by Aubrey Irons
“We don’t have to go there,” she’s says quietly. “Not tonight.”
She leans into me again, kissing me softly.
“Goodnight, Silas.”
“Goodnight, gorgeous.”
Chapter 30
Ivy
Morning sun streams in through the curtains of my childhood bedroom.
Not much has changed in here. The same desk, the same white dresser, the same chair by the window. Heck, I’m lying in the same bed that’s been here since I lived in these four walls. Okay, the NSYNC and Lighthouse posters have thankfully been pulled down. But aside from that?
Exactly the same.
It’s late in the morning, but I’m still in bed, still glowing and grinning about the night before. I touch my lips, feeling like the same blushing teenager I once was, lying in this same bed thinking about the same boy kissing me.
It’s the same feeling I felt all those years ago. I might be twenty-six now, but I’m still getting the same butterflies I got after being kissed by Silas Hart for the first time behind our neighbor’s garage. I’ve got the same dopey grin on my face as the first time I truly let myself get lost in those sea-blue eyes of his.
And I’m getting the same blush of heat through certain places in my body that I did the first time he slowly pulled my clothes off of me - the first time I took off his.
“We don’t have to, not until you’re-”
“I am ready.”
I kiss him, holding his face.
“I want this,” I say heatedly, feeling my heart racing in my chest. “I want you.”
“You’re all I ever want,” he says softly, kissing me.
I know I’m not his first, but if I ever thought that would bother me, it doesn’t. I don’t care about anything else actually, because I’m in love. We’re in love, and nothing else comes close to meaning anything besides that.
We’re parked up by the falls, lying naked together in the back of his truck on a blanket, with the summer moon shining down and the falls gurgling like music in the background. He’s slow, and careful, and it doesn’t hurt like everyone says it will.
In fact, he’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my life.
I’m addicted after that. After that, we’re doing what we did that night all over again, every chance we get. And it’s like I love him more every single day.
Later, what starts as a joking comment turns into reality. It turns into each of us saying yes in front of a priest, and putting a ring on the other’s finger.
I never do lose those butterflies.
And apparently, I really never did lose them. They just went into hiding over the last eight years. Because here I am in my bed, my fingers tracing my lips and still feeling the delicious soreness in my body from him the night before.
I have NO idea what comes next. But here and now and whoever this is?
It’s pretty perfect.
I glance at my phone on my bedside table and roll my eyes. Twenty missed calls from my management company, another fifty texts. Utterly unsurprisingly, there are no missed calls from Blaine.
I’m sure they’re freaking out, and I can picture Lori, my agency manager, tearing her hair out about the prospect of Blaine and I not being a “thing” anymore, and what that might do to my fan-base, and more importantly, my sales power.
Fuck them. My fans are normal people, and they will completely understand the Blaine situation once I post something short and sharp about it. Hell, I’ll probably see an increase in sales and ranking after I do so.
Grudgingly, I finally slide out of bed, and I’m pulling clothes on when there’s a knock at my door.
“Yeah?”
Sierra pokes her head in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
She makes a sour face. “I heard about Blaine stopping by.”
I roll my eyes and she scrunches up her face. “What a douche.”
“Thank you.”
She laughs. “Mom and Dad just want to see the good in everyone, you know that. I think they just really wanted to believe Blaine was…I dunno.”
“Not a douche?”
She grins. “I was going to say ’the one’. I mean, he’s not, well, you know, he’s not-” she trails off, but I know what she’s not saying.
“He’s not Silas.”
She nods, looking at the floor for a second before looking up at me with a sly grin. “Uh, speaking of which. I heard you got in pretty late last night?”
“I plead the fifth.”
She gives me a look. “Care to elaborate?”
“You do know what pleading the fifth means, right?”
Sierra laughs. “Fine, keep your secrets, even though I totally know where you were and who with.”
“No you don’t.”
She smirks. “Silas Hart? The falls?”
My eyes go wide for second, totally betraying me, and she laughs. “Dude you’ve got grass in your hair, and a serious hickey on your neck.”
My jaw drops as I jerk my hand to my neck, only to see my little sister’s eyebrows shoot up mischievously.
“Well, I was kidding, but thanks for confirming that.”
“Bitch.”
She grins triumphantly, but then I decide to turn the tables on her.
“And what time did you get home last night?”
She blushes even though she tries to cover. “Oh, I stayed over.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mhmm,” she says noncommittally, looking away.
“At your friend’s house, right?”
“Yep,” she says quickly before glancing back at me, her face still pink.
“You uh, you do actually have grass in your hair, by the way.”
“Ivy!”
Our mom’s voice calls from downstairs.
“Yeah?” I poke my head out of my room and glance down the staircase.
“There are, uh, there are some people here to see you?”
I groan.
Now what.
“Nope.” I shake my head furiously side-to-side. “No fucking way.”
My dad raises a sharp brow at my language from across the kitchen, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Ivy,” Lori sighs as she clasps her hands in front of her. “Ivy, this is damage control time.”
“I don’t care what it is, I’m not doing it.”
They can’t be serious.
“You and Blaine are a business, Ivy,” Lori says sharply. “To be perfectly blunt, you’re commodities.”
“Now you listen to me!” My dad suddenly growls, his face red and angry. I look at him and shake my head.
“Dad, I’ve got this.”
He’s mad. He’s mad like he rarely gets, but this time it’s actually making me smile.
Stella apparently impressed upon Blaine to leave after I did yesterday, before sitting my parents down and explaining the situation to them.
My dad was apparently ready to go after him with a golf club after that.
He looks at me here in the kitchen, his eyes darting menacingly to Lori and the two members of her PR team standing timidly in the doorway.
“Dad-” I smile wryly. “Let me handle this.”
I turn back to Lori, smiling plastically. “My fans will understand, Lori. I’m going to post about the breakup today with a little fun note about Blaine and his other girls, and we all know the fans are going to eat that up with a silver-”
“I’m just going to stop you right there, Ivy,” Lori says brusquely.
Lori is all business. All New York sharpness and polish in her steel-grey business suit and pumps, all of which seems unbelievably out of place here in my parents’ farmhouse-style kitchen.
“You’re both a business, Ivy. You understand that we manage Blaine as well, right?”
She raises a sharp brow, and my jaw drops.
“Wait-”
“I can’t let you tarnish his image, Ivy. That’d be bad for business.” She shrugs. “Not to mention a
breach of your own contract.”
Across the kitchen, Sierra is glaring daggers at Lori, and my dad mutters something under his breath through his scowl before my mom puts a hand on his arm.
“You can’t actually expect me to do this.”
“This” is the industry gala event Lori and the rest of the team apparently want me to attend, with Blaine as my date. They want me to smile for the cameras, model some new products, and act like I don’t want to punch the obnoxious loser next to me in the mouth.
“The gala?” Lori smiles saccharinely. “I do, actually. We need you both there for exposure and branding power.”
“I won’t do it,” I snap, folding my arms over my chest.
“You’re contractually obligated, I’m afraid.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t,” Mom says icily.
Lori sighs like she’s an annoyance, which gets my blood boiling.
“Contractually obligated, Ivy,” she says again, slower. “I don’t think we need to go into what happens if you break that.”
“You actually want me to show up to some stupid event with Blaine and pretend we’re together.”
“I actually do,” she says sharply. She taps something on her phone before she stands, smoothing her business suit.
Efficient, cold.
“You’re very good at what you do, Ivy. You’re witty, pretty, choose products well, and people like you. But this is the other side of the business, unfortunately. And I’m sorry to say, it’s the side that doesn’t move or change.”
She nods at my family before turning to me.
“Tonight, Ivy. We’ll send a car.”
Chapter 31
Ivy
“Hey.”
He’s leaning against the main cabin looking out at the harbor, but he turns at the sound of my voice and grins.
“I’m starting to think you just have a thing for houseboats, the way you keep showing up like this.”
I smile as I stop over the side onto the boat. “Hey, you live here.”
I shriek as he suddenly scoops me up into his arms.
“And yet you keep coming around,” he murmurs. “You must kind of like me or something.”
He kisses me and I’m falling right back into last night. I’m right back in the moment with just him and I with nothing else in the world mattering, just like it used to be. And I want to shove him into that cabin and pull his clothes off and do everything I’ve been waiting so long to do with him all over again.
But that’s not why I’m here.
He stiffens at the frown on my face. “What is it?”
I sigh heavily, looking away. “I have to do something tonight.”
“Does it involve me and a nice long drive somewhere, and maybe you in one of those short little sundresses I keep seeing on your Instagram page?”
I bite my lip as I turn, shaking my head. “Sadly, no.”
“Well?”
“I have to go to Boston.”
His face looks puzzled. “Okay, when should we-”
“With Blaine.”
The puzzled frown turns to a scowl.
“Look it’s this stupid work thing. There’s an industry gala, and there’s going to be a lot of brand reps there, and Lori and the rest of the team think I should be there.”
“Right, with Blaine.”
He looks away, his eyes going distant.
“Silas, it’s not like that.”
He nods, his face still dark.
“It’s this contractual thing. We poll better with fans as a couple or something.”
“So you’re going with Blaine, as a fucking couple?” His eyes flash at me, and I can see the muscles of his shoulders bunch under his t-shirt.
“Silas, I have to do this. I’m contractually obligated to pretend I’m ‘with’ him tonight.”
“Yeah, well, shouldn’t be too hard,” he mutters.
I slide my arms around him, trying to grin into his scowling face. “Oh, c’mon. What are you, jealous?”
He turns back to me. “Yeah, Ivy, I am.”
I roll my eyes. “Of Blaine?”
“Yes!” he snaps. “Yes, I’m fucking jealous of Blaine, and every other guy who got to be with you while I was gone.”
I can feel a sharp heat rise up inside as I narrow my eyes and pull away from him. “Okay, first of all, it’s not like you were off on military service or something and I was supposed to wait for you.”
“That’s not what I-”
“And second of all,” I cut him off. “‘Every guy’? What the fuck is that supposed to be mean?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it like-”
“I’ve dated three guys since you, Silas. Three relationships in eight damn years.”
“Ivy, I wasn’t implying-”
“Because you were gone, Silas! And after you left, I didn’t have the capacity to see ‘other guys’.”
I stare at him, shaking my head and feeling the scorn tumble out. “You keep talking about how much you missed me and how much it sucked for you to leave but do you have any fucking idea what it did to me? I didn’t even sleep with another boy until I was twenty, you know.”
His face tightens. “I’m sorry, Ivy.”
“Yeah, well, me too.”
I shake my head before I lean in and quickly kiss his cheek. Then I’m turning on my heel and stepping back onto the dock.
Silas frowns. “Hang on, where are you going?”
“To Boston, with fucking Blaine, because I can’t have this conversation for the hundredth time again.”
Chapter 32
Silas
Well that could have gone better.
I’m sulking later, laying back in the deck chair on the roof of my boat with my feet kicked up.
She’s in Boston by now, with that douchebag. And I get it. I’m not actually childish or jealous enough to think she’s there for any other reason besides that she has to be there.
But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The other part of this is the sort of ambiguity we’ve fallen into here. I mean we’re falling right back into the old ways and going down the same paths we took all those years before, but we haven’t actually addressed that.
We haven’t said what that is, or what it means.
I mean, we’re married, but that joke’s getting old and I know it.
Are we friends? Friends who fuck? Or is it something more?
I want that third one. I want the third one and then some. I want everything with Ivy that I always assumed I’d have before it all went to shit. I want everything with her that I promised to her in vows spoken in a church rectory.
Acting like a selfish, jealous little jackass earlier was hardly the way to show her that.
I slump back in the chair and frown at the small ferry in the distance as it putters around the breakers.
My personal storm-cloud is broken though by the pitter-patter sound of small feet running down a pier. I turn and grin as I see Stella with her son running ahead of her coming down the docks towards me.
“Carter!” She catches up with him, swinging him up into her arms. “No running on the dock, honey.”
He squirms, but she hoists him up and raspberries his belly, melting his little scowl away in a fit of giggles.
I smile as I climb down from the roof of the boat. “What are you two doing down here?”
I reach out and help Stella climb aboard.
“I thought you might want a friendly face.” She gives me a wry look. “And I also thought you might want to actually meet your nephew.”
I do a double take, blinking at her.
My nephew, as in, family.
She pushes her fingers through her hair and holds my eyes with a fierce gaze. “Look, I know, okay? About you and Ivy.”
My jaw drops. “What do you-”
“I know,” she says quietly, jerking her hand up and flashing her bare ring finger at me with a meaningful look.
Oh
.
Shit.
I stare at her, dumbfounded. “She told you?”
Stella nods. “Pretty sure I’m the only one she did, but yeah.” She shakes her head at me. “Jesus, Silas, she had to tell someone after you left like that.”
I meet her hard gaze. “I’m not the monster you think I am, Stella. You know that.”
“I knew that,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “But that was before you left.”
She leans closer out of toddler earshot. “By the way, I’m not quite ready to forgive you for doing that, either.”
“You know it’s complicated.”
She smiles thinly. “Yeah, heard that one before, sport,” she says, nodding meaningfully at Carter. “That’s a guy favorite for why they can’t act like men.”
I glare at her, but she holds it, throwing it right back at me.
I break first, looking away before glancing down at her son. Bright blue Hammond eyes, tow-headed blonde like his mom.
I hate that I wasn’t around for this.
Stella was basically my older sister growing up, even if we’re the same age. She’s always acted older, and she grew up fast. Had a kid fast, that’s for sure. And God should I have been there for this. For one, I wish I’d been there when Carter was born, to be the uncle I should have been. Well, secret uncle, or something.
The other part of me wishes I’d been here so I could have knocked the teeth down the throat of the dumb prick who walked away from her when she was pregnant.
“So, you’re Carter, huh buddy?”
He moves behind his mom’s leg.
Stella sighs. “Carter it’s okay honey, this is your Uncle Silas,” she says, shooting me a look.
I kneel, smiling at him. “How’s it going, little man?”
“Good,” he mumbles quietly, eyes wide.
“You’re being good for your mom, right?”
He nods, wide-eyed.
“Good boy.”
He smiles.
“Can I get a high five?”
He grins wider and nods as I raise my palm. He smacks it, and I glance up to see Stella smirking.
“I’m trying to make things right, Stel,” I say as I stand. “I’m trying to be the man I need to be here. I’m not running from this, not anymore.”