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.”
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.”
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.”
She nods slowly, her eyes sizing me up before the corners of her lips pull up just enough to count as a grin.
Well, at least I’ll be counting it.
I turn back to Carter. “You like fishing, buddy?”
“He’s four, Silas.”
“Well, high time he learned then.”
She gives me a look.
“I could show him how to pick a lock or steal a candy bar if you’d rather.”
Her look sours, but she looks away to try and hide the grin that comes to her face.
“C’mere, buddy.”
I duck into the wheelhouse and grab a spool of fishing line and a lure hook from the rusty old tackle box that was in there when I rented the place. I lace on the lure and cut off a length of line before I kneel next to Carter at the back of the boat. He looks on with big, wide eyes as I show him how to hold on and dangle the line over the side.
I turn back to Stella, who looks reluctantly impressed.
“So. You and Ivy are….?” she trails off, raising a brow at me.
I shake my head. “I don’t know what we are, but I’m working on it.” I hold her look. “I’m not giving up this time.”
Stella moves next to me, her hand ruffling her son’s hair as he stares intently down the line into the water.
“Silas, I wanted you to meet Carter, and I want to believe things are good now, but I haven’t totally forgiven you.”
“You know why I left.”
She nods. “I know why, but that doesn’t mean I like it. You were better than all that, Silas.”
I shake my head. “No, I wasn’t.”
I glance down at my nephew, feeling anger at all the years I missed, but also this glowing warm feeling at being so close now to what I’d always wanted.
Family.
“You all wanted me to be better than that, but I wasn’t.” I look up into Stella’s eyes. “But I am now.”
Carter suddenly screeches as he looks up at me sharply with a wild look on his face and the line jumping in his small hands.
Stella laughs. “Did he actually catch something?”
I kneel next to Carter, who’s cackling away as I help him pull the line up out of the water with the flip-flopping 2-inch flounder flailing around at the hook.
“Fish!” he says with almost wonder, his eyes round as he stares at his tiny catch.
“Yeah, buddy!” I throw my hand up for another high-five, and he smacks it. “You got one!”
I take it cleanly off the hook for him, letting him see it flop in my hand before I toss it back into the water.
He giggles.
“I’m not going anywhere, Stella,” I say as I stand. I glance back at Carter.
“I’ve got a lot of making up for lost time to do.”
33
Ivy
“Hi.”
I glare at Blaine’s smug, tanned, bleach-toothed face in the hotel lobby.
“Oh, hi.”
“Ivy,” he reaches out to touch my arm but I pull away.
“Contractually obligated, Blaine,” I say icily. “That is the only reason I’m here right now.”
He nods, looking contritely at the floor. “That’s fair, I deserve that.”
I roll my eyes. “Please don’t play the victim card. Spare me.”
He nods again. “Thanks for being here.”
“I told you, contractually-”
“No, I know, it’s just-” he shrugs. “Ivy, your brand is better than mine, and we both know it. I know you’re carrying me, and I just want to say thank you.”
“Please don’t.”
I’m literally counting the minutes until this ridiculous thing is over. I’m here to mingle,
smile for the branding teams from sneaker and cosmetic companies, and eco-travel destinations. I’m going to smile, I’m going to shake some hands, snap some pictures where I pretend I don’t want to drown Blaine in the punch bowl, and then I’m going home.
To Silas.
“Ivy, I know you don’t believe me, but that whole thing from before, that really was a photoshoot. There’s no one else.”
“That’s great, Blaine,” I say evenly, not smiling.
“I have to go.”
“So we’ll meet here in the lobby before we head out?”
“Fine.”
I think he’s about to say something else, but I ignore him as I turn and step towards the elevator banks. The doors to one open, and I blink as I suddenly come face-to-face with my assistant.
“Ainsley!”
She jumps at my sudden greeting before she focuses on me “Oh, Ivy!”
I throw my arms around her. “What are you doing here?”
She frowns as she pulls away. “Uh, my job?”
I grin. “Sorry I meant I didn’t know you were here here. Are you staying in the hotel?”
She nods. “Yeah, Lori and her crew put me up for tonight too.”
“So how’s Boston been? You’ve just been staying with your friend?”
She blinks quickly. “What?”
“Your friend? Isn’t she someone you went to college with?”
Ainsley clears her throat. “Oh, right, yeah. It’s been fun. How’s home been?”
I arch my brows. “It’s been…interesting.”
“What happened with that guy you hit on the pier?”
I laugh. “It’s a very long story.”
She glances down at her wrist watch. “Can it wait? You have to be ready in two hours or Lori is going to have a fucking meltdown.”
I grin again and give her another quick hug. “I’m so glad you’re here for this shit-show.”
* * *
After a long, hot shower, I check my reflection in the mirror in the hotel room mirror. Lori and her team have picked out this slinky black thing with tiny shoulder straps and silver sequins that wash down one side like a wave. I have to give her credit, it looks great.
I finish piling my hair up on top of my head, the slight curl I’ve given it post-shower falling to my shoulders and giving me that “casually elegant without trying” look that I’ve actually spent the better part of two hours trying to nail.
Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 94