by Lisa Levine
He leaned his face up to kiss me, and I kissed him back. All I ever wanted to do was keep our lips pressed together for an eternity as time melted around us.
“What are you going to do then?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going to lawyer up, for starters. I’ll take your advice about calling the bartender to testify; that’s a good idea. And I’m meeting with Layla tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“To see if I can offer her something other than myself in exchange for her calling off her brother. I just have to believe that she’s after something else. I know you don’t want to talk about her, but honestly, she and I were never close, not even a little bit. It was casual sex and a couple of lunch dates. There were no emotions involved at all. So I find it really hard to believe that there’s nothing else that she would consider in exchange. She’s coming to the office tomorrow at noon, and I’m going to see if there’s any last chance of getting out of this before all the legal proceedings begin.”
Easton reached up to hold my face as he looked in my eyes.
“You have nothing to worry about, Ivy. I just want you to know that. Not while I’m meeting with Layla, not about all this legal crap, not ever about anything. I’m yours, and I always intend to be.”
I smiled and kissed him again and ran my fingers through his hair. I loved that he said that to me, and I believe him wholeheartedly. But now it wasn’t him that I was worried about; it was everything else that kept trying to pull him from me. I just wished that there was something I could do to help.
“Will you call or text me after your meeting with her to let me know how it goes?” I asked.
“Of course. Now let’s get out of here for tonight.” He stood up and lifted me with him before setting my feet down onto the floor.
We walked back out into the main entryway, and since several of the people had already left for the day, things seemed a little calmer.
“Goodnight, Janet,” Easton called as we walked out the door.
“Goodnight, Mr. Wilder.”
The city air was cold and invigorating. Since he hadn’t ever made it to meet me at the bookstore, we decided to go for a walk in the city instead and stopped at a nearby coffee shop for a latte.
“Will you come home with me tonight?” he asked.
“I really want to,” I said as we sipped coffee outside and watched our words make little clouds in the cold air. “But it sounds like you have a pretty important day tomorrow. It might be better if I just went back to my apartment tonight.”
“No,” Easton said as he positioned his body in front of mine and took my free hand in his. “Ivy, it would be better if you stayed with me. I want you next to me.”
“Okay,” I said as I smiled. “Then I’ll come.”
I left my car parked at his office building, and he drove us home. Although technically, it was his home, not mine. We stood together and looked out the window and watched the gentle snow start to fall outside. No matter where we were or what we were doing, we couldn’t ever seem to go without having some part of our bodies touching each other. But tonight, instead of another passionate night of making love until the wee hours, we curled up together on the wide couch with blankets and fell asleep.
In the morning, aside from feeling a little stiff after sleeping on the couch all night, we were refreshed and rested. Easton let me wear one of his T-shirts since I hadn’t brought a change of clothes, which was a little too big on me and slouched in a comfy way against my waist. I tucked the front of it in and left the rest hanging out.
“Hey!” he said as he teased me and pulled at the corners of the shirt. “That’s not fair! You’re always making me tuck in my shirt.”
“I guess I figured that we’re breaking all the rules now anyway,” I said. “So, what’s one more?”
“Oh, are we?” He came closer to me and grabbed the belt loops in my jeans as he pulled me into him. “What rule are we breaking exactly?”
“The one about not getting involved with your friends.”
Easton threw his head back and laughed, and when he brought his face back down to me, he kissed me as he lifted me off the ground and spun me around in a circle. If my high school self could have seen this happening, she would have known that she had nothing to worry about.
When he set me back down, things got a little more serious, and we both finished getting ready for the day ahead. I poured us both coffees, and we took a moment to hold hands and take a deep breath before walking out the door.
“It’s going to be okay,” he reassured me. “I’ll call you as soon as my meeting with Layla is done to let you know what’s going on.”
“Okay,” I said.
He could tell that I was still worried. “Try not to think about it too much. Focus on the bookstore until you hear from me.”
After we had gotten to his office and shared one last kiss until we saw each other again at the end of the day, I got into my car and drove to work. Just as I pulled away, my phone buzzed, and I looked down to see a text from Easton.
“I love you.”
27
Chapter Eighteen (Easton)
The morning dragged by slowly as if time were purposefully trying to torture me.
I half-expected Layla not to show up, so I was surprised and glad when I saw her walking into my office behind Janet.
“Thank you, Janet,” I said as she closed the door behind Layla. “Layla, please come in and sit down. Thank you for coming back to meet with me.”
“I’m not sure why I did, to be honest. It’s not like there’s anything you can say to me that you didn’t already say to my brother.”
“Actually, I’m hoping that there is,” I said. “There must be some sort of deal that you’re willing to broker in exchange for calling off your brother.”
“There is,” she said. “And Roger already told it to you.”
“Besides that, I meant. You and I didn’t even really care about each other, so I don’t understand why you would be willing to exchange charges and company shares just in order for me to get back together with you. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Layla huffed. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that good in bed.”
Okay, ouch. “Then what does it have to do with?”
“Money.”
“I’m confused,” I said. “If Roger goes through with the legal proceedings, you’ll get money. So offering to drop that in exchange for a relationship with me defeats the entire point of that.”
“I don’t just want a relationship,” she said. “I want to get married.”
“Married? Hell no, that’s never going to happen, Layla. Come on; you can’t be serious.”
“I want enough money to comfortably live on without having to depend on anyone else, including my brother. Being married to you gets me that.”
Okay, so the main goal she had was money and lots of it. I needed to stop and think for a second. There had to be a better way out of this, a way that would keep me away from Layla and her brother, keep my company afloat so that no one lost their job, and keep me out of jail.
“What if I offered you enough money that you could do exactly what you want. Think about it; if you get married to me, then you may not have to depend on your brother anymore, but you won’t really be free, either. You’d be attached to me. Wouldn’t you rather be completely independent and financially stable all on your own with no need to worry about money ever again and no need to rely on anyone else?”
I could see the gears turning in her head as she was thinking it over. Loose and rusty gears, but still gears all the same.
“How could I do that?” she asked. “What are you offering me?”
“I’ll give you everything I have,” I said, eager just to make this whole thing disappear so that I could get on with my life with Ivy. “I’m a billionaire, the richest man in Chicago. I’ll drain my accounts and give you every last penny that I have. But in exchange, you and R
oger sign a legal document releasing me of all charges. You release all claim to my company and agree that my company and my employees are off-limits. And the both of you stay the hell away from Ivy and me.”
“Ugh,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “That stupid girl. Honestly, what has gotten into you? You used to be a powerful, billionaire playboy, and now you’re just like a puppy on a leash. You were such a bad boy, and now you’re so domesticated by some silly bookstore girl. How will you even survive if you give me all of your money?”
“I still own my company,” I reminded her. “And it’s extremely successful. I’ll put myself back on my company payroll, and I’ll get by like most people get by, by earning a paycheck. Eventually, I’ll amass my wealth again. But in the meantime, you’ll be richer than you’d ever be even if you married me because the money would be a hundred percent yours. And I’ll be rid of you both, no offense.”
Layla laughed. “I don’t care how offensive you are; I only care about the cash.” She stuck her hand out across the desk. “Deal.”
I reached out and shook her hand and told her that I would have my attorneys draft up the paperwork today. She agreed to sign everything and have Roger sign everything as well. She also called him from my office to let him know that we had reached an agreement and that he should call off his legal hounds. By the time she left the office, everything was being handled and the situation was resolved.
I let Janet know, and she let all of the employees know that they could rest easy. Then I went back into my office to text Ivy.
“Everything went well,” I typed out. “The situation has been settled, and there’s nothing to worry about anymore.”
She immediately messaged me back. “Are you now engaged to Layla?”
I thought she was probably joking, but it was too difficult to interpret humor through text, so I answered her as if the question were a serious one just in case. “No, I have my eye on someone else.”
I watched to see if she started typing, but there was no response. I smiled to myself as I thought about how my comment might have thrown her for a bit of a loop.
“So everything is for sure, okay then? And Layla and Roger are out of the picture?” she texted after a minute or so had passed by.
“Yes. Oh, and I’m coming to the bookstore early today.”
“Okay, any particular reason why?” she asked.
“Because I can’t seem to stop wanting to see you.”
Ivy sent a smile emoji, and then I put my phone back into my pocket to wrap up a few things before I left the office.
“These just came through the fax for you,” Janet said as she walked in with a handful of papers.
It was the legal documents I had asked for. It was amazing how fast the attorneys could be when they wanted to and when they knew they would be getting paid well.
“My apologies, Mr. Wilder, but I couldn’t help but see some of what the papers said as I was watching the fax come through. Are you sure that you want to go through with this? I mean, it’s none of my business at all, but it sure does seem like you’re giving up a lot, everything that you’ve ever worked for.”
I really admired Janet; she had a lot more to bring to the table then I had initially given her credit for. “I’m really glad that I hired you,” I said. “You have proven to be such a responsible, intelligent, and compassionate employee. You have a good heart and a good head on your shoulders. And you seem to have a knack for looking out for your boss,” I grinned.
“Thank you,” she smiled.
“Yes, I’m sure that I want to go through with this. The amount of money that I’ve made is not everything that I’ve worked for, and I’ve made some great investments. Everything that I’ve worked for and wanted is waiting in the bookstore for me right now, and Ivy’s more important to me than any amount of money.”
“I really admire you, Mr. Wilder,” Janet said. “And Ivy is one lucky girl.”
I signed all of the papers and then handed them back to her.
“I’ll fax them out right away,” she said.
“Thanks, Janet. I’m leaving for the day now. Pretty soon, I’ll be on the company payroll, and I’ll actually have to show up and work full days,” I said as I rolled my eyes dramatically.
She laughed and then went to send the fax.
28
***
When I got to the bookstore, I saw Ivy arranging little stuffed llamas on a shelf in the kids’ section. I ran up to her and hugged her from behind, and she tried to hold in her yelp of surprise.
“So what happened?” she said as she sat down on the floor near the llama display to hear about how my meeting with Layla went.
“Well, to wrap it all up in short form, I agreed to give Layla all of my money, and she agreed to leave me, you, and my company alone.”
“Wait; what? What do you mean by all of your money? How much of it did you agree to give her?”
“All of it.”
“Easton,” she said with a look of grave concern on her face. “Don’t you need it? What will you do without all the money that you’ve earned?”
“The only thing I need is you. Everything else can be earned back.” I smiled so widely that my mouth hurt, and Ivy could see that I was happy. Broke, but happy.
“Hey, do you keep any of your poetry books here?” I asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“I want to read them.”
“Now?” she asked.
“Yeah. You still have a couple of hours left on your shift, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, can you get them for me? I want to sit and read them while you’re working.”
“You mean you’re not going to follow me around to tell me tales of all your personal conquests?” she teased. “I’m going to kind of miss that.”
“You are my only conquest now, so you already know all the juicy details,” I said as I grinned at her. “Besides, you’re not going to miss that. You hated hearing about all the girls I hooked-up with.”
She laughed. “That is very, very true. I did hate it because I always wanted to be one of those girls.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said as we stood up and I pulled her in close to me. “None of those girls could compare to you, and none of those girls ended up stealing my heart.”
Our lips locked together as if our bodies were magnetized. It wasn’t until we heard a child make a small “eww” sound and heard a parent huff that we realized we were still standing in the children’s section while we were making out. Apparently, the huffing parent went and got a manager because Ben showed up a few seconds later.
“Uh, guys,” he said, “you know that I’m super happy that you’re in love and all now, but if you could try to keep things G-rated in the kids’ section, that would be very much appreciated.
“You know, Ben,” I said, “I think you’re the coolest manager I’ve ever met.”
Ivy laughed as she tucked that last stuffed llama back into place on the shelf, and then we left the kids’ section so that she could grab her poetry books for me to read.
I flopped down into one of the big, overstuffed armchairs and looked at the three books in my hands. I knew that Ivy had written poetry, but I always thought that she meant she had scribbled down poems on notebook paper or something. I had no idea she actually had books. I remembered that in college, Ivy majored in journalism studies, and I thought her minor was in creative writing or something literary. She had gotten her degree in journalism but then somehow ended up here instead. She used to tell me about the poetry that she would write, and I would listen, but I never really listened as closely as I should have.
I cracked open one of the books and looked at the dedication page. I felt my heartbeat against the wall of my chest when I read what it said.
-For E. You never really knew how I felt about you, so I just put it all inside these pages.
Before I read any of the poems, I opened the second and third books to their dedication p
ages as well.
-For E. Again. Yeah, I know, I just can’t seem to shake him.
-For E. Just because it will always be you.
It couldn’t possibly have been me. I flipped to the publication page to find the dates that the books were written. She made them during our last three years of college together. What an idiot I was. I remembered those college years, sort of. I was pretty drunk and rowdy through a lot of it. I had a different girlfriend—if you could call them that—just about every week. I remember that Ivy and I would sit in the common area of our co-ed dorm together and drink hot tea in the middle of the night. Sometimes I would fall asleep talking to her because, despite her efforts to sober me up, I was usually wasted and would pass out in her lap. Sometimes I thought I felt her stroking my head while I slept. I definitely remembered waking up and seeing her writing poetry in her notebooks and journals. All that time that I was being an idiot and running around utterly blind to what was right in front of me; she had been writing poems devoted to me.
I opened the first book back up again and started to read. I wasn’t prepared for what was inside.
Ivy’s writing was amazing. Her carefully chosen words poignantly pulled at my heartstrings while I read her poetry about everything from love to pain to sleepless nights and wondering about the universe. I tore through all three books and was just about finished with the last one when Ivy came and squeezed herself into the chair next to me.
“Do you like them?” she asked.
I looked up from having just finished the very last poem. “They’re amazing,” I said to her in awe. “Truly amazing. I’m so sorry that I didn’t pay more attention to you when you told me about your writing. You’re absolutely brilliant at it.”
She smiled. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said.
“I do,” I said before she could continue. “Ivy, they are so good. Do you have any more?”
“Yeah, there are two more. I have them back at my apartment.”
“I want to read them,” I said. “Are they all dedicated to me?”