16. Ivy
IVY
C am kills the engine, plunging my street into utter silence.
This early in the morning, nothing is stirring. No vehicles. No people. Even the summer crickets aren’t chirping, quieted by the coming dawn, or our loud arrival scared them away.
I scan the neighborhood Drew and I loved so much.
The towering trees along each curb, the ones nearest the streetlights casting leafy shadows onto the pavement.
The quiet homes lining each side of the street—all dark, their residents fast asleep in their beds.
Husbands and wives snuggled together. Children tucked in with kisses and fairytales.
All sweetly oblivious to the turmoil brewing inside me just outside their closed doors and windows.
It’s so peaceful, so perfect.
Then my gaze lands on my house.
With the porch light off, it may appear like the rest of them—a place where a happy family slumbers undisturbed by the turbulence of the world outside—but it doesn’t feel like they do.
Not to me.
Not when I know how empty it is inside.
Not when no one is waiting for me to crawl into bed with them.
No one is there waiting to hold me.
Nothing but cold sheets and another sleepless night without Drew waiting for me behind that door.
And the ride back from Strathmere has left me shaking in a way that has nothing to do with the thrill of being on Cam’s bike.
It’s a cataclysmic crash.
A full-blown collapse of my ability to remain strong or pretend that everything will be okay.
The tears at the beach were merely a fraction of what I’ve bottled up inside me, and as it vibrates under my skin, seeking release, I know that if I’m alone tonight, it will be with intrusive thoughts and suffocating grief.
And I’m not sure I’ll survive it.
Not alone.
Cam glances over his shoulder at me, holding out his hand to help me off while he searches my face carefully, taking in every detail and cataloging it behind his darkened eyes. I slide my palm into his and swing my leg over until I’m standing on the pavement beside the bike on shaky legs.
He starts to pull his hand away, and all the air rushes from my lungs on a panicked exhale as I tighten my grip.
One of his brows rises. “Ivy?”
My bottom lip trembles, and I stay standing through sheer will alone on knees that want to buckle. I don’t want to need this. I don’t want to need him. I want to be strong enough to walk through that door myself and spend the night alone, the same way I have every night since Drew died.
But I don’t have it in me tonight.
I just can’t.
“Will you…” I swallow through my suddenly dry throat. “Will you stay…for a while?”
I hate how needy I sound.
How helpless.
Cam’s entire body tenses, the leather of his jacket creaking as he rolls his broad shoulders, his hand still clasped tightly in mine. “Ivy?—”
No!
I can see his reservation.
The hesitation in his gaze.
“Please. I just”—I shake my head, willing the tears to remain at bay—“don’t want to be alone right now. I don’t think I can be. I don’t trust myself to be…”
Not after what we just did.
I don’t say those final words, but I shouldn’t have to.
Cam was there to watch me crumble on that beach.
He witnessed my devastation.
Held me through it.
Helped me remember how to breathe.
Assured me that things would get better when, in that moment, it felt like it never would.
So, he knows how I’m feeling.
He understands what I’m saying without voicing the words .
Cam watches me for a moment, his gaze locked with mine so long that I almost get lost in the murky-blue waters that swirl with reservation and uncertainty. “Okay…”
Despite the clear hesitation in his acceptance, relief rushes from me on a heavy breath.
I slowly release his hand—not fully trusting my legs—and step back, giving him room to climb off the bike as I brace my hand on the seat. He does it tentatively, his jaw tight, shoulders tense, and pulls his helmet from his head, shaking out his thick, dark hair.
He approaches cautiously, lifting his hands to release the strap on mine, carefully removing it. Then he tucks it into the saddlebag and turns to face me again.
Tension rolls off him, along with an uneasiness I haven’t felt from him since the first night he showed up on my doorstep. When we were total strangers.
So much has changed between us since then.
We’re…
Friends ?
I’m not sure that word fits, but nothing else seems to, either.
With everything we’ve shared with each other, the harsh reality we’re both living in with Drew’s loss, we should be friends. Yet, he’s still keeping secrets. Things that could help give me answers about those lingering questions that keep me awake at night.
But tonight, I don’t need them.
I just need to not be alone.
To be with someone who can understand how I feel right now.
And he’s the only person on the planet who does.
Cam follows me up to the house, and I dig the key from my pocket and unlock the door, pushing it open to the emptiness I knew I would find.
So different from how this space once felt.
It was our haven, where we planned our lives together, laughing and loving.
Tonight, it’s quiet.
That spark gone.
All that love and joy sucked away the moment his heart stopped beating.
I used to walk in and feel mine swell.
Now, it’s merely an empty void in my chest.
This is why I didn’t want to be alone.
I couldn’t be alone.
My eyes move to the now-empty mantle, and almost instantly, they burn with the threat of tears I thought I had completely cried out at the beach.
Cam closes the door behind him, shrugs off his jacket, and drapes it on the chair he sat in that first night he came.
He runs his hands through his already disheveled hair, the thick locks falling over his forehead and curling at his temples as he slowly lowers himself onto the couch and spreads his arms across the back.
I peel off my jacket and lay it over his, trying to keep my gaze from drifting to the mantle. “You want something to drink?”
He shakes his head, his eyes going to exactly that spot. “I’m okay.”
I am definitely not.
My knees tremble, and I grasp the armrest of the couch, using it to help me sit beside him.
His eyes lock on me, taking in every movement, assessing me in that piercing way he always does. As if he’s trying to catalog each minute detail for later reference.
The scrutiny heats my skin, and I stare at the empty fireplace rather than at him. But it isn’t long before my eyes drift up to the mantle where the box sat—its presence massive even though it was small enough to rest there unobtrusively.
It only occupied that spot for a few weeks, but its absence has hit me almost as hard as the news of Drew’s death did that night I got the call from Nancy.
And the longer I look at it and see the empty spot, the harder the reality of what we just did hits me.
He’s really gone now.
All of him.
My chest tightens, squeezing relentlessly until I can barely breathe, and a sob I didn’t know I still had left in me falls from my lips, breaking the silence of the house I was so scared of.
“Shit, I’m sorry…” I bury my face in my hands, the tears flowing down my cheeks and dampening my palms. The hiccupped sobs rip from my chest, and I try to breathe through them. Try to rein it back in. “I-I thought it would be better.”
What we did tonight was the right thing to do.
What Drew would have wanted.
So why does it feel so wrong?
Cam shifts beside me and settles his hand on my back, rubbing gently. “I’m sorry, Ivy.” His voice sounds gravelly, as if he is struggling the same way I am, just doing a much better job at hiding it. “I honestly don’t know if it ever will get better, but what we did tonight…”
I lift my head and meet his gaze. His blue eyes swim with concern and a dozen other emotions I can’t distinguish.
“It had to be done. For you and for him .”
For you and for him…
Those words batter against my skull, and I know he’s right. Deep down in my gut. But my heart doesn’t seem to want to agree.
The memory of watching the ashes float away in the wind and disappear into that dark water clutches my chest so tightly I struggle to drag in air.
“I just don’t…” I fumble with my words, unsure how to explain the suffocating sense of uncertainty and loss overwhelming me. “I don’t know what to do without him.”
No answer has come in the weeks since he died.
And it feels like one will never come.
Hiccupped sobs overwhelm me, stealing my ability to speak any further. And there isn’t anything left to say, anyway.
This agony won’t ever dissipate.
This loneliness and hollowness are my new normal.
This is my new life, even though it doesn’t feel like living at all.
Cam slides his hand from my back to around my shoulders and reaches over to drag me up onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me and allowing me to bury my face against his neck.
He holds me to him tightly.
Keeps me from shattering.
Offers me his strong body to give me something to cling to when it feels like I’m free-falling.
Leather and citrus fill my labored breaths, each one so painful that I want them to stop.
I want all of this to just stop.
Cam’s warm breath flutters over me as he presses his lips into my hair, his arms securely gripping my trembling body. “You keep doing what you have been doing, Ivy. Making it through each second, each minute, each hour, each day. That’s all you can do.”
His voice doesn’t waver.
His hold doesn’t yield.
His confidence in his words as steady as the man who said them.
I pull my head back and look at him in the moonlight streaming in through the front window. His hooded eyes hold so much pain, and yet somehow, they ground me because they also possess an profound certainty that I wish I could share. “You say that like it’s so easy.”
Cam shakes his head, brushing hair away from my face and swiping away my tears with his thumb. “It’s far from easy, but it’s all you can do. It’s all I can do.”
He isn’t just talking about losing Drew…
It’s how he lives his life now in recovery.