’s soaked floor.

  I was still only wearing jeans and although I was a hot-natured guy, I was beginning to feel cold. Oak Hill’s fall was always crisp and chilly, just the way I liked it, but standing here almost naked, my nipples could cut through glass.

  On the walk back over to my house, I tried to come up with a rational explanation to give Breanna regarding the fact that Ivy – the person who drove Breanna into acting like a possessive psycho – would be sleeping in the same house as me.

  Our last conversation was me basically informing her that we needed some time apart to think, and here I was, doing the complete opposite of thinking. I was doing.

  I brought my gaze to my porch before even crossing to the right side of the street.

  Ivy was sitting on the front stoop of my house, still wearing the same clothes as earlier, and although they weren’t hugging her body any longer, she was still just as compelling.

  My brows crinkled the closer I got to her. Her head popped up when she heard my scuffle on the sidewalk, and her eyes grew wide.

  “Why aren’t you inside?” I questioned, closing the distance between us.

  She said nothing. She only drove those forest-green eyes into me.

  “When did you do it?” Her voice was as soft as a whisper but still demanding.

  “Do what?” I asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  Ivy stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. She walked over and leaned against the porch pillar and then jutted her head at the front of the house.

  “Did you do this? Did you build this house? Did Lanning Construction build it?”

  So, my suspicions were correct. She really hadn’t seen it yet. I figured she hadn’t, or she would have said something, and I honestly could not believe that Becca had never told her. But, then again, Becca lived on the complete other side of town. She might not know, either.

  I climbed the steps and leaned against the rail on the other side of the porch, crossing my arms over my bare chest, still feeling the cool evening air brush along my exposed skin.

  I narrowed my eyes. “How have you avoided this street for so long? Have you been taking the long way into work since moving back?”

  She swallowed and averted her eyes down. My heart ached a little in my chest but I pushed it away.

  “Yeah…” she whispered, then looked back up at me. Her eyes burned with such heavy truth that it rocked me to the core. The hurt was still there. It’d been six years since her parents passed but it still hurt her just as deeply. Which hurt me. “I know it’s been awhile, but the pain is just as bad. Just because I’d grieved and moved on, that kind of pain doesn’t leave you, ya know? I just didn’t know if I could handle seeing some different house in the spot that my house used to be. I didn’t want to put myself through that.”

  I looked away because I honestly couldn’t stand seeing that much pain in her eyes.

  “When did you do it?” she asked, voice low.

  I swallowed down my need to look away and glanced back at her fac
e. She was staring at me intently, eyes full of need.

  “The summer after my senior year.”

  I paused, thinking back to when I’d begged my father to buy the lot and build her house again. He’d surprised me when he agreed. He said it was a nice house, and that the neighborhood just didn’t seem right without it.

  Thinking back, he must have known that I needed some type of closure for that part of my life. As if somehow, building her house would help me heal.

  It didn’t necessarily help me heal, but it did bring new clarity to the situation. I was hurt when she left, and so confused. The little boy inside of me wanted to rebuild that house so that maybe… things would go back to normal. But after we finished, a man emerged, and I realized that she was gone.

  I also realized that nothing would ever be the same.

  Her house had been rebuilt, but she never came back, and her parents…they would forever be gone. The family that once lived there was no longer.

  It had been a turning point for me – and it was about that time I started to climb out of my cave, and I started to be the Dawson that everyone knew again.

  Not fully, because I’d never truly felt like the Dawson I was when I’d had Ivy by my side, but I was better. Semi-healed.

  I thought I’d closed all the gaps in my heart through Breanna but the truth was, I hadn’t. They were sealed, barely, but now that I was standing here looking at Ivy, the girl I’d been chasing for most of my life, those gaps were laid wide open.

  And I knew, deep down, the only person to close them all the way, as in pour-cement-over-them closed, was the girl standing only a few feet away from me with tears glistening in her eyes.

  Her bottom lip trembled. “But why?”

  My heart pounded in my chest because I’d never admitted the truth aloud. Never.

  My voice was hoarse and strained. “Because I thought it would bring you back to me.”

  Ivy’s mouth parted, just barely, but it did. I swore I heard her take a sharp inhale of breath, too.