Chapter 16 Ivy
IVY
The pounding on the front door draws me from bed far too early considering the mostly sleepless night I had after Cam left, and I groggily stumble to it, rubbing my eyes and yawning.
“Ivy!”
Marlo’s muffled voice reaches me as I struggle to throw the lock with my brain still not quite completely awake.
“Hold on!” I finally manage to throw the deadbolt in the right direction and tug open the door to find her practically bouncing on the porch with the sun barely risen. “What are you doing here?”
And why the hell are you so damn perky this early?
She pushes past me, tugging her phone out of her pocket as she does. “Did you see the news this morning?”
“What?” I rub my eyes again, nudging the door closed with my hip. “No, you just woke me up—”
“Look!”
Blinking rapidly to clear my vision of those last remnants of sleep, I scan the headline of an article pulled up on her phone screen.
Cush Returns In Philly
My breath catches as I snatch it from her hand, quickly scrolling down to the image below the words. “Oh, my God…”
Marlo nods vigorously. “Right? That’s them, isn’t it?”
Them…
Tears blur my vision, and I have to swipe them away with my free hand to see the mural painted on pale brick. “Yeah, that’s them…”
Right there in black and white.
So vivid and lifelike, it feels like I could reach out and touch the five-year-old versions of the two men who have altered my life in such immeasurable ways.
Drew and Cam…
Sitting on a curb…
In their matching outfits and shoes…
Sharing a cheesesteak…
My throat tightens, and I struggle to swallow through the clog that has lodged squarely in it as I stare at the painting of exactly what Cam described to me while we sat in that booth at Max’s.
God, was that really only a few months ago?
It seems impossible to believe when so much has happened since then, when so many things that are so huge have changed in such a short period of time.
The baby kicks, almost as if she’s sensing my heightened emotions and is responding in kind.
I rub gently at the spot and glance up at Marlo. “Where is this?”
She snags the phone from my hand and scrolls down through the written article to another photo of the mural taken from farther back.
“On a building behind Max’s parking lot.
It appeared overnight.” Her wide eyes scan over the screen, her lips parted in awe.
“I mean, he must have been up all night painting that—”
“No.” I shake my head, my body trembling as everything that happened last night replays through my mind. “It wasn’t all night.”
Because I woke up to him gone well before midnight.
The bed was already cold.
Which means he must have left here to go do this.
Hot tears trail down my cheeks, and Marlo grabs my wrist, dragging my attention back to her rather than what any of this means.
Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
Pulling free from her hold, I stumble to the couch and drop down onto it, afraid my legs won’t continue to hold me up. “He was here…”
Marlo looks from me to Gladys sitting on the end table. “I figured he was at some point. He stopped by with dinner and was worried when I told him you had already left.” She trails her fingers around the edge of the pot. “And he saw Gladys and wanted to bring her to you.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Yeah, he…uh…stayed for a while.”
Her eyes widen. “What’s a while?”
Shit.
I bury my face in my hands, embarrassment heating my cheeks. “I’m not totally sure. I fell asleep, but I woke up hungry around maybe eleven, and he was gone…”
She drops onto the couch beside me, narrowing her assessing gaze and likely seeing far too much. “What’s wrong?”
So many things.
All those reasons I was lying in that bed alone, staring at the wall, trying to escape into a fantasy because reality was crippling yesterday still exist.
That agony that made me break down in front of Cam when I promised myself I would never give him a reason to worry because I needed him out of my life still lives in my chest.
Drew is still gone, and we’re still here, facing a future without him.
But as I rest my hand over my stomach and rub at the spot where the baby likes to press her foot, the emptiness I felt when I woke to Cam gone doesn’t seem so…fathomless.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
Just like I’ve never known what to do with this hurricane of conflicting emotions Camden Usher created when he stormed into my life unexpectedly.
The raging pregnancy hormones don’t help anything.
It seems like anything and everything can set off a downward spiral that I’m not capable of pulling myself out of alone. I probably wouldn’t have been able to if Cam hadn’t shown up last night, if he hadn’t said those words and made those promises I want so badly to believe.
I shake my head to try to clear away those thoughts that will pull me down the dark path I somehow escaped.
“Nothing is wrong. This is…” My gaze travels to her phone still clutched in her hand, the mural still up on the screen.
A long breath rushes from my lungs. “This is a good thing. And I want to see it.”
Marlo nods, pushing to her feet and sliding her phone into her pocket. “Let’s go.”
“Now?”
She sighs and holds out a hand to me. “Yes, now. Trina can open alone today.” A grin pulls at her lips. “We need to see this in person.”
* * *
It’s even more stunning up close.
From here, I can see every minute detail Cam included in the image. So perfect that it’s like a snapshot in time. Yet he somehow did it with only black and white.
The way one brother closes his eyes as he takes a bite, as if he can’t wait to savor it, while the other grips the sandwich with both hands, ready to devour it, makes it so easy to tell which one is Drew.
He savored life.
Never took it for granted.
Lived each moment with the kind of intense love of it that mirrored the way he loved me.
But Cam…
He devours.
Anything and anyone in his path.
He sees something he wants, and he consumes.
That’s precisely what he did with me, and staring at this image now, surrounded by dozens of strangers who came to see it, too, I somehow know this was meant for me as much as it was for him.
This mural is a love letter to his brother and an apology for everything that went wrong between them.
It was the only way he could say it.
Tears spill down my cheeks, and Marlo wraps her arm around me and squeezes.
“You good?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
My hands move down to rub at my stomach, where the baby’s movements seem to have only increased since we arrived, almost as if she’s as excited as I was to see this.
That’s your daddy…
And your uncle…
The memory of his large, warm hand pressed against the same spot mine now rests, and the way he held me so tightly through my complete breakdown, threatens to buckle my knees.
But Marlo’s hold on me keeps me steady.
“What do I do?”
I glance over at her, and she offers me a sympathetic half-smile.
“I’ve never known you not to do the right thing, Ivy.”
A little half-laugh, half-sob slips from my lips. “But what if I don’t know what the right thing is?” I shake my head. “I can’t…I can’t stop hating him and being so fucking angry about what he’s caused. How am I supposed to forgive that?”
Marlo’s gaze cuts to the mural, and she stares at it for a long time before she finally returns her focus to me. “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t?”
“And keep him from his niece’s life?”
From mine?
It’s the last thing I should want after everything that’s happened, but I can’t deny that last night, the thought that he might not stay, that he might turn and walk away instead, had filled me with so much fear that it physically hurt.
Or that waking up and finding him gone felt like losing something important all over again.
But I also can’t deny this bone-deep anger I continue to carry with me every day at how things have turned out.
This baby will never know the man on this wall. She won’t know his laughter, or his gentle touch, or feel how much he loves her the way I always did.
And there’s only one reason for that.
One person to blame.
The identical little boy sitting next to him, who somehow always manages to break through the walls I build around myself and make me question everything.
Just like he is doing right now.