“Ugh, hang on,” she mutters into the phone again. “I’m fine, okay?”
She puts her full weight into the handle as her body strains.
“Oh, this is fucking ridiculous, just let me get that for-”
“I said, I’ve got-”
I want to say it happens in slow motion, but it honestly happens so fast I don’t even have time to blink.
The handle on her fancy luggage gives way with a snapping sound, and before I can even move, her whole arm jerks back with the full weight of her pulling.
Right into my face.
I go sprawling backwards, knocked right off my feet onto my fucking ass right there on the pier, my hands clutching the elbow-mark on my cheek right below my eye.
“Oh shit!” she screams, gasping as she whirls. “Oh my God!” She drops to her knees right next to me. “Fuck, are you-”
And right then, she stops.
Because right then, two things happen. I pull my hands away from my face, because that tone in her voice has just changed, and she pulls her ridiculous sunglasses off.
And right then, we both know.
Oh what the fuck.
Somehow, I remember to breathe.
Somehow, I remember to grin as I look up into the face I haven’t seen in eight fucking years.
Ivy Hammond.
The girl I left behind.
The girl I’ve never managed to get out of my head or my damn heart.
Oh, right…
And the girl who’s my wife.
3
Ivy
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
I can feel the pier itself swaying beneath my feet, my breath tight in my throat as I stare into the eyes of the last man on earth I ever expected to see again. Not outside my own head that is.
“I live here.” His voice is deeper than it was; older, more mature.
It has the same effect on me now that it did eight years before though. The same shivering tingle up my spine, the same tightness in my throat.
I quickly bury those thoughts deep as I frown at him. “No, you don’t.”
He grins, a flash of that gorgeous, roguish and cocky smile that hasn’t changed one bit from the boy I knew all those years before. The stubble on his jaw is a bit darker, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, but it’s like time and age have conspired to make him even hotter - even more attractive than he was even back then.
It’s unfair that he looks so good this many years later.
It’s unfair that he looks this good after what he pulled.
After he left.
He eyes me. “Well, do you?”
“Do I what,” I hiss, still blinking, still trying to process the ghost from my past standing in the flesh in front of me.
“Live here.”
“No,” I grumble.
“Well how do you know if I do, then?”
He’s goading me. Eight years after walking out of my life with my heart in his hand, he’s still teasing and needling me like we’re still kids - like nothing’s happened at all.
Like he didn’t destroy me when he walked away and never looked back.
This isn’t happening. I shake my head, sucking in a deep breath of air as I try and steady myself. This is the double vodka I had on the ferry, not reality. I’m not actually standing in front of Silas Hart on the piers of Shelter Harbor.
This is a hallucination brought on by being home. It’s an apparition, and I’m eighteen again, and standing on the pier with those same piercing blue eyes looking right into my heart, knowing everything I’m thinking and letting me fall right into them, however wrong.
But that was eight years ago.
That was before he broke my heart.
“I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”
I narrow my eyes at him, focusing on his words. “You knew I was coming home?”
He shrugs, bringing a hand up and raking his fingers through his mop of hair. “Well, yeah.”
He says it offhandedly, as if of course he’d know I was going to be here. As if he’d know anything at all about me eight years after walking away.
“How,” I spit out.
Silas grins. “Think I’m supposed to know when my wife is going to be in town-”
“Do not say that!” I snap, the heat rising in my cheeks as I jab a finger at him.
“Why? It’s true.”
I can feel my hands clench into fists. “It is not-”
“Oh I distinctly remember a priest and something about ‘having and holding’, and then there was this bit with the rings-”
“Shut up, just stop talking,” I hiss, my eyes darting around as if someone might overhear.
“You gave up that title when you left me.”
“I didn’t-” his eyes tighten before he scowls right back. “Didn’t take you too long to forget you had a husband, by the way.”
“Because I didn’t,” I snap back. “I had a criminal.”
“You knew exactly what I was when you said yes, sweetheart.”
I roll my eyes. “Nice, Silas.” I scowl at him, still standing there grinning at me, as if that fucking charm of his is going to fix this.
“I should have sued you for abandonment years ago.”
He barks out a laugh. “Never too late, darlin.”
I tighten my mouth, my gaze narrowed at him. “And by the way, were you just hitting on me?”
He snorts. “I was, before I realized who it was.”
“Oh fuck you,” I spit.
“I didn’t recognize you, okay?” He shrugs again, raking his fingers across that distractingly attractive shadow on his cheek. “You got hot.”
My eyes go wide as I feel the indignation boil up inside. “Excuse me?!”
Silas laughs. “No-no, hang on, that came out wrong. I mean you got hotter.”
“Keep digging, douchebag.”
His eyes flare for a second as they hold my gaze, his lips tight.
“You changed your hair.”
Yeah and my direction in life, and everything else about me since you walked away from us.
But I don’t answer him. Instead, we stand in silence right there on the pier of our hometown, right where we used to stand staring at each other under totally different circumstances. Under totally different stars.
My mind reels, trying to take in this man from my past - the man from my past. And I don’t know whether I want to beg him to kiss me the way he used to where my damn toes would curl, or if I want to shove him right off the end of the pier.
Or worse.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I finally say quietly.
“Which one is that.”
I suppress the growl in my throat. “What are you doing here, Silas.”
He shrugs. “It’s not every day Jacob Hammond gets a park named after him.”
I stare at him. “You came back for my dad?”
“Rowan invited me.”
I make a mental note to bury my older brother. Alive. In a very deep hole.
God he’s more attractive than he ever was. The boy I once loved became a man over the last eight years. He’s bigger all over - thicker chest, broader shoulders, more muscle on his arms. The smattering of teenage tattoos from when we were young have grown to full sleeves, and the smooth chin I used to kiss is now scuffed with a five o’clock shadow that was never there when we were young.
When I was eighteen and madly in love.
When we got married.
When he left.
“I thought you were in Ireland.”
I say it quietly. I don’t actually know that he was, just rumors and conversations overheard. I never wanted to know for sure where he’d gone off to, because it made it easier to stomach that he’d left. He wasn’t somewhere else –somewhere tangible - instead of next to me, he’d just disappeared.
Silas takes a deep breath, his eyes locked on mine. “I was.” His eyes search my face, though I don’t know what he
could possibly be looking for. “Dublin.”
“For eight fucking years?” My voice is shrill, and I hate that it is.
“There-” he stops himself and shakes his head. “Yes.”
I’ve gone over a reunion with Silas Hart in my head nine thousand times in my head over the years. Every conceivable scenario, every variable outcome, every possible conversation. At first, they were silly, stupid fantasies - he’d tell me how he’d been kidnapped, or thrown into a secret jail for years, and how the thought of me alone had kept him alive.
God I was an idiot back then.
But they soon turned more real - more grounded in the reality that the man I’d loved and given my heart to had willingly walked away and stolen it with him. And then my dream-conversations changed to me being this confident, self-sustained woman who casually laughs at the silly boy from her past who shows back up looking for forgiveness.
And yet here I am, letting every insecurity come pouring out like the same silly little princess who married the thief and thought there’d be a happily ever after somehow.
“Ivy-”
“Do they have fucking email in Ireland, Silas? Phones?”
He sighs as he drops his gaze to the boardwalk beneath our feet, the ocean sloshing gently beneath it.
“Well, this is going well,” he finally says, looking up with that grin on his face and that token glimmer in his eye.
“Don’t,” I say testily.
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t try and be funny, or cute-”
“Oh?” He grins at me. “So you do at least still think I’m cu-”
“Silas.” My eyes flash, his name almost choking in my throat. “Stop, please.” I shake my head. “I’m not that girl anymore.”
The grin drops from his face as his sea-blue eyes narrow in on mine. “And what girl is that, Ivy.”
“The girl you used to know,” I say, summing every ounce of firmness from deep inside and keeping my voice even.
“I’m not anything like that girl anymore.”
He shakes his head, a pained look creeping into his eyes. “Ivy-”
“That girl died when you left her.”
I whirl before he can answer, walking away down the pier as the echoing sound of the wheels of my suitcase follow in my shadow.
4
Silas
I blink as she storms away, that newly golden hair of hers blowing out behind her and that silly suitcase banging across the boardwalk in her wake.
“Wait a second. Ivy-” I jog after her, snagging her arm and pulling her back around.
“Hang on a sec-”
“I did, Silas!”
When she whirls on me, there’s fire and a pain in her eyes that I’ve never seen before.
It’s a look that kills me.
I never had to see the rage. I could picture the sadness and the anger, about a million fucking times over the years.
But I never got to see it right there in front of my face.
Not after I left.
Not after the night that changed fucking everything. The night that shattered the perfection I’d held in my hands for a brief second before it all streamed away like the blood and rain of that night. I never had to look her in the eyes after that last time in the hospital lobby.
I left because of the heat, but also because I couldn’t bear to hurt the only real family I’d ever known any more than I had after that night. It was bad enough that I was dating Jacob Hammond’s daughter - me, the wrong guy from the wrong side of town with one of his princesses.
But after that night, and the crash, and Rowan?
Yeah.
I was nineteen, and stupid, and afraid. And I left the girl I loved more than anything in this world, three days after marrying her.
That was eight fucking years ago.
‘Course, the pain of leaving was bad enough, but seeing how fast she moved on hurt even more. Even with the letter I left her, a month after I’d gone, she was off at college like she’d planned. Three months after that, she was with someone new.
She never did write me back.
So I stayed away, and I buried myself in the life I always said I’d never dive into. Five fucking years pulling jobs for Declan’s people in Dublin, earning a reputation as the best lift-man in town.
I’d only thought about coming back about a hundred times, but the only things worth coming back for were her, and the rest of the Hammond family. The rest of them had written me off.
She’d moved on.
And just like that, I’d lost anything that would have brought me back, until now.
And now here I am, in the town I left fucking years ago, in front of the girl whose heart I broke.
The girl who shattered mine.
Goddamn she looks amazing. I mean, the hair, the makeup, the clothes - they might not quite be the “her” I knew, but damn does she look good. Besides, the girl I knew stopped being the girl I “knew” the minute I left.
I know who she is these days. Yes, Ireland has the fucking internet. I know about the seminars, the web series, the cookbook, the YouTube channel, the Instagram account full of fucking all-juice diets and holiday crafts and goddamn endless pictures of her looking just this side of sexy posing all over the damn place in yoga gear.
Yeah, I know this isn’t the same girl, because I’ve watched her become the woman she is now, knowing I’d fucked that up.
She turns back and starts walking down the boardwalk again, and I follow.
“Where are you going?”
“Home, Silas. I’m m going home and away from you and this asinine conversation.”
“Do you want a ride or something?”
We’re at the end of the pier and she turns and barks out a laugh. “Not a chance.”
I nod at the beat-up old pickup truck parked behind her, and she stiffens.
“You still have that?”
I shrug. “Declan kept it, miraculously. I think he forgot it was in the garage or he’d have sold it for whiskey or cards about twelve hours after I-”
I stop short, realizing how easily I’m falling into the same sort of banter and ease that I knew eight years before.
“After you left?” she says sharply.
My jaw tightens. “Look, I’ll give you a ride. There’s-” I look away. “There’s a lot to tell-”
“Nope, no need,” Ivy says brusquely. “I’m getting a ride from Stella, and besides,” her eyes narrow on me, that fire burning fiercely. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”
I know I have zero right to own the anger and the raw fury I feel at the mention of that word, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to keep my temper from roaring up inside.
Of course, I know about the boyfriend - Blaine. The fucking douchebag with the bleached white teeth and the goddamn ponytail that’s always popping up in her social media posts. The smarmy looking prick with the store-bought tan and the magazine smile.
The guy she’s clearly head over heels for.
The guy that was me, in another life.
“I can’t believe you came back here,” she says quietly, her voice like shattered ice as she slowly shakes her head at me.
“I told you, I came-”
“I don’t care,” she says sharply. “But whatever you think you’re looking for? Whatever ‘big conversation’ you think we’re going to have? Whatever bullshit answer you have for fucking me over all those years ago?” Her eyes narrow into mine, her face a mask of cold fury as she brushes hair back from it.
“Forget about it.” She blinks twice. “I have.”
She turns again on her high-heels and starts to march down Commercial Street, her suitcase rolling loudly behind her.
“Go back to Ireland, Silas,” she calls over her shoulder.
And then she’s gone.
Again.
5
Ivy
I force myself to keep walking - shoulders back, head high and forward all the way until I get around the corner o
f Hasting’s hardware store. It’s only then that I exhale, my legs turning to jelly and my heart skipping along at a hundred miles an hour. I drop onto the bench that runs along the side of the store, my hands pushing into my hair as I suck in lungsful of air.
Silas.
What the hell he’s doing here, how my brother managed to not tell me about that little detail before I got here, and about a million other thoughts go roaring through my head as I focus on breathing in and out.
As I focus on holding onto my sanity.
The man I never thought I’d see again, in the flesh, face to face.
“Uh, are you okay?”
Ainsley’s voice pulls me back into the now, and I quickly blink away the thoughts. “Yeah,” I force a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine, I just-”
I just saw the ghost of heartbreaks past and now I’m finding it sort of hard to breathe.
I smile at my assistant. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just hungry I think.”
She makes a face. “After that boat-ride?”
I grin. “You get used to it.”
“No thanks.” She looks up at the old brick-style New England buildings that line the waterfront streets - the cobblestone pedestrian streets, the knick-knack shops, the touristy bars and restaurants all serving the same seafood menu and drink specials.
“Cute town.”
I make a face as I stand from the bench and pull out my phone. “Trust me, it’s all bullshit.”
“Oh, Blaine called, by the way.”
I roll my eyes as I glance at the blank screen of my phone. Blaine’s developed this annoying habit of calling my assistant instead of me - like he’s calling to network with me instead of to tell me which ferry he’s taking to my home town.
“Oh yeah?”
Ainsley clears her throat. “Yeah, he’s, uh,” she looks uncomfortable. “I think he missed the ferry after us.”
I groan, but my phone buzzes in my hand as my sister calls.
“Hey, I’m here,” I say quickly. “We’re next to-”
I stop as I see Stella’s Volvo pull up to the curb at the top of the pedestrian side-street we’re standing on. Her hand sticks out the window and waves.
Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 80