Chapter 13 Cam
CAM
ONE WEEK LATER
It looks so different tonight.
His house.
Hers now.
Darker…
I look up at the porch light I replaced that should be glowing brightly this time of night, but it’s off—either because Ivy forgot to turn it on or chose to keep herself in the darkness intentionally.
Probably the latter.
Ever since the beach, I’ve been worried about her, even more than I had been before that day.
And not just because of how we left things. She had every right to feel that way and say those words to me.
She seemed so…lost.
Alone.
Drifting and hopeless.
So completely devastated in a way that seemed even worse than how I found her that first night after she’d received Drew’s ashes.
I hadn’t thought it could get harder than it was at that moment when her eyes met mine through the driving rain and she said his name…
Having to watch confusion and then hope flicker across her face for that split-second before she crumpled into my arms.…
But I was so fucking wrong.
About everything.
And there were so many things I wished I’d said as she walked away from me on the beach, but I knew none of them would change anything for her—or me.
All saying them would have done is make me seem desperate.
Because I am.
I’m desperate to go back to that night four years ago and do it all over again so fucking differently.
I’m desperate to go back to that night months ago and change everything I said to Drew.
Instead of threatening to reveal the truth to Ivy, I would congratulate him and drop to my knees to beg his forgiveness. I’m desperate to take Ivy’s pain away…
As if that’s even possible.
There have been so many things I’ve deluded myself about, but that isn’t one of them.
But it doesn’t mean I won’t do anything I can to make it better for her.
Even if it means facing the same anger she threw at me on that beach, which might very well happen tonight.
I’ve walked through this front door so many times over the last few months—uninvited, then welcomed as a friend, as a lover, then uninvited again…yet she hasn’t asked me to stop.
It would be easy for her to ask Mom to tell me to stop, or even to reach out herself and demand I stop intruding into her home and her life.
To stop with the meals and the notes about the baby.
To stop coming in when I know she’s gone, like a thief in the night trying to get away with something he knows he shouldn’t be doing. But she hasn’t.
And that’s the only thing that gives me any glimmer of hope where Ivy is concerned.
When everything else, including her own words, warns me to stay away, I keep coming back, moving toward that dim light at the end of the vast dark tunnel, hoping that one day, I might finally step into it and be able to embrace something besides this anguish we both seem to be lost in.
And that’s what worries me most tonight—that she’s lost somewhere no one can reach her and doesn’t want to be found.
Because she should be at the shop right now.
She should be busy with Marlo and Trina working on the flowers for the wedding tomorrow.
She should be surrounded by people who love her and support her.
But she chose to come here.
To this dark house.
Alone.
Just like she chose to go to the shore alone rather than asking Marlo or Mom to go with her on a day she knew would be incredibly difficult.
There’s a difference between needing space and wanting some time alone to process things and locking yourself away to wallow and waste away.
And I can’t allow the latter to happen to Ivy.
I promised Drew I would take care of her and the baby, and that is one promise I will never break, even if it breaks me.
Balancing what I brought for her in my left arm, I pull out the key and slip it in, then unlock the door.
I hesitate for a moment before pushing it open.
That hint of reservation about whether I should be intruding when she made it very clear she doesn’t want me to is enough to make me reconsider what I’m about to do.
But I’ve never been good at self-preservation or doing things that are in my own best interest.
That’s always been my downfall and what has led to just about every shitty decision I’ve ever made.
Which is why I open the door and enter the home Ivy shared with Drew for the first time in months when Ivy is also here.
Her scent overwhelms me immediately, like blossoming flowers in the spring, despite the fact that nothing truly feels alive in this house.
The darkness envelops me, everything still and quiet.
I inhale deeply, drawing what I can of her into my lungs since there’s a very good chance she is going to kick me out as soon as she realizes I’m here.
I tighten my grip on the items in my left hand and tucked into my elbow before I close the door behind me.
Silence lingers as I make my way to the kitchen and place the bag with her dinner into the fridge.
I pause for a moment, waiting and listening, but there still isn’t any sign of where she might be.
Unease settles in my stomach, and I take the other item I brought for her and set it on the small end table beside the couch next to the photo of her with Drew at the shore the day he proposed.
A place so filled with happy and beautiful memories for us that he made their place, only for it to become somewhere filled with the sadness I saw on Ivy’s face the other day.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I take a deep breath and force myself to look away from it before a tidal wave of emotions can overwhelm me.
Fuck.
I’ve tried so hard to find a way to sort through all these feelings over the past few months, but each time it seems like I might be getting a grip on the constant internal turmoil, that I might be finding a way to make it through a single day without breaking down and having to fight for my sanity and sobriety with every fucking fiber of my being, something sets me back again.
A memory.
A smell.
A single look from the woman whose house I’ve just let myself into.
She’ll hate me for being here, for me having to be the bad guy by not letting her slide down this slippery slope that leads nowhere good.
But I already am anyway.
Always will be.
And I have to keep my promise to Drew and give myself some peace of mind that she’s all right.
I make my way past the closed office door and to her bedroom, pausing just inside the jamb, refusing to invade this space that belonged to them.
I’ve crossed so many lines that never should have been, but this one seems more like a vast canyon I refuse to leap over.
Ivy lies with her back to me, her dark hair spread out behind her on the pillow. If she’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake her, but I need to know that she and the baby are okay.
“Ivy?”
She flinches, as if hearing me say her name is somehow painful to her now, when she used to shiver in anticipation when I whispered it before.
I squeeze my eyes closed and drop my forehead against the doorjamb, sucking in a long, slow breath, gathering the strength I need to face whatever wrath she might throw at me tonight.
“What are you doing here?”
Her voice is somehow soft but heavy with a thousand different emotions I’ve also struggled with so intensely.
I lift my head and gaze at her again—the slope of her exposed shoulder blade, the way her hand rests protectively on her growing stomach, the elegant length of her neck, and the smooth line of her jaw.
My hands itch to touch her, to run over her soft skin and absorb all that addictive energy she always puts out.
Instead, I fist them at my sides, preventing me from overstepping—again. “I stopped by the shop to bring you dinner because you usually work late on Friday nights before a wedding…”
She tilts her head slightly toward me, still not looking over her shoulder but clearly listening.
“Marlo told me you left early because you were tired.” I swallow thickly. “I was worried.”
That probably wasn’t the right thing to say.
It was only a week ago that we stood on that beach and she told me she didn’t want me to worry about her.
And I don’t have the right.
Ivy isn’t mine.
She never has been.
Even when she was in my arms and my cock was buried deep inside her, she was always Drew’s, and no matter how badly I want to believe that could ever change, it won’t.
Her heart will always belong to him.
And that’s how it should be.
But even knowing that, I can’t just walk away.
I never could when it came to Ivy.
She finally turns her head all the way and glances over her shoulder at me, and teary eyes slam into me so hard that I practically stagger back.
God, I fucking miss her.
Every single part of my soul screams out to close the distance between us, to pull her into my arms and tell her how much I love her and how sorry I am. But she doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want more apologies that won’t change anything. More words that can’t undo all the damage I’ve already caused.
She wants the life she was supposed to have.
She wants the life Drew promised her and would have delivered.
Ivy shifts slightly, returning her head to the pillow and her focus to the wall in front of her. “I’m just tired.”
I don’t believe that.
Not even a little bit.
She takes her job too seriously and cares about the business and her customers too much to leave early when there’s work to do for something as important as someone else’s special day…unless she truly couldn’t be there any longer.
“Really, Cam. I’m fine—”
Her voice breaks before she can finish, and a sob slips out.
She slaps her hand over her mouth to try to cover it, but it’s too late. That heartrending sound slams into my chest so hard that I close the three steps between me and the bed before I can even think about what I’m doing.