Ivy’s fists clenched at her side. “That’s not fair, Alex.”
“It’s not fair for me to call you on keeping something from me? Brent is my coworker. And you didn’t think I needed to know that? Is it as serious for you as it is for him?”
Brent closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hear her response. He wanted to be gone, because this wasn’t going to go his way. Not at all. Ivy had talked to him about how much Alex meant to her. This was her time to be there for her sister. And Brent was going to get left behind. He knew that with every beat of his broken heart.
“Alex,” Ivy whispered.
“What?”
“Don’t do this. I know you’re angry and you’re scared, but don’t make me answer that. And don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
Brent opened his eyes.
Ivy was walking closer to her sister. “Leave.” Her voice was quieter. “He won’t get us here.”
Alex’s lower lip wobbled. “But I said I’d take care of us, that I’d never let that happen again. I don’t know how to do that, Ivy. I don’t know how to do that unless we leave. Put more miles between us and him.”
“There has to be another way,” Ivy cried.
“You and Violet are everything to me,” Alex said softly. “I’m doing this for us.”
Brent had always been a fighter for what he wanted, which was why he opened his mouth. “Alex, if it’s about your ex-boyfriend, we can help you.”
And he knew in an instant that that was exactly the wrong fucking thing to say.
Alex whipped her head toward him, dark hair flying around her shoulders. “What did you just say?”
Ivy made a choked sound in her throat, and Alex turned back to her sister. “Ivy, please tell me he didn’t just say that.” Her voice was a harsh whisper, full of pain and daggers that Brent felt all over his body. He couldn’t imagine what Ivy felt.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“I didn’t mean to tell him,” Ivy protested as Alex turned around, ripping open a cabinet door and grabbing her favorite mug off the bottom shelf. She stalked past Ivy, who followed her. “Alex, please listen, I can explain—”
Alex turned around so abruptly that Ivy plowed into her. “You can explain that you told Brent something I hadn’t planned to tell anyone? Ever? Something that I’m ashamed and embarrassed about?”
“But Alex, that wasn’t your fault—” Brent started.
As both the sisters turned to him with fury in their eyes, he realized he needed to seriously learn to keep his fucking mouth shut.
“You decide, Ivy,” Alex said. “You can come with me or stay. But either way, I’m leaving.”
Alex turned and walked out. It was a dramatic exit, and she took all the oxygen out with her, if the sounds of heavy breathing coming from his own mouth, Cal’s, and Ivy’s were any indication.
Ivy turned to Brent, a riot of emotions on her face. And with a sinking feeling, he recognized regret. Loud and clear in the lines around her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said, the tears flowing again, her voice choked, “but she’s my sister.”
And then she followed Alex out the door.
Brent didn’t know what to do. He wanted to yell and punch something, and then maybe cry, and then take a baseball bat to Robby’s face.
Instead, he stood there, frozen, unable to comprehend how he went from one of the best weekends of his life to this.
He looked to Cal, pleading for something, anything. He was nine again, and the only thing that could make everything better was his big brother.
Cal’s lips were parted, his expression full of sympathy as he tugged Brent to him, wrapped his arms around his back, and hugged him.
Brent didn’t care that they were grown men and Paytons and all of that macho bullshit. He wanted to be fucking comforted, dammit. The love of his life was leaving on a jet plane and didn’t know when she’d be back again.
He wanted to cry.
WHEN IVY GOT home, loud thumps and muttered curses were coming from Alex’s room.
Ivy had only gone over to the garage to drop off lunch for Alex, thinking she’d forgotten it when she left that morning. She hadn’t expected to walk into what she had. So she’d called Delilah on the way home and told her that she couldn’t come in today.
She hadn’t explained why, because she still wasn’t quite sure what had happened.
All she knew was that her life—the one she was just starting to fall in love with—was crumbling all around her. Again.
It was a couple of hours yet until Violet would get home from school, so Ivy took a deep breath and walked down the hallway to Alex’s room, feeling like she was heading to her death.
Alex was digging her suitcases out of her closet.
“Alex, wha—”
“I’m just getting them ready,” Alex said shortly.
“So you’re really serious about this? Leaving? And why the hell didn’t you talk to me about this last night?” Alex whirled around, and Ivy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her sister this distressed. It wasn’t . . . normal. Despite knowing what Robby was capable of, this didn’t seem entirely that rational either. “Can you please slow down and talk to me?”
“So you lied to me, right?” Alex’s nostrils were flaring.
Ivy pursed her lips because she knew they had to have this out, right here. She nodded.
“You were seeing Brent, and it wasn’t casual.”
“Yes, I was seeing him. No. No, it wasn’t casual.” Admitting it out loud made her heart swell and ache all at the same time.
Alex’s face was pinched. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie?”
“At first it wasn’t anything serious. I didn’t have any intention of falling for Brent, but then . . . I did. I fell, Alex. And I’d planned to tell you when I came home the other morning, but that’s when you got the call about Robby. And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t look you in the face when you had tears in your eyes and tell you that I’d found love again.” Ivy stepped forward, her hand out, which Alex eyed warily. “And that’s on me. I’m sorry for that. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for sure. And then I knew, and then . . . it wasn’t the right time.”
Alex’s lips trembled and damn, but Ivy had never seen her sister cry this much. “You told him about Robby?” Her voice was higher-pitched and laced with hurt and pain. Ivy felt it echo in her own body.
“I didn’t know I had told him. Remember that night he drove me home from the bar?”
Alex nodded.
“I was drunk, and I guess I told him then. I didn’t remember, but he told me the other day that I’d mentioned Robby. I hadn’t told him before because I didn’t feel it was my story to tell. But you know how I get when I drink and . . . ” She shook her head. “I’m sorry for that too. You have to believe I’m so, so sorry.”
Alex picked a jacket off a hanger and held it in a white-knuckled grip. “Do you want to stay?”
That was a loaded question. Sure, she wanted to stay, but . . . “I want you to stay.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know, but—”
“Is Brent worth staying?”
Ivy thought about his laugh and how he made her happy. About the feel of his hands holding hers, his mouth on her mouth. She thought about losing that, missing it. And she wasn’t sure she could bear it. She thought about having to tell Violet that they had to leave again. She took a deep breath. “He’s worth staying. But you’re also worth leaving for.”
Alex didn’t speak.
“But you have to understand that my leaving with you isn’t because I think you need to take care of me. It’s because I want to be there for you. When I had no one, absolutely no one, you took me on, along with my huge belly and my pregnancy mood swings. And I want to do that for you.” Her voice shook; her palms were sweating. Why did she have to choose between Brent and her sister? How did it come to this?
Alex stared at the jacket in her
hands. “I-I was thinking we could go someplace warm, like South Carolina. He’d never find us there. We could start over.”
For the third time! Ivy wanted to cry. “Please be honest with me. When it comes to Robby, are you scared that he’ll hurt you physically? Or that he’ll embarrass you in front of your friends, or . . . ”
Alex didn’t answer for a long moment. Ivy waited while her sister’s face alternated between anger and sadness and hate. Finally, she spoke up. “I’m afraid he’ll make people see me differently. Because they’ll think I’m weak. And I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid that then I’ll go back to him.”
Ivy stepped forward and crushed her sister into a hug. “No, no, Alex. I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t go back to him.”
Alex was crying now, real tears soaking the shirt at Ivy’s shoulder. “I wish I believed that too. He’s so good at isolating my friends, and . . . I want to leave here while people still remember me as their strong, bad-ass female mechanic.”
Ivy rubbed Alex’s back. “You are a strong, bad-ass female mechanic.”
Alex sniffed. Ivy held her for a while until Alex pulled away and began to systematically pull herself together emotionally in a way that Ivy had seen before.
She hated that Alex had to do it. She wanted to yell and rage and tell Alex that Ivy wouldn’t let Robby get to her again, and neither would their friends here in Tory. But she didn’t know if Alex wanted to hear it or would believe it.
So instead, she said, “I’ll talk to Violet when she gets home.”
And that was all the energy she had left. She walked out of her sister’s room and into hers. She shut the door behind her, curled up under the covers, and wept.
WHEN VIOLET GOT home, she grabbed her snack—Teddy Grahams—and then hopped onto the couch to watch TV, while Ivy was trying valiantly to disappear into her romance novel about the rogue.
Ivy had tried to figure out how the hell she was going to talk to her daughter. She’d spent most of her afternoon in bed, thinking of a solution—some gray area in a situation that Alex was only viewing as black-and-white.
Violet’s face was flushed, her tiara slightly askew. Ivy put down her book. “Hey, baby. How was school?”
“Mom,” her daughter said, eyes wide, “you wouldn’t believe where we are going for a field trip in the spring.”
Ivy’s stomach flipped. “Where?”
“There’s a farm near here where they have cows and pigs and even honeybees! I’m so excited, Mom.” She shoved her snack into her mouth and chewed while she talked. “There are baby cows too, and we can touch them. And Preston already said he’d sit with me on the bus.” Violet grinned. “Isn’t that cool?”
In this moment, Ivy really wished being a parent wasn’t so damn hard. “I got some bad news.”
Violet froze, with her hand halfway to her mouth. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything’s fine, but I think we have to move again.”
Violet dropped her uneaten food. “When?”
Ivy swallowed. “Soon.”
Violet’s eyes closed slowly; then she popped them back open. “Why?”
“Baby—”
“Is this about Brent? I thought he made you happy.”
Ivy thought she was going to throw up. She said she had to move, and the first thing her daughter assumed was that it was because of a man. What was she teaching her daughter? That Dawn girls ran? Because even now, Robby was affecting their lives. And they were letting him. Ivy knew that Alex thought this was the right decision, that they were strong, independent women, but Ivy wasn’t seeing it that way, not anymore. “No, honey, Brent’s a good man. We just think it’d be best to move a little farther away.” But even as she said the words, she didn’t believe them.
Violet was smarter than Ivy gave her credit for. Her daughter’s voice shook as she asked, “Because of Robby?”
Ivy reached out her hand. “Vi—”
“Mom,” she said, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. “I like it here. I like my school and my friends. I like your friends, Delilah and Jenna. I like Brent and Honeybear.” She sucked in a breath. “When is it going to be our turn to stay?”
Those words. They unlocked something in Ivy’s brain, in her heart. They hadn’t been in the town long, but they’d been here long enough to form connections better than they had anywhere else.
Alex had a job with a solid business and family in the community. Ivy loved her job. They had girls’ nights out and good men who were great influences in their lives.
They couldn’t move. This looming threat of Robby would be there wherever they went, Ivy knew now. And she was tired of running. Oh, so damn tired. She wanted to stay and spend time with a man who said he loved her.
Who she believed she loved back.
Ivy wanted to work on striking out the fear in Alex’s eyes. And to do that, she needed help. For once, the Dawns would quit acting like they didn’t need anyone else.
Ivy pulled Violet to her and cradled her head to her chest, running her hands down her hair. It’d taken her six-year-old daughter to wake her up, but at least it had happened somehow. “It is our turn to stay, isn’t it?” Ivy murmured into Violet’s hair.
Violet nodded against her mother’s chest. “And I wanna play with Honeybear again soon.”
Ivy squeezed her eyes shut. After that episode at the garage, she wondered if Brent would ever speak to her again. But it was time to run toward something she wanted, rather than away from something she feared.
“I have some ideas, baby. Can’t make any promises, but I’m going to try, okay?”
“Okay.”
“One four three.”
“One four three, Mommy.”
Chapter Nineteen
“YOU KNOW WHO likes light beer?” Brent gestured toward his brother Max’s Bud Light. “Ivy.”
Davis groaned loudly. “You are killing me, Brent. Literally killing me.”
“Not literally,” Max pointed out. “Unless you are actually dying, and if so, I’ll call 911.”
Davis ignored him. “We brought you out tonight—hell, I even shaved—to forget about Ivy Dawn. Not to whine about her.” He looked over his shoulder. “There—that girl right there at the bar. What about her?”
“Her jeans look . . . sparkly,” Cal muttered.
Davis rolled his eyes. “Fine, then her over there, by the pool table.”
Brent reluctantly turned his gaze in the appropriate direction. “No. No brunettes.”
Davis stared at him. “Why?”
Cal coughed into his fist. “Ivy.”
“So now she ruined a whole hair color for you? Jesus Christ.” Davis threw up his hands. “I give up.”
Brent poked at the bottle of his fourth beer, which was now empty. “Maybe she won’t move. Maybe she’ll stay.”
Cal cleared his throat. “Jenna called Alex. She said they’re packing.”
“Shut up,” Brent growled.
“Don’t shoot the messenger.” Cal’s voice was soft despite his words. Brent knew he was going easy on him.
Brent had never been this heartsick over a woman. Now he understood why Cal fought so hard against falling for Jenna over the summer. Because heartbreak? It fucking sucked, and it hurt, and it made him whiny and needy.
He replayed that conversation in his head way too much over the last couple of days. And every time, he didn’t see a solution. Alex was clearly scared, closing ranks to protect the family to which she’d appointed herself protector. Ivy had sat in his kitchen, telling him how she wanted to be there for her sister, wanted to prove it to her.
And this was her way.
But Brent wanted something from her. Some sign that this was breaking her heart too. He wanted her to feel the pain he was in, wanted to know this wasn’t one-sided like he feared it was.
God, he was a fucking sad sack.
Davis leaned in, his voice no longer full of teasing. “Look, man, I get that you’re hurting right now. But
just try to give yourself a night off from it, okay? Drink and talk with us and maybe flirt with another girl to take your mind off the one who broke your heart.”
Brent blinked up at him. He knew Davis was right, knew that this was what he should do. Plus, Davis had come out to a bar for him. Something he hadn’t done since his injury. The least Brent could do was stop moping. Brent glanced over at Cal, who nodded, and Max, who held out his hand for a fist bump.
Brent straightened, rolling back his shoulders. He could be that guy again, the charmer, the one who had fun and made women laugh enough to want him in their beds.
It wouldn’t be anything serious. It’d be casual. It was what he was best at, after all. So he fist-bumped Max, who cheered, and Davis grinned. Cal was subdued, but he smiled.
“I’ll get the shots!” Max said as he hopped down from the bar stool.
The door to the bar opened, and a group of women walked in, huddled together in black pants and black shirts, led by a woman in white, who wore a sash that read Bachelorette in pink swirly letters.
Brent took a deep breath and grinned. “Game faces, fellas. Bachelorette parties are like stealing candy from a baby.”
When Max returned from the bar with the shots, they all took them on the count of three. Brent winced as the liquid slipped down his throat, burning along the way. He shook his head, clapped his hands on a whoop!, and then stood up. “Gonna go make sure someone is buying those ladies the first round.” He winked. “See ya later, guys.”
HE WAS DANCING. With someone. Who had hair. Definitely hair. And a warm body. And tits, because they were pressed enticingly against his chest. A drink splashed on his hand, and he thought for a minute that he wasn’t sure they allowed drinks on the dance floor, but then a female giggle reached his ears, and he thought, Oh, fuck it.
A hand tipped with silver-painted fingernails grazed his chest. “Whoa, steady there, big guy.”
He must have stumbled. Wait—did she call him big guy? And why was he stumbling? Shit, how many drinks had he had? He tried to focus his eyes, but the room was spinning . . . spinning. Was he upright?
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