27. Ivy #2
“Because earlier in the night, I left the party to get some fresh air out in the garden.” I squirm, shifting to tuck my feet under me. “And Drew eventually joined me, and things got…very inappropriate for public.”
Marlo’s jaw drops and stays open. “Did you fuck Drew in his mother’s garden during her damn birthday party?”
I shake my head. “No…I let who I thought was Drew kiss me senseless and get me off on his hand in his mother’s garden during her damn birthday party.”
“Oh. My. Fucking. God.” Marlo shifts forward and sets her wineglass on the coffee table, like she doesn’t trust herself to hold it anymore. “It wasn’t Drew?”
“No.” I shake my head, running my hands through my hair.
“That was Cam that night out in the garden. He came to surprise his mom and Drew at the party. They didn’t even know he was in the country, and he was going to slip in through the back door and surprise them.
Only, he got interrupted on his way in.” I press my hand against my chest. “By me .”
“Holy shit. And he just pretended to be Drew so he could hook up with you?”
Her outrage matches what I felt when I discovered the truth last night.
And how I should still feel about the situation.
But it’s so much more complicated than that.
The fact that he lied, that he pretended to be Drew and didn’t correct me when I made that assumption doesn’t bother me as much as the aftermath does.
I was a very willing participant in what happened on that bench, and I don’t have any way of knowing how things would have been different if he had sat next to me and introduced himself.
Would there still have been that spark?
Would attraction still have sizzled red hot between us?
Would I have slipped under his spell and completely forgotten that I came to the party with his brother and given into it?
I want to believe the answer is no to every single one of those questions.
I want to believe that I am too good a person and far too loyal to have ever acted that way when I had already started developing feelings for Drew at that point.
I want to believe I would have shaken his hand, chatted for a few minutes, then gone inside with him to help surprise Drew and Nancy.
But deep down, I’m not that confident.
A dark little voice that sounds like the one Cam used as he pounded into me last night whispers that I wouldn’t have cared about all the reasons it was wrong, that I would have kept going, that Drew’s fear of losing me to his brother was very valid.
Nausea roils my stomach, and I gulp in air, trying to prevent myself from throwing up the more that little voice talks to me.
The more it insists the reason I’m not more angry with Cam about what he did was because of how fucking much I liked it and him that I’m willing to forgive something so utterly unforgivable.
“Ivy?”
I jerk my gaze back to hers.
“I just want to make sure I’m following all of this. So, you hooked up with Camden and then that night, went home and slept with Drew…”
Hell.
Why is it so much worse when someone else says it?
It isn’t as if that fact hasn’t been slamming around in my mind since last night, hasn’t blown holes in those beautiful memories and turned them into something completely different—ones that will torment me.
Nodding, I squeeze my eyes together. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“Hmmm.” The scrape of Marlo snagging her wine from the table fills my ears, and I can feel her watching me, my skin flushing under the assessment. “So, what did you do after he told you? Did you smack him?”
My lids snap open, and I glare at her. “No, I did not resort to physical violence.”
She snorts. “I probably would have.”
Of that, I have absolutely zero doubt.
Marlo has always been the stronger of us. She stood her ground, refused to back down to anyone, even in school when we were still finding out who we would be as people, she knew she wasn’t the type to allow anyone to dampen her light, step on her toes, or do anything to hurt anyone she cared about.
She defended everyone in our circle with a vicious ferocity I could never find.
Maybe because Nonni and Mom were true pacifists and believed in free love, beauty, and that nature had the answer for everything.
If only it were that simple…
While I’d give anything to have them here, to feel their warm, comforting hugs again during a time when I need them the most, Marlo’s presence brings a tough-love, smack-in-the-face reality check that I so often need.
And he probably did deserve to be smacked for what he did.
“He warned me to stay away from him, that it had been a selfish and shitty decision on his part, that he understood if I couldn’t forgive him for it, but…”
But I’m weak.
The last several months have beaten me down, crushed what little strength I had before Drew died, and left me on a downward spiral to something incredibly scary. And I faced it alone.
Marlo, Trina, even Nancy being around, checking on me, trying to help, couldn’t break through the wall of anguish that had covered me so completely.
Yet, Cam broke through it.
Our shared grief and love for Drew allowed it to crumble, and when I did, he was there to hold me and keep me steady.
I don’t think Marlo could ever understand that, even if I tried to voice it.
Apparently, my inability to finish my sentence says it for me.
“Oh, girl.” Marlo’s eyes widen. “You stayed.”
The disbelief and disappointment hang heavy in the air between us, and I nod, biting my lip again, trying to figure out how to justify what I’m feeling in any way that won’t make me sound like the horrible person it seems like I’m becoming.
“I just…couldn’t walk away from him, Marlo. The other night, after we spread the ashes, him holding me, being with him like that, all of it felt right. Normal.”
She purses her lips, considering her words. “Because he looks exactly like Drew, not because he’s Camden.”
I wince at her statement.
Partially because I suspect it might still be true somewhere I don’t want to acknowledge, but also because I know there’s a part of me that understands it isn’t true at all.
“No.” I shake my head. “When he first got here, all I could see when I looked at him was Drew, but I don’t anymore. I see Cam . For who he is. For what he is.”
“Which is what, Ivy?” Her brows rise. “The guy who lied to you? The guy who pretended to be his brother to get in your pants?”
I scowl at her.
“Isn’t that what happened?”
“I mean, yes, but also…I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
I finally can’t sit still anymore, and push up from the couch, pacing in the living room.
“The way he talked about that night, the way he explained it to me, it was almost like he was drawn to me and he couldn’t walk away.
And I understand that because that’s how I felt with Drew, and that’s how I felt in that garden with Cam, too.
” Pausing, I close my eyes and envision that night again.
The scent of the pool and lilacs. The way the summer breeze blew over me so gently.
And then he appeared . “I knew I shouldn’t have let that happen out in the garden.
Good God, you know that’s so not me. But it was like I couldn’t help myself.
The way he looked at me, the way he kissed me, the way he touched me.
It just melted the rest of the world away. ”
Marlo studies me for a moment, her lips twisting. “And it still does that?”
There’s the ultimate question, the one that’s been rattling around inside my head since the moment he made his confession.
Given the way we spent hours wrapped up in each other, not thinking about anything else, and simply feeling , it would be impossible to say otherwise.
I nod. “I don’t know why, if it’s some big cosmic fucking joke, but being with Cam? It gives me something I never thought I’d have again.”
“What’s that, Ivy?”
“ Life .”
She settles back as if I’ve slapped her, her brow furrowing. “Really?”
“There’s just something about him, his energy, the way he lives his life so unapologetically and on his own terms, yet he cares so deeply for other people.
The beauty he can create with a flick of a hand.
He makes me”—I smile because I don’t know how else to describe it—“happy in a way I didn’t think was possible after Drew died. ”
Marlo considers me for a few moments. “Does he, though? Because all I’ve seen since he’s been in your life is you confused and anguished and constantly second-guessing your decisions and what you’re feeling. You were never like that with Drew. With Drew, it was all-in.”
“I know.” I shove my hands through my hair.
“But Drew was always so easy to be like that with. He was so open with everything, with how he was feeling, with what he wanted out of life and from me. It was effortless to do that with him. Cam isn’t like that, and that mystery, that reticence and haunted look in his eyes somehow draws me to him. ”
“You can’t fix him, hon.” She raises a concerned brow. “You know that, right?”
Anger flashes hot through my blood, and I clench my fists, glaring at her. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Aren’t you?” She lets that question settle for a second before she continues.
“Cam’s messed up. He said it himself; he warned you.
The man was addicted to every drug on the planet, abused all of them, and he’s only been clean for a year.
He ruined his relationship with his twin brother, the closest person to him in his life, by finger-fucking you in the goddamn garden of his mother’s house on her birthday, pretending to be him.
And you’re honestly going to tell me that this is the man you want to be with?
That, what, two months after Drew’s death, you’re ready for all of that ? ”
Fuck.
Tough love hurts.
I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my head.
“No. I’m just saying…” Frustration taking over, I throw up my hands and walk away toward the front windows to stare out at the street again.
“I just keep waiting for him to show up. My heart beats faster knowing he will. I don’t know what to do with that, Marlo.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.
Do I ignore it? Pretend it doesn’t exist. Go back to sitting on that couch or lying in my empty bed every night, sobbing and miserable and wishing I could join Drew wherever he is? ”
Because that’s what my life had become.
I was drowning in my despair the night Cam appeared on my doorstep, the closest I’ve ever been to doing something unimaginable that couldn’t be taken back.
His arrival saved me, even if it brought a deluge of other problems and questions with it.
Marlo releases a heavy sigh, and I hear the clink of her glass as she sets it on the table and her feet padding over to me.
She wraps her arms around me from behind and gives me a squeeze.
“I’m sorry. You know I’m only trying to get you to actually see what’s happening, right?
I don’t want you falling down some rabbit hole, chasing after some fantasy that doesn’t exist. He’s not Drew. ”
My bottom lip trembles. “I know.”
“He’s never going to be Drew.”
I choke on a sob. “I know. And I don’t want him to be.”
Because it was Cam who dragged me from that dark abyss.
It was Cam who brought me back to life again.
She releases me in order to step up next to me, and I turn to face her.
Green eyes filled with concern search mine. “Did you sleep with him?” I don’t even have to answer her because she gives me a tight smile. “Okay, so, we’ve already gone that far. What’s the plan?”
“What do you mean?”
She sweeps an arm toward the window. “I mean, he’s here in Philadelphia, right? But he still hasn’t told his mother.”
I cringe. “No.”
“And you two are sneaking around…”
“We’re not sneaking around. We went to the art museum today.”
Her brows rise. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I release a sigh. “And ran into, I guess, an ex-friends-with-benefits of his so that was awkward.”
She cringes. “Yikes.”
That same green monster rears its head, the vision of Roxy and how casual and intimate she was with him making me have to swallow back wine-tinged bile.
But I can’t be that person.
“Look, he had a life. Just like I did.” With his brother . “A past, one he isn’t proud of. Who am I to judge him?”
“You’re his brother’s fiancée.”
“A fact I don’t need to be reminded of, Marlo.
” I don’t mean to snap at her, but she recoils slightly at my tone.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if it’s possible for me to sort out all the feelings I have for Cam, but I know that right now, I need this feeling because the alternative is me pulling back those covers, climbing into that bed, and staying there indefinitely.
And I don’t want to do that anymore.” Tears stream down my face, and I shake my head. “I can’t.”
She grabs my hands and squeezes. “Okay. Just…be careful, Ivy. He warned you away for a reason.”
“I know.”
And there are a thousand reasons it shouldn’t happen again.
Why I shouldn’t want him to pull up his motorcycle on that street and come walking through that door tonight.
But not a single one seems to matter.