by Max Monroe
I was scared to death of what I’d find on the other side of that shabby little cabin’s door, but the thought of not knowing wasn’t even a consideration.
Careening inside on a near slide and expecting the worst, I held on to the knob for support—physical help to stop my momentum and a crutch to hold me on my feet.
And there was carnage, all right.
Bloody and beaten, my heart finally made its exit and landed lifeless on the floor.
My sister. And Levi fucking Fox.
Intertwined and kissing. His back to the couch. Her hands in his hair. Their open mouths tangled and her eyes closed in pleasure. Her legs spread and open in invitation from a very opportune spot on top of his hips.
Oxygen evaporated. My breath was jagged as I fought to bring it back, and a rush of tears hit me harder than a tidal wave.
It was all so unavoidable now, the emotion. I’d ignored it for weeks, pushing it to the back of my mind and promising to confront it later. But it was here now. The hate and the lust and the very real affection I’d felt for Levi, all mutilated with a sharp allied sword.
He’d captured me. My spirit and my spine, both had been finely developed over the span of my life to ready me for him.
He was tortured, and I was the salve. I just had to dance to his lead until he could see the truth. I’d honestly believed that.
You’re a fool, Ivy.
Levi noticed me out of the corner of his eye and shoved Camilla back a foot, but the damage was already so painfully done.
My feet treaded at the ground like water, moving my body back toward the open door in an effort to stay afloat. The room was cloudy now, my eyesight long compromised by my tears, and a steady whoosh had formed in my ears.
I had to get out of there.
Moving as quickly as I could, I swiveled so that I could run straight ahead and launched myself right out the door, over the stairs of the porch, and onto the gravel drive. My toe caught, and I went down on a knee.
Fuck!
Tiny pricks and raging fire burst free, and I used the pain to stanch the flow of my emotional wound and got to my feet.
“Ivy!” Levi yelled, the sound of his feet pounding on the wood of the front porch.
I turned back, fury burning the back of my throat, leaving it raw to the sting of all my salty, swallowed tears. At the sight of him, silent pain was no longer an option. He jumped down to the driveway and charged me.
“I fucking get it!” I screamed, holding up a vehement hand to stop his approach. “The arguments, the blatant statements, the games… I should have gotten it from the beginning. You want to be rid of me!”
I heaved a breath, and he filled the tiny, quiet moment with a whisper. “Ivy.”
Camilla stood shaking and confused as she looked on from the top of the stairs, but I had absolutely nothing left in me to give her. The broken boards of our fence would have to wait to be mended, and her innocence would be recognized later.
Right now, I only had the energy for Levi.
“Well, congratulations. You got it!”
He closed his eyes, so I did the same, unwilling to torture myself with the sight of him any longer. The words would be all the visual either of us needed.
Words final and true, I bore the blow of each syllable as I spoke. After tonight, Levi and Ivy would never be a thing. And I’d have to find a way inside myself to get over what might have been.
“You’re liberated of me,” I whispered through a throat full of torturous gravel. “I…” I swallowed a thick ball of saliva and used it to wash away the grit, smoothing the edges of my message and outlining each declaration deliberately. I didn’t want him to have any room for confusion and questions—I didn’t plan to stick around to answer them.
“I’m done thinking of you when you’re nearby and when you’re not. I’m done tying myself in knots over your pain and your past. I’m done entertaining the idea that you’re something other than you are, and I’m done with this.” I jerked a wild finger back and forth between us. “This twisted thing between us—whatever it is—it’s over.”
“This twisted thing between us—whatever it is—it’s over.”
Ivy’s words barreled out of her lips like a bullet from a rifle in the otherwise silent Montana air. They ricocheted, echoing and booming and filling the space around me so raucously the effect nearly brought me to my knees.
My heart clenched so hard inside my chest I thought it might migrate up my throat and choke me.
I wanted to go to her.
I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and kiss her pain away—kiss our pain away.
But we’d proven time and again that kisses couldn’t heal real problems. In this instance, I was certain it would only worsen them.
She so obviously wanted distance from me. If she could have put a thousand miles between us with a snap of her fingers, she would have snapped twice to put two.
I rubbed roughly at my chest with one hand, trying to erase the phantom pain taking up residence beneath my ribs. It wasn’t a turn in health, but an awakening of emotion that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
“Ivy,” I called to her. I had no other words, no explanation, nothing of value that would ease her pain or fix what I’d just broken, but I had a million poor substitutions I was willing to try.
With a mane of red hair blowing in the brisk wind and green eyes harsh with accusations and something I feared was hate, Ivy stared at me from the yard of Grace’s house.
Even tear-stained and raging, she was so beautiful it hurt. And now that I’d let the dam burst, the real, raw emotion I felt for her free to flow, I knew she held the power to destroy me.
God, how in the fuck had I gotten here? How had we gotten here?
Two good people battered and destroyed by a battle to survive one another.
Suddenly, I mourned for the mess I’d made of something I’d never really had.
Pain bit into my skin and forced my eyes closed.
I’d fucked up so bad. Not intentionally, but I’d played the starring role in this. I’d charmed her sister into thinking that kissing me was an option. And I’d spent so much energy trying not to feel something for Ivy, that it was too easy for her to believe I didn’t.
Regret washed over me like long, slow waves on a shallow beach. Each wave was icy cold and sent shivers down my spine. I longed to go back and take a different path, but now that was impossible. The past was irrevocable. I knew that better than most.
I stared down at the ground and found myself envying the pebbles of the driveway, hard and lifeless and unable to feel torment. Unable to bleed and regret—unable to cry as they buried people they loved.
Ivy moved toward her car, but before she could swing open the door, I jumped into action. Hand hard and swift, I planted it into the glass of the driver’s-side window and slammed it the few inches back to shut.
Her green eyes flashed to mine, agony and loathing mixing to make them muddy and toxic.
“Get out of the way, Levi,” she spat.
I shook my head. “No. I can’t let you leave like this.”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Way.” Each word existed in a swirl of defiance behind gritted teeth, but I didn’t falter.
I couldn’t let her get behind the wheel when she was so obviously affected. It wasn’t safe, and if something happened to her, I didn’t know how I’d be able to live with myself.
I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a world without her in it.
She’d become the fire in my veins. The instant she’d stepped her beautiful, stubborn, determined ass into Cold, Montana, she had turned my world upside down. She’d pushed my boundaries, and instead of fading into numbness and oblivion, I’d actually started to live.
I. Needed. Her.
I just wished I would’ve realized it sooner, before now—before I’d destroyed everything.
“Ivy, I can’t let you drive right now,” I said evenly, trying for once to be the calm one
of the two of us. She flinched, the change in my demeanor unwelcome and ill-advised.
To Ivy, my late arrival to gentle consideration was an insult to all of the weeks she’d spent trying to evoke it.
“Fuck you, Levi!” she screamed, and without warning, she lifted her hand and slapped it hard across my face.
My skin stung from the assault, tingles and needles dotting the corner of my eye thanks to the new pressure in my cheek, but I didn’t care. I deserved this. I deserved every bit of her anger. And her anger was better than nothing at all.
But my lack of response only urged more rage to boil inside of her.
It spilled over in the form of another slap to my face.
And another.
And another.
I lost count after five. And with each smack of her hand to my battered cheek, her tears turned to sobs.
Fuck. She was broken, and I was to blame.
Thick-throated and disappointed in myself, I gave in. The pull, the want, the need—it was real. I couldn’t let it go on like this any longer. Wrapping my arms around her like a vise, I fought the pressure of her antagonistic body and pulled it to my chest.
For a brief moment, she allowed it, even burying her face and tears into my shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into her ear. “I’m so sorry, Ivy. What happened back there isn’t what you think. It’s the complete opposite, actually.”
Instead of soothing the wound, my words served as a stabbing reminder of my indiscretions.
With a hard shove, she pushed me away, her eyes wet and pained and oh so fucking beautiful I felt it all the way to my bones.
“Your apology means shit,” she said. “I don’t want your fucking excuses or anything, for that matter! I’m. Fucking. Done. With. You!”
Done with me.
I wished I could go back in time, rectify my mistakes, take back all of the cruel and thoughtless things I’d ever done or said to her. But I couldn’t.
Instead, I settled for giving her what I could then. Jaw hard and heart aching, I stepped away from the door of her car and offered it to her.
She stomped around me and swung it open violently, her movements swift and sure. She was pulling away from the pain and building a wall in its place, and I could see it so acutely I felt superhuman.
In reality, I just recognized the signs. I’d been doing it within the walls of myself for years.
Hand to the handle and the barrier of the door at her disposal, I thought that’d be the last word I got to speak. “Just explain one thing to me, Levi,” she ordered, her voice steely as she paused in the space between who we were and who we would be. “Why do you hate me so much?”
My response was immediate. “I don’t hate you, Ivy.”
“Then why do you act like I’m the enemy, and everyone else gets a pass?”
Her question held so much truth that nausea clenched my gut, and without even thinking, the words spilled out of my mouth.
“Because I want to be numb…and with everyone else, I can. But not with you,” I whispered. “You make me feel too much.”
Green eyes searching blue, she looked at me for a long moment, and I silently hoped by some miracle she’d understand. But I knew it was a pipe dream. There was so much she didn’t understand, but it was because she didn’t know—because I hadn’t told her.
A tiny prickle of hope touched the bottom of my spine and locked my body as she moved back out of the door of the car and slammed it shut.
“You need to leave,” she demanded, squashing it with the heel of her boot.
I looked on in devastation as she moved back toward the house, a wide-eyed and confused Camilla still standing on the porch looking down at us.
“And don’t worry, Levi,” she tossed over her shoulder. The coldness in her voice made me cringe. “You won’t have to feel too much anymore because of me. I’m done.”
Done.
I didn’t want to be done. Not with her, not with us. Not with any of it.
It was in that very moment that I made a promise to myself.
I would never be done with Ivy Stone.
Not today. Not next month.
Not ten years from now. Not ever.
I wasn’t going to let her go.
Ivy walked up the steps of the porch and into the house, and with one confused glance in my direction, Camilla followed her sister inside, shutting the door behind her as she went.
I stood in the driveway, the direction of my gaze unchanged.
I didn’t know where to go from here or what I could do that would right the wrongs I’d done to her.
I held on tightly to the fact that I’d be seeing her soon.
Tomorrow morning, in fact. Bright and early for another production day on Cold.
We were going to try this again. Only this time, I’d spend my time proving I wasn’t an asshole.
This isn’t the end; this is just the beginning.
Levi and Ivy’s story will continue in Cold, Book two in the Stone Cold Fox Trilogy.
COMING SOON: APRIL 22ND, 2018
COLD: BOOK TWO IN THE STONE COLD FOX TRILOGY
I wanted a second chance. What I got was a repeat.
She was too beautiful. Too smart. And her emerald green eyes saw too much.
I wanted space—she took it away.
I craved her lips—she gave me her kiss.
I screwed it up—she got smart.
Avoiding me is the right thing to do. I’m messed up, tortured, and probably always will be.
But I still want her.
Her mind. Her body. Her heart.
I want it all.
And this time, I’m in control.
No matter what I have to do, I will make her mine.
PREORDER COLD TODAY
Fox, the third and final book in the Stone Cold Fox Trilogy will release
on May 20th, 2018.
PREORDER FOX TODAY
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First of all, THANK YOU for reading. That goes for anyone who’s bought a copy, read an ARC, helped us beta, edited, formatted, or found time in their busy schedule to help us out in any way.
We love you guys. Every single one of you. Your love, your support, your enthusiasm for our words is everything.
This series is so unlike anything we’ve written, and honestly, it came in like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball. And once Ivy and Levi told us their story, we had to drop everything and just write all the words. They’ve ingrained themselves so deep in our hearts, and we can’t wait for you to read the rest of their wild, twisty, angsty, passionate, and so unbelievably emotional ride.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
THANK YOU.
Without every single one of you, none of this would be possible.
All our love,
Max & Monroe
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