22. Ivy
IVY
NOW
M y legs tremble, threatening to give out as the memory washes over me like a destructive tidal wave.
The details are so crystal clear, even after all this time, that I can still feel his hand between my legs and the way my heart yearned for more from him even after he made me completely unravel in the most sinful way.
But I can’t speak.
Can’t move.
Can’t even begin to process this vicious truth bomb that just detonated in my mind.
Cam watches me with trepidation hardening his gaze, his brows drawn low, shoulders tense. “You keep asking me what happened between me and Drew, why we had a falling out, why we weren’t speaking to each other anymore. That night is why .”
Blood rushes in my ears, drowning out the music playing in the studio, making my head spin. My heart slams violently against my rib cage, and I stumble backward and grip the edge of the kitchen counter to keep myself upright.
He takes a step toward me with his free hand out, as if he’s going to grab me to keep me steady, but I flinch from his touch, stopping him in his tracks.
The floor tilts beneath my feet, wobbling as all the pieces fall into place, clicking together like some strange puzzle built on lust and lies. “Drew knew…”
He knew something had happened in the garden that night…
And he knew it had been Cam.
I let my gaze drift up to lock with his, even though he’s blurry through the tears now filling my eyes and sliding down my cheeks.
Cam looks utterly dejected, his shoulders slumped, free hand fisting at his side. “Of course, he knew.”
He knew.
He knew.
He knew.
Drew. Fucking. Knew.
That night changed everything for us.
For all intents and purposes, it was the true start of our relationship.
The weeks leading up to that had been getting to know each other. Feeling each other out. Figuring out if there was anything there beyond the initial attraction and playful flirtation.
But that night was the defining moment—the single second in time when I knew Drew was it.
And…
“Oh, God…” I slam my hand over my mouth to prevent a sob from slipping out, but even biting into my flesh doesn’t completely stop it. Not when the truth wrenches it from somewhere deep in my soul.
And…it wasn’t even him .
My head spins wildly, trying to make sense of any of this, and I release the counter and stagger over to the painting of me from that night.
If I had never seen this, if I had never questioned him about it, would Cam have ever told me the truth? Or would I have gone on thinking that one of the best nights of my life was with Drew?
Other canvases stand stacked, leaning against the wall behind it, and I reach out with a trembling hand and pull it back, exposing the next one.
Of me—sleeping on the couch in my living room.
I move to the next.
Of me—holding my mother’s lily.
The next…
Of me—tears streaming down my face as I stare up with utter devastation in my eyes that he somehow managed to capture perfectly.
Each one a snapshot of time we’ve spent together.
They’re all of me…
I frantically move another stack, tugging back a landscape propped at the front to find half a dozen more of me—each depicting a single moment from over the past several weeks.
Each drenched in my pain, reflecting precisely what I was feeling as if he weren’t merely witnessing it but actually experiencing it right along with me, each and every time.
These are my life.
These are my anguish.
These are his.
Cam moves, his footsteps making the old floorboards creak, but the look I cut his way over my shoulder makes him freeze, hand tightening around the still-dripping brush in it.
“You are my muse. You have been since the first moment I saw you…” His Adam’s apple bobs on his forced swallow, like he’s fighting through something lodged there. “And I haven’t been able to paint anything else since the night I came to your house…”
My hands tremble as I let the canvases fall back into place with a thunk that draws a cringe from him.
But I can’t care about that.
Not when the reality of what happened keeps smacking me squarely in the face. “Drew knew…”
Cam nods.
“But you never went in…”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I left because I had just kissed my brother’s girlfriend and gotten her off”—his voice rumbles, heavy with the same kind of agony tearing me apart right now—“and I wanted to do it again. I wanted to do worse.”
And I wanted him to.
I practically wept when he walked away, desperate to keep him there, my body aching to free his cock and allow him to slide home.
“You must have said something to him when you went back to the party, something that tipped him off, because Drew texted me shortly after I left, and it only said five words. ‘I know what you did.’”
He KNEW.
Because I walked into that house on shaky legs, found him, and told him I couldn’t wait to get home to finish what we started in the garden.
He. Fucking. Knew.
I choke on another sob, my hands fisting at my sides, seeking anything to cling to that might stop this spiraling feeling. Nails bite into my skin, but I don’t care. I need the physical pain to cut through the agony threatening to shred me apart right now. “That night changed everything…”
Cam nods. “Drew and I never spoke again.”
“What?”
That wasn’t what I meant.
I was referring to my relationship with Drew, to the fact that he brought me home after the party and made love to me for the first time. We were inseparable after that. I didn’t just give my body to him; I gave him my whole heart.
Cam locks his jaw, a muscle there ticcing.
“I’m sure he wanted me to call, wanted me to apologize, wanted me to offer some sort of an explanation for the way I acted, but I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t give him one. Because I didn’t regret it.
I couldn’t when”—his bare chest rises and falls sharply—“when it was the single greatest moment of my life.”
No.
I wince, squeezing my eyes closed against the flood of turbulent emotions and voices in my head.
They scream and thrash.
They fight to make sense, to find what was real and what was a lie, but I can’t tell anymore. All of it blends together into a swirl of black and white like the paint Cam places on the canvases.
Something clatters to the floor, and this time, when I hear Cam move closer, I don’t have the power to retreat.
My entire body feels numb.
Useless.
On the verge of collapse.
Everything I thought I knew about my relationship with Drew was a lie.
All spawned from one night—that I didn’t even have with him .
Cam stops in front of me and grips my chin, forcing my face up, and I let my eyes open, almost blinded by the intensity of what stares back. “Everything the two of you had was real, Ivy. You had over four years together. You had a life together. A future together.”
His words barely register over the whooshing of blood in my ears.
I can’t look away from his penetrating gaze, from the force of it and the way it locks me in place.
How did I not see it?
How did I miss it?
The differences between them…
The darkness that creeps into his blue eyes that Drew’s never had…
The slightly more crooked smile…
The way this heat that blazes across Cam’s gaze as he looks at me burns like a wild inferno, whereas when Drew looked at me, it smoldered.
“I-I should have known.”
Cam shakes his head. “No. You shouldn’t have.
Drew and I often wore similar clothes without even planning it.
And back then, I didn’t look like this. ” He motions toward his face.
“I always covered my tattoos for my mom’s parties.
We probably looked exactly the same that night to everyone.
And I was a fucking selfish prick who took advantage of the situation. ”
“But why ?” My lip trembles along with my body. “Did you really hate him that much that you had to?—”
I can’t even say the words.
Can’t even bring myself to think them.
His brows draw low, his gaze confused now.
“ Hate him?” He shakes his head, and a humorless laugh slips from his mouth.
“I didn’t hate him, Ivy. I loved Drew more than anyone on this planet.
” He sucks in a long, slow breath as he searches my face, and then his thumb moves up and brushes over my lips.
“Until the moment I walked into that yard and saw you.”
My breath catches at the passion burning in his gaze, the absolute surety in it, even when I’m not sure about anything anymore.
“It was like time stood still, Ivy. Lightning struck. The earth shifted under my feet. All those clichés you always hear about in the movies and romance novels. All of it happened to me the instant I laid eyes on you that night. I saw you sitting there, and I just…” He shakes his head, tilting it as he stares at my lips.
“I knew who you were instantly. I knew you thought I was him. I knew I was doing something wretched and wrong. But I couldn’t walk away.
I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t let you slip through my fingers. ”
Instead, I came on them…
I unraveled in his arms, under his touch and kiss.
I came apart .
“But I wasn’t yours to have …”
He flinches, his eyes squeezing closed. “You think I don’t fucking know that, Ivy?
” His palm slides away from my face, and he steps back, shoving his hands through his hair.
“I’m not a good person. I’m the guy who tries to steal his brother’s girlfriend.
And that night destroyed everything . My relationship with Drew, my relationship with my mother because I couldn’t ever come home.
All of it gone in a fucking instant because I saw you and had to have you.
Because I wasn’t strong enough to walk away.
Because I wasn’t a big enough man, or a good enough person to just tell you who the fuck I was and let Drew have you.
” He pounds his fist over his heart and opens his eyes, now wet with tears.
“I had to take you, and it cost me my fucking sanity .”