Chapter Fifteen – Ivy
The bell over the café door jingles when we step in, and the smell of coffee and buttered toast wraps around us like a quilt.
Heat flares under my skin—not from last night, though my body remembers every place he learned by heart—but from the way Rowan’s hand finds the small of my back as two ladies at the counter whisper my name like it might bite.
He doesn’t look at them. He looks at me, checks, the question in his eyes quiet and plain: you good?
I am. And I’m not. I feel soft and skinned, fluttery and floaty, like I’m walking around with a secret and everyone can hear it humming.
It’s the way he was after. How the edges of him went gentle.
How he gathered me closer like I was something breakable and precious, set his mouth to my temple, and murmured, “I’ve got you,” into my hair.
How every time the breath hitched in my throat, he stilled and asked—quiet, certain—“This okay?” until the word yes felt like a promise I was making to both of us.
When the room finally settled, he slid his palm slowly over my spine, rubbing steady circles until my heartbeat matched his.
I fell asleep on his chest with his T-shirt bunched in my fist and woke once to find him tucking the sheet higher, brushing the hair from my cheek, and whispering something I was too drowsy to catch and too greedy to ask him to repeat.
Morning was a softer version of him that I didn’t know I was allowed to keep—coffee set on the nightstand the second my eyes blinked open, a clean T-shirt handed over without comment, his thumb skimming the back of my knuckles while he asked if I wanted toast or something real.
He kissed my forehead instead of my mouth, like he knew which part of me needed tending first, and stood in the doorway while I tied my shoes, smiling that small, wrecking smile that never makes it to photographs.
On the drive into town, he kept one hand on the wheel and one on my knee—not possessive but present.
At the stop sign before the bridge, he traced slow, absentminded circles there, like he was learning a song under his breath.
He turned the radio down when a caller shouted, rolled it back up when an old waltz came on, and sang exactly two off-key lines to make me laugh.
When we parked, he came around to my side and offered his hand like we were stepping onto a dance floor and not cracked pavement, and I took it, because last night made me brave in a new, quiet way.
He holds the door a beat longer than necessary, palm out, then weaves us through the morning crowd. First time in public since we… didn’t sleep. First time trying on the shape of us outside four walls and a dim lamp and the steady way he breathed after.
He pulls out my chair. Orders me water without asking because he’s noticed I forget.
When I take off my sweater, he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over the back of my chair; protectiveness disguised as practical.
The corner of his mouth keeps trying to curve.
He won’t let it. But it’s there. He feels the lightness too.
We take the table near the back—our unspoken preference, offering the most privacy.
His knee bumps mine and stays. I could sit here and memorize the new parts of him—the soft after, the way he keeps catching my hand under the table like he’s surprised it still fits so well—but I didn’t come just to float on last night.
“Gossip mill’s working overtime,” he says, picking up a menu he knows by heart. “Marge already refilled the sugar like we’ll need courage.”
“It’s either a slow news day,” I murmur, “or a pop singer just ruined the reputation of a respectable cowboy.”
He shoots me a sideways look. “Respectable?”
“You wear denim-on-denim without irony and say things like rotation schedule in public.”
A huff of a laugh. It makes something low and grateful open in my chest. He feels different today—lighter, yes, but careful in a new way too. He keeps checking in without words. When my phone vibrates
Bailey:
You alive? do not forget carbs
His thumb strokes once along the inside of my wrist, and my whole nervous system sighs.
Marge appears with coffee like she’s been waiting for this exact moment since 1987.
She takes our order with a smile that says she’s already decided we belong together.
Rowan adds bacon to my avocado toast because last time I stole his.
I glare, and he looks smug. It feels ordinary.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted ordinary until this minute.
The whispers at the counter rise, crest, settle. He watches me, not them. “We can take it to go,” he says quietly. “If it’s too much.”
I shake my head. “I like being seen next to you.” Truth, delivered without armor. His eyes flare—barely—but I catch it. A yes that lives in his ribs.
By the time the coffee hits the table, my hands won’t stop moving. I fish out a pen and tug a napkin closer.
Rowan leans back, arms crossing, amused and wary in equal measure. “That tone. The one that starts with hear me out and ends with me up a ladder.”
I draw anyway. A rough square. Rows inside. A rectangle at the edge. “Camp,” I say, because I’m done pretending it’s a passing thought. “One field for strawberries, one for corn. A greenhouse for herbs in early spring.”
He tilts in despite himself. “That’s not how you draw a greenhouse.”
“I’m not an architect. I’m a dreamer with caffeine and a Sharpie.” I add little stick figures beside a barn. “This is the petting zoo. This stick kid is petting a goat.”
“That goat has antlers.”
“ Artistic license. ”
He chuckles, quiet but genuine, and it sends a thrill through me. That laugh is rarer than rain in July.
I keep going, layering the sketch with energy. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life. But I’ve seen the way kids respond to this place. How you light up when you talk about teaching them. You’re not as much of a hermit as you pretend to be.”
He runs a thumb along his jaw, eyes dropping to the napkin. “You think I could do it?”
The raw vulnerability in his voice knocks the wind out of me.
“I think you could change lives,” I whisper. “Starting with your own.”
Before he can answer, there’s a tap at my elbow.
I turn—and see her.
A little girl, maybe seven or eight, with tangled curls and wide brown eyes almost too big for her face. She’s wearing a sequined shirt with a unicorn on it and has a pink plastic purse slung across her body.
She’s also wearing a medical bracelet.
My heart stutters.
“Are you Ivy Quinn?” she asks, voice small and breathless.
“I am,” I say softly.
Her mom catches up to her, cheeks pink with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. We were walking by and she recognized you from the fireworks video online—”
“You sang on the stage!” the girl chirps, bouncing on her toes. “I have your song on my tablet!”
I blink rapidly. “You do?”
She nods, and for the first time, I notice the tremor in her hands, then I see the bracelet clearly.
Epilepsy .
It’s etched in tiny bold letters beneath her name.
And something clicks in my chest—like a light bulb or maybe a match.
“I have epilepsy too,” I tell her, scooting to the edge of my seat and leaning down to her level. “And I think that makes us pretty incredible.”
Her eyes widen. “You do?”
“Yup. It doesn’t stop me from singing. And it doesn’t stop you from doing anything you want either.”
She beams, and her mom mouths, “ Thank you ,” behind her. I stand slowly, heart thudding.
As they leave, Rowan stands beside me, steady as a tree.
“You okay?” he asks, his hand brushing my lower back.
I nod. “That…” I swallow. “That meant more than she knows.”
He studies me, then glances down at the napkin I left on the table. “Maybe the camp needs music days.”
“And glitter crafts.”
He groans. “You’re gonna destroy my farm.”
I look up at him, lightness blooming in my chest. “Nope. I’m gonna help you build something better.”
His gaze drops to my lips. And I think maybe the next move is his.
After breakfast, we don't go straight home.
Rowan drives us toward the edge of Otter Creek, past the vast fields and weathered fences, his hand resting on the gearshift like it belongs there. Like it’s sculpted for this life—one of soil and sweat and things that grow slowly but last.
He doesn’t say where we’re going. Doesn’t have to. I let the silence sit between us like an old friend, arms looped around my sketchbook as I watch the trees blur past. The camp flyer napkin is tucked safely between its pages. I don't want it to wrinkle.
We slow at the crest of a hill and turn down a dirt road flanked by tall grass. At the end of it is a massive oak tree, its limbs thick and sprawling like it’s been standing here longer than the town itself.
He parks and gets out. I follow.
The air is warm and still. A late summer kind of stillness.
“This was my thinking spot as a kid,” he says, running a hand along the tree trunk. “Used to come here to figure things out.”
I glance up at him, tilting my head. “You brought me to your brooding tree?”
His mouth twitches. “You’re welcome.”
We sit in the patchy shade, legs stretched out in front of us, and I lean back on my elbows. The sun filters through the branches, dappled and lazy. A cicada buzzes in the distance. Somewhere far off, a tractor hums.
“So,” I say lightly, “are you going to ignore the fact that you almost kissed me again?”
His jaw flexes.
“That obvious, huh?”
“I mean… I practically heard wedding bells in Marge’s eyes.”
He doesn’t smile, not quite, but something softens in his face.
I don’t give him time to climb back behind that wall.
“Then why haven’t you?” I ask, voice steady even though my pulse does its own stampede.
His answer is a rough exhale. “It’s not about Crew. I know what that was.” His gaze drags over my mouth like it’s costing him. “It’s me. It’s… everything I haven’t figured out how to hold without breaking.”
I open my mouth to argue and don’t get the chance.
Rowan closes the distance in one sure step, my back finding the warm trunk of the oak.
His palm comes to my jaw, the other landing at my hip, and then his mouth is on mine—hungry and reverent, like he’s been starving and finally decided to eat.
The world narrows to the press of him and the rough bark at my spine and the way he kisses like he plans to remember every second later.
I rise onto my toes. He deepens, a low sound rumbling in his chest that I feel everywhere.
Fingers slide into my hair. My hands fist in the front of his T-shirt, hauling him closer like I could stitch us together if I tried hard enough.
He breaks only to breathe, then takes my mouth again, slower now, a promise threaded through the heat.
When he finally stops, he stays close—forehead tipped to mine, breath mingling, and his thumb still stroking the corner of my mouth like he can’t help himself.
“You deserve more than a man who’s still figuring out how to build anything that lasts,” he says, voice low and wrecked.
I keep him right there with a hand at the back of his neck. “Maybe you just needed the right person to build it with.”
His eyes shutter, then open—clearer, softer, like the choice hurts and heals at the same time. He kisses me once more, quick and certain, then rests his brow to mine again.
“I want to do this right,” he says. “Not perfect. Just… true. The kind that holds when storms roll in.”
“Okay,” I whisper, because it is and I am. “Then we start the way things that last always do—one nail, one board, one breath at a time.”
His mouth curves against mine. He laces our fingers—solid, warm, unshowy—and eases us away from the tree like he’s learned the exact pressure it takes to keep something precious intact.
We don’t hurry. We don’t explain. We walk back toward the glow of the house, hand in hand, like two people who have finally decided which direction to face.
We sit there like that for a while, our hands locked, the silence between us not heavy anymore, but healing.
When a breeze stirs the leaves above us, he looks down at me and says, “You terrify me, Ivy Quinn.”
I smile. “Good.”
Back at the farm, Rowan drops me off at the cottage like he’s afraid if he comes too close, he’ll lose every last bit of control he’s barely holding on to.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks, voice rough.
I nod, already halfway through the door. “You better.”
I don’t see him again until late afternoon.
I’m weeding the garden behind the cottage—yes, me , elbows-deep in dirt with my sunglasses perched on my head and my hair a frizzy halo of sweat. Rowan’s voice floats over the fence like it belongs here.
“Hey.”
I glance up.
He’s leaning on the gate. Sweat-damp shirt, dusty jeans, that eternal I’ve-been-working-with-livestock look he wears like a second skin.
He holds up a glass jar. “Sun tea.”
I blink at him. “You made me tea?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
I walk over and take it, sipping the warm liquid with a grateful sigh. “It’s delicious. You’ve ruined me for store-bought.”
He clears his throat, eyes on my mouth. I step closer. He doesn’t move.
A beat. Another. Then his fingers brush mine, and something inside me sparks like a struck match.
And just like that, we're no longer dancing around it.
That night, I sit on the porch of the cottage with the camp flyer napkin in my lap and my guitar beside me. I strum a few soft chords, words blooming from my lips like petals, gentle and easy.
It’s not a song yet, but it feels like one, like the beginning of something that matters.
As the stars stretch across the sky and the crickets sing, I close my eyes and let myself believe that this town might have room for a girl like me.
Maybe Rowan does too.
And if I’m lucky…
Maybe he’s already letting me in.