Chapter 40
forty
IVY
“You know, this is one of your traits that I really don’t like.” Ivy didn’t even bother knocking on Nathalie’s door as she walked into Nathalie’s bedroom. Nathalie was lounging on her bed, back propped up, staring—no glaring—at the wall.
“You’re not the only one.”
“Lachlan or you?”
Nathalie flicked her a look that was still very much a glare. “Probably both, if I’m honest.”
“Well, honest is a good place to start.” Ivy nervously brushed her palms against her hips and walked over to slide backward onto the bed. Sometimes she hated wearing skirts, mostly in moments like this when it’d be so much easier to crawl into the bed in a pair of leggings, but she’d spent all day at work and work required she look nice.
Nathalie didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move when Ivy sat by her legs. This was going to be a tough one, Ivy knew that. Nathalie was feeling something big, and typically when that happened, she shut down as quickly as possible. Which meant that Ivy was going to have to drag Nathalie out of whatever hell she’d fallen into.
“Lachlan and I convinced Greer to think about it.”
Nathalie snorted and rolled her eyes. “She’s already made her decision, Ivy. I don’t think you two can convince her to change her mind now.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t even know why she’s quitting.”
“She’s quitting because she wants to.” Nathalie flicked her gaze to Ivy. “No one quits under force. They do it because they’re under duress, because their bosses are shit, or because they want and have another job lined up.”
“Well, I don’t think she has another job lined up.” Ivy leaned back slightly, stretching her feet out in front of her. The conversation with Greer had been startling at best. She hadn’t been expecting it, not after everything they’d gone through, everything they’d done. But she could see where Greer’s mind had taken her, the path she’d wound to draw the conclusions she had.
“Why would she quit without another job?”
“Because she thinks it’s better than the alternative.” Ivy made sure to look directly at Nathalie. She wanted to see how she was taking in this information and how exactly they were going to be having a conversation from here on out. Would Nathalie admit that it was more than just sex? She was so close to that, to fully admitting that their world was dependent on each other, all of them, and that perhaps for once, she wanted it that way.
“The alternative being homeless and jobless?” Nathalie raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Yes, that is better than the alternative.”
“I don’t get it.” Nathalie sighed heavily. “I don’t get why she would willingly walk into that instead of just staying here.”
“You walked away.” Ivy raised her chin up, trying to make her point. “You walked away instead of staying in there to have the hard conversation. God, you two are so fucking similar sometimes it drives me nuts. Neither one of you wants love, or thinks you’re worthy of it, or thinks that deep meaningful relationships make sex and family better. But they do. And I’m tired of you especially trying to deny the fact that you need that in your life.”
Ivy hadn’t meant to say it quite like that, but she was exhausted from spinning in this conversion. She’d been doing it with Nathalie for twenty plus years. It was perfectly fine for Nathalie to consider Ivy and Lachlan her best friends, but she always tried to keep them at arm’s length, she always tried to convince herself that she had to do life on her own, when in reality that wasn’t what she did at all.
“I’m sorry, but I’m tired of your attitude.”
“ My attitude?” Nathalie pressed her hand over her chest. “Get off your high horse, Ivy.” Nathalie flung the blanket off her legs and immediately got out of the bed, but she didn’t leave the room. Ivy wondered if it was because she didn’t know where to go. With Greer and Lachlan still downstairs, the kids in the house, and Ivy right here, she was literally confined by the people who loved her and that she didn’t want to be loved by.
“Yes, your attitude.” Ivy stayed sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping as calm as she possibly could. She was ready for this fight. And she needed to be the one to have it because she was perhaps the only one that could make some kind of dent in Nathalie’s thick skull. “Do you want us here or not?”
Nathalie froze in her pacing. Her eyes locked on Ivy’s, and her lips parted in surprise.
“Because we can all leave.”
“W-why would you leave?” Nathalie’s lower lip trembled.
“I love you, Nathalie. Lachlan loves you, Greer loves you, we all love you. But you go around and act like you don’t need to be loved. You go around and act like you’re outside of and beyond us, that you’re not quite within this circle.” Ivy curled her fingers into the sheets, needing to make sure that she said this correctly. “Do you want to know why we weren’t a family before Greer came into our lives?”
Nathalie shook her head, but Ivy dove headfirst forward anyway.
“Because you never saw us as a family. Lachlan and I have relied on each other and you for years. And you’ve relied on us. We are a family. We always have been, since we met back in college.” Ivy’s heart raced. She had to be getting through to Nathalie, right? She had to be saying something that was going to make a dent, that was going to shift Nathalie’s perspective. “Tell me that’s not true.”
“I-I can’t,” Nathalie whispered. “You two have been my world since college, since I left my parents out of my life, since I decided to go to medical school and since I decided to start a family.”
“Not start , Nathalie.” Ivy stood up now, walking toward her. “Not start a family. We were a family before Leon and Alaric were born. We were a family before Baylor and Penny. And maybe that’s why it never worked out with them, or at least partly why, because we never brought them into the family.”
Ivy took Nathalie’s hands in her own and stared down at the physical connection. Nathalie wasn’t running away, so that was a good thing. She wasn’t yelling or screaming either, and that was even better. Ivy had been afraid that was going to happen as soon as she walked in here.
“Greer has put a lot of things into perspective for me, things I never really thought about until she started questioning them.” Ivy looked up into Nathalie’s eyes. “Things like who I love and why I love them. Things like why I was holding myself back from experiencing that love. Things like what family really and truly means.”
Nathalie drew in a sharp little gasp, but she still didn’t say anything.
“And I’d wager a bet that she’s done the same for Lachlan and the same for you.”
“She hasn’t,” Nathalie whispered, but it didn’t sound like she meant it. It sounded like that old defiance rearing its ugly head again.
Ivy broke away, stepping back and no longer touching Nathalie. “Then I’ll say that we’ll all leave. If it doesn’t matter, then why would we stay?”
“Ivy…” Nathalie stepped closer, reaching for Ivy’s hand and grasping her fingers again. She stared down at some random point between the two of them, not making eye contact, not saying anything. Ivy held her breath, hoping that this was going to be the moment when those walls holding Nathalie back would finally shatter and come crumbling down. Because she was tired of running up against them. She was exhausted from having to prove her point repeatedly that Nathalie couldn’t live without them, that she needed them. But more than that, she wanted them here.
Ivy breathed into the silence, giving Nathalie the time she needed to formulate her thoughts and her words, and hopefully dig a little deeper into exactly what she was feeling. The silence was deafening, and the longer it went on the more Ivy’s stomach churned because what if she’d been wrong? What if Nathalie didn’t feel the same way about them that they felt about her?
What if Greer was right? That it was easier to flee than it was to stay.
“I need you in my life,” Nathalie whispered, still not looking up to meet Ivy’s gaze. “I can’t…” she took a deep breath and stepped in closer, bringing Ivy’s hand to her lips and pressing a delicate kiss to Ivy’s knuckles. “I can’t do this without you.”
Ivy’s heart raced. She wanted to leap and jump and whoop! She’d finally made it through to the inside of Nathalie’s protective ring, and she wasn’t going to look back now. But she couldn’t scare her off, not yet.
“I need you,” Nathalie murmured, kissing Ivy’s knuckles again. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you.” Ivy took the last step to Nathalie, closing the gap between them. She wrapped her hand around the back of Nathalie’s neck and drew her down so that their lips could press together in a tender, sweet embrace.
Nathalie parted her lips, and Ivy dipped her tongue into Nathalie’s mouth, seeking and comforting all at the same time. She closed her eyes and breathed in the freshness of this one moment, the time when they were finally coming together truthfully and honestly together, torn apart and rebuilt stronger than before.
Ivy slowed the kiss and pulled away, but she kept her hand on Nathalie’s cheek. “Will you leave us?”
Nathalie shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Then why did you leave tonight?” Ivy looked up into Nathalie’s eyes, begging her to finally say what she refused to say for so long, what she refused to admit for so long. “Why not stay and talk it out with us?”
“Because I was scared,” Nathalie murmured, closing her eyes at the same time. “I don’t understand why she’d leave.”
“She’s leaving because she thinks it’s the better option for us, not for her, but for us. And she’s willing to make that sacrifice to make our life better.”
Nathalie scrunched her face up.
“Sound like something you would do?” Ivy asked, trying to push to make her point that she and Greer weren’t all that different from each other.
“Yes,” Nathalie agreed.
“Good, at least we’re on the same page there.” Ivy stroked Nathalie’s cheek lightly. “We told Greer to take a few days to think things through, and she agreed. I want to give her that space and time, but I don’t want to give her too much of it. Our goal was to keep her in the family, right?”
“Yes.” Nathalie sounded far more confident now than she had moments before.
“Then we need to make sure that she stays, especially because I don’t really think she wants to leave. I think she wants to protect, and I think she wants to make this easier on us and she knows that we won’t take the easy road.” Ivy pulled Nathalie in for another kiss.
“So what do I do?”
“Be honest with yourself, Nathalie. And stop running. Stop walking out on important conversations. Family isn’t always the fun bits. Sometimes it’s the hard bits, the tough conversations and the shitty decisions, and staying in the hospital room because your friend is an idiot and tried to die on you.”
Nathalie shuddered, finally raising her gaze to meet Ivy’s. “I never wanted to die on you.”
“I know you didn’t.” Ivy smiled at her. “You’d never leave Alaric.”
Nathalie nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t ever leave you or Lachlan either.”
“And Greer?” Ivy held her breath. This was what she’d been waiting for.
“No. I wouldn’t leave Greer.” Nathalie swooped in and covered Ivy’s mouth with her own.
This kiss was heated, passionate, and so much deeper emotionally than any other kiss they’d shared. This wasn’t fun and games anymore. This was connection, and trust, and hope for a future that they might actually be intentionally building together finally. Ivy threaded her fingers through Nathalie’s hair and pulled her down, deeper into the kiss. She moaned and arched her back, seeking more touch, more of whatever this was because it felt so damn good.
Nathalie nipped Ivy’s lip, easing out of the kiss. “I love you, Ivy.”
Those words meant so much more than any other time Nathalie had said it to her. It wasn’t that she felt Nathalie had been lying before, but that had been about friendship and what they could and were doing for each other. This was about feelings, and emotion, and who they wanted to be together.
“I love you, too,” Ivy whispered. “And Greer and Lachlan.” She grinned at Nathalie. “We should probably tell them that at some point soon.”
Nathalie hummed her answer, her gaze dropping back down to Ivy’s lips. “At some point, yes.”
Ivy grinned broadly and leaned in for another kiss. “But you have to stop walking out on conversations like that. It panics us.”
Nathalie sighed, biting her lip. “I’ll work on that.”
“Good.” Ivy stepped away and put her hands on her hips. “So what are we going to do about Greer?”
“You said you agreed to give her some time.” Nathalie frowned. “You have to give her that time now.”
“It’s the time that worries me.” Ivy sat back down on the bed and huffed out a breath. “Because with time I worry that she’ll come to some other crazy solution.”
“Solution?”
“Like leaving.” Ivy moved her hands around in the air as if to make her point. “If she has the time to think, and if she goes somewhere, then how will she ever want to come back. What if she changes her resignation date to effective immediately?”
“Now look who’s panicking.” Nathalie sat down next to Ivy and covered her hand, squeezing tenderly. “You need to give her time to think, and she probably needs to do that away from us.”
“Like I said before…” Ivy looked into Nathalie’s eyes. “It’s the time thing that scares me.”
“Because you love her,” Nathalie concluded.
“Because we all love her.”