10. Ivy
IVY
THREE DAYS LATER
C am’s bike remains parked at the curb.
In exactly the same spot it has been occupying for almost two hours…
Untouched other than by the last fading rays of the summer sun that is gradually disappearing behind the buildings and casting shadows over the city.
A dark, lonely sentinel that reminds me so much of its owner.
There isn’t any sign of him , though.
I scan the surrounding street, examining each and every building, for what feels like the hundredth time since I followed him from my house, but I still can’t figure out where he might have gone after he climbed off that thing.
It’s quiet this time of night.
Not much foot traffic.
Only a few cars driving by.
And no sign of the man who barreled into my life and has somehow twisted me up enough that I have to know what happened between him and Drew and what he’s hiding. Enough that I literally followed him when I turned onto my street and saw him leaving before I could catch him to talk.
Clenching my jaw, I glance down at my phone again to check how long it’s been since I last stared at the screen to see how much time had passed.
Ten minutes.
But the longer I stand here, tucked between these two buildings in the alley, leaning against the brick and peeking around the corner at his bike, the more obvious it becomes that I have lost my mind.
This is stalking.
Full-blown.
Flat-out.
Criminally convictable.
Stalking.
I knew it when I followed him here. Logically, I knew I should have let him drive away from the house like he does every night and disappear until he decides to come back…only to repeat the cycle.
It shouldn’t matter what he does when he leaves.
It shouldn’t matter why he always leaves before I come home.
It’s none of my damn business.
Stop dancing.
But somehow, Marlo’s words keep repeating in my head.
It does feel like some strange, cosmic dance.
Cam waltzed into my life so unexpectedly.
Appeared on my doorstep like a ghost the day that I was supposed to marry Drew, when I had just brought what was left of him home.
And he has swept me away in a storm of questions when I didn’t think I could possibly have more than I did the night Drew died.
Yet, he possesses the ability to give me something no one else can—answers.
That doesn’t mean you should have followed him…
My conscience knocks violently against my skull, trying to convince me to walk back to where I parked my car a block away and go home. To do this the right way—like maybe leaving him a note at the house asking him to call me or to stay late one night so we could talk.
That would have been the right course of action…
Not standing here, staring at his bike, waiting for him to reappear.
I release a ragged breath, giving the Harley one more longing look. Like the man who rides it, it’s somehow dangerous looking. Something you want to climb on because it will feel incredible but also maybe kill you in the process.
There was a reason Drew never went near a motorcycle. After all the injuries and deaths he saw in the ER because of them, it would have taken an act of God to get him on one.
Yet Cam shows no fear taking off on one in the middle of the driving rain.
And taking off is exactly what I need to do.
I release a frustrated sigh, letting all the anticipation and frustration that’s been building up in me since I saw him pulling away from my house out with it.
Eventually, we’ll talk.
Forcing anything right now would only make the situation more fraught with tension that I’m quite sure neither of us needs at the moment?—
“Did you follow me here?”
“Shit!” I whirl toward the voice behind me and find Cam, leaning against the old, rough brick of one of the buildings we stand between, lighting up a cigarette that dangles from his lips.
Pressing my hand over my thundering heart, I try to steady my breathing and come up with any excuse—anything at all —that might explain why I would be here.
Aside from being a complete and total stalker.
“No, I?—”
One of his black brows rises to meet the hair falling across his forehead. Accusation darkens his blue gaze the longer he holds mine. “Just happened to be hanging out in this alley for fun on a Monday night?”
He takes a long drag from his cigarette as he waits for me to respond, looking so casually sexy and dangerous in his leather jacket, dark jeans, and T-shirt reclined against the wall with one knee up, booted foot pressed flat to the brick.
The man has caught me red-handed—or red-cheeked as I feel the heat creeping over them.
My throat tightens, strangling my ability to come up with any response when I know there isn’t one that would make any sense.
“Um…”
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
There isn’t any way out of this that will allow me to walk away with my pride intact. It left the moment I decided to follow this man.
“Okay, so maybe I was following you.”
A long stream of smoke floats from between his lips, and he raises both brows slowly. “Because?”
I let out a heavy sigh, my cheeks heating so badly that I know they are candy apple red by now.
Averting my gaze, I concentrate on the grainy, uneven texture of the brick on the wall immediately next to him instead of having to keep looking at him while we have this conversation. “Christ, this is embarrassing…”
He doesn’t say anything.
A second passes.
Another.
Sounds of cars passing on the streets and the smell of the smoke float over me, but Cam remains absolutely still and silent until I finally force myself to look at him again.
The corner of his mouth twitches before he shoves the cigarette back there, still watching with that consuming gaze that seems to see straight through me.
Be honest, Ivy.
It’s really the sole option. Even if I were a good liar, I don’t want to lie to Cam. That would only continue this dance , and we need to get off that floor and somewhere that I’m not spinning and spinning endlessly.
There are already too many secrets.
Too many unspoken truths.
Between Cam and Drew. Between Drew and me. And now, between Cam and me.
“I haven’t seen you in over a week, yet you’ve been at my house every day.”
His shoulders tense slightly, but he releases another puff of smoke casually, as if my statement didn’t somehow rattle him.
Anyone else might not have caught that tiny muscle movement, the shift in his stance against the brick, but in so many ways, he’s so much like his brother that it seems I can read him just as well.
It was intentional—him being gone by the time I got home each night.
He didn’t want to see me.
That knowledge somehow makes acid burn in my throat, because this entire week, even if he hadn’t been single-handedly ensuring I’ve been fed and leaving me those little glimpses into Drew’s and his past, I would still know he’s been there.
I can feel it—his presence in the house.
Not to mention the fact that his scent seems to permeate the air long after he’s left.
I’ve come to expect it to be there the last week, and the thought of walking in one day and it not being there makes my eyes burn with tears I don’t understand.
He watches me, as if he’s expecting me to expand upon my observation. When I don’t, he takes another long drag from his cigarette, then languidly releases it. “Do you not want me to come anymore?”
My gut tightens painfully, and I press my trembling hand over it. “No, it’s not that. I just…thought maybe you were avoiding me.”
His eyes never leave me as he inhales more smoke and lets it go in a round plume like the damn Cheshire Cat. Slowly. Deliberately. As if he’s trying to drag out my agony and leave me standing here longer looking like a complete and total idiot. “I haven’t been avoiding you, Ivy.”
Something tells me that isn’t completely true.
The slight downward turn of his lips and the steely set of his jaw. The way his shoulders tensed when I brought it up in the first place. The tightening of his fingers around his cigarette…
“What have you been doing then?” I glance at his bike behind me on the street and scan the area, still completely clueless what he would be doing in this area of town since he had already parked his bike and disappeared by the time I got through the stoplight that delayed me and found where he ultimately parked. “What are you doing here ?”
The corners of his mouth twitch, the tiniest hint of humor dancing across his blue eyes. “If I told you that , it would kind of defeat the entire purpose…”
“Defeat the purpose? What the hell are you?—”
Oh, shit.
Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit.
I squeeze my eyes closed and bury my face in my hands. “Shit. I am such an asshole.”
Cam clears his throat, the sound as rough as the brick fencing us in on two sides. “You have never been, nor could you ever be an asshole, Ivy.”
Letting my hands fall, I force myself to open my eyes and look at him again.
Really look at him and that torment in his gaze.
And think about all the little comments he made that day at my house about high school and how he spent his time.
And the things Drew alluded to at times, about Cam being dangerous whenever I tried to bring him up. “You were at a meeting.”
He nods cautiously. “NA. I’ve been clean and sober for a year.”
Oh, God…
“Do you go…every day?”
It would explain why he’s been leaving before I get home every day. He would have to in order to get here in time for it to start.
Glancing away to the other end of the alley, he places the cigarette between his lips and inhales deeply. Like he needs a moment and the nicotine to come up with his response. A few seconds later, he releases the smoke, still watching something on the street opposite me. “Lately, yes.”
Lately.
“Since Drew died?”
He swallows painfully and nods as he returns his attention to me.
Fuck.
And I’ve been annoyed with him for always leaving before I came home.
I thought he was trying not to see me for some reason. That I had done or said something wrong. I made it about me when it was about him and what he’s been going through . “I’m sorry…”
He snorts a laugh and sucks on the cigarette that’s burning precariously close to his fingertips now. “For what?”
“For being here. It’s none of my business.
” I shove my hands through my hair, embarrassment and guilt mixing into a volatile concoction in my bloodstream.
My legs tremble, begging me to bolt, to make a mad dash for my car to escape the sheer mortification I’m feeling under his scrutiny.
“I shouldn’t have followed you. I shouldn’t have…
inserted myself into your life when you clearly don’t want me in it. ”
Cam’s back stiffens, and he drops the butt and his foot from the wall, grinding the toe of his boot into it.
He turns and steps closer, until the smell of his jacket, citrus, the wind, and the light smoke clinging to him floods each breath I take. “ You don’t want to be anywhere near me or my life, Ivy. Trust me.”
Tension vibrates through him, and Cam tips his head back and stares up at the thin strip of appearing night sky visible between the tall buildings on either side of us.
A minute passes.
Another.
Finally, his voice cuts through the night air, bearing an edge to it that’s razor sharp.
“I’ve done a lot of really horrible things in my life, Ivy.
Drank myself to blackout. And when that stopped working, put just about every drug known to man into my body.
Cocaine, heroin… I injected literal poison into my veins to escape my life.
” His eyes dart over to mine, what plagues him making them almost black tonight.
“And that isn’t even the worst of it because what I’ve done to other people is ten times worse.
So, believe me when I say you should walk away now. ”
Those words and the absolute unwavering conviction with which he says them sting more than they should.
More than I should let them.
I’d love to believe it’s because I’m looking at an almost carbon copy of Drew, and the thought of never seeing him—never seeing Drew—again is unfathomable, but Camden isn’t Drew. And I’ve always known that.
At first glance, they may appear identical, but Cam’s eyes hold that pain Drew’s never did. A weight and heaviness that seems to settle onto his shoulders, too. He has been beaten down by something, broken by life or experiences in a way that Drew somehow escaped.
He isn’t anything like the man I loved.
And the reason what he said stung has nothing to do with their shared face and everything to do with this connection I’ve felt with him since I woke in the house to find him kneeling in front of me in that damn storm.
Because no matter how many times I try to push it away, attempt to deny what I’ve been feeling the past two weeks, it’s impossible to deny that I need him in my life. I need someone else who understands my pain, who is experiencing the same agony, in order to keep living through it.
“Isn’t that my decision to make, not yours?”
He sucks in a sharp breath, then retreats a step, shoving his hands through his thick, dark hair.
Then he finally glances back at me. “I need to eat, and since you’re here, I assume you haven’t yet, and what I left for you is still sitting in your fridge.”
“What did you leave for me?”
“Sweet and sour pork and sesame noodles from Emei.”
My stomach growls, and my mouth waters imagining the meal waiting for me. More of my favorites. “How did you?—”
He walks past me toward the street where he parked his bike. “You want to ride with me or meet me?”
Huh?
“Um, where are we going?”
His blue eyes meet mine over his shoulder as he pauses on the curb. “Max’s. I’m dying for a cheesesteak.”