Chapter 21
IVY
Relief surged through me like a warm wave. Then I crossed my hands over my galloping heart. I’d been afraid his news involved my deceit, and I’d allowed my selfishness to make me feel some kind of way. Now, I felt another kind of way.
I scooched closer to him and took his hand. “So, whaddya got right now?”
“Thirty-seven days—two days before I found out you were coming back to me, so even before I knew you’d changed your mind about being with me, I stopped. I mean, I stopped pretty quickly. It happened on two different nights, but I totally fucked my sobriety, and I’m back at the starting gate.”
“Congratulations on thirty-seven days of sobriety.”
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed the LII tattoo on the back of it. “I know you’ve probably been beating yourself up, but don’t. You know how this goes. W-was it bad?”
“Like black-out drunk bad?”
He laced his fingers with mine. “The first time wasn’t pretty, but I didn’t go out in public. Didn’t go out the second time, either, which involved about four and a half glasses of whiskey, impaired but not totally off my face.”
“Four glasses of whiskey would have me on my ass.”
“One glass of whiskey would have you on your ass.”
He flicked a piece of hair from my cheek. “And that’s a good thing, but I could tell my tolerance was off, so that’s a good thing, too.”
I put my arm around his shoulders, broad enough for me to lean on, but now he needed to lean on me. I squeezed him close. “Did you call your sponsor?”
“I did all that.”
He took my hand dangling over his chest and pressed his lips against my palm. “I don’t want you to think it was because you broke up with me. I don’t want to put that pressure on you. And I’m not making excuses for myself. It’s always up to me. That decision is always on me.”
“Was it Thea?”
He jerked his head up. “Why do you ask that? Who told you that?”
Oh shit. Jack had told me, but I didn’t want Ian to know I was talking to Jack about him behind his back. That might lead to other discoveries. “You sort of told me. I mean, you didn’t say you’d fallen off the wagon over it, but I could tell you were bummed about her connection with Shana’s husband, Jasper.”
“Yeah, fuck me.”
He sank his head in his hands. “I was over there, and Thea called Jasper Daddy right in front of me. Wrecked me.”
My heart ached for him, and I rubbed a circle on his back. “I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to have kids or even a family, for that matter, but I’m sure that’s not uncommon with stepparents. And it’s better that Thea have a stepdad like Jasper than some total asshole, right? You want her surrounded by loving people.”
“Of course, yeah. I’m just being selfish.”
“That’s not selfishness. That’s human. And you are one of those, despite all your many talents. Just think, we can now celebrate your two-month sobriety together, and we can celebrate your however many days sobriety right now.”
I crawled into his lap, discarding my towel and straddling his hips because, well, sex made everything better, right?
***
On the eighty-minute drive into the city, Ian talked about his music and the album. His infectious enthusiasm practically bubbled out of him, and I prayed so hard that the record would exceed all his expectations. He needed this so badly—more than he needed me. He just didn’t know it.
When we got to the recording studio, the charged atmosphere settled my fears about the fate of the album. The guys in the studio had the swagger of pros who knew they had something special.
While Ian talked to Ronnie about a few issues and the plan for the afternoon, I picked Hamza’s brain about what he did as a sound engineer. Ian kept sliding glances at Hamza until he said, “Just blink twice, Hamza, if you need to be rescued.”
I stuck my tongue out at Ian, and Hamza answered, “No, mate, really. Never had no one so interested in my job before. Ivy makes me feel like a right legend.”
“Thing is, she really wants to know.”
Ian winked at me.
I smiled back, but I had a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. Ian treated me so well, better than anyone had ever treated me before. I felt so safe in that man’s arms, and he took his care of me very seriously. He couldn’t even lie to me about his relapse, and I know it had pained him to tell me about it. And what was I doing to him? How could I keep this deception going any longer?
But the lie was keeping me safe, too. Keeping both of us safe.
Ronnie pulled out a chair next to his, facing a board of lights and controls that looked as if it belonged to a spacecraft. “Sit here, Ivy. You can ask me as many questions as you like. My job is much more important than Hamza’s.”
“Bro.”
Hamza threw a balled-up, greasy paper napkin at Ronnie. “We’ll ask her at the end of the session.”
“Do not put me on the spot.”
I wrapped my arms around Ian from the back, poking my chin between his shoulder blades. “What are you going to sing, baby?”
“I’m going to record ‘Lost and Found’ again. I’ll play the piano, and we’re just waiting for Dennis and his guitar.”
On cue, a tall guy with scraggly blond hair and a wispy goatee, tats clawing their way up his neck, burst into the room. “Sorry I’m late, lads. Bit of a sesh last night.”
Ian’s back grew rigid beneath my touch, and I figured Dennis’s sesh included copious amounts of booze. Must be difficult for any addict to navigate the perilous temptations of the music world.
But when Ian turned around, a smile stretched across his face. “No problem, mate. We’re gonna record ‘Lost and Found’ again. I’ll be on piano, since Giles isn’t here, and I’m not calling him. This is just a one-off I’m doing for my girl. This is Ivy. Ivy, Dennis.”
Dennis’s long fingers wrapped around my hand. “Oh, nice to meet the missus. We been hearing nothing but Ivy this, Ivy that.”
“I hope followed by good things.”
I disentangled my hand from Dennis’s.
“Nothing but good. It’s quite sickening, actually.”
Dennis nudged Ian in a way I didn’t like. I hoped the guy could at least play guitar.
“Are we ready?”
Ian smacked Dennis on the back. “Let me just get some water.”
As Ian went to the back of the room to get a bottle of water, I settled beside Ronnie, excitement fizzing in my veins. Ian placed some water in front of me on his way to the recording booth where Dennis had already taken a chair with his guitar. Ian sat in front of the piano and ran his fingers across the keys.
Ronnie gave them some directions, and then Ian started to play the opening chords of the song, which I hadn’t heard before. When he began singing, his rich baritone voice gave me chills, and the personal lyrics cut me like a razorblade on the wrist. By the second verse of the song, his usually smooth, liquid tone roughened around the edges, and the emotion in his voice carved a hollow in my heart.
His feelings kaleidoscoped across his face, and he squeezed his eyes closed as if to reach deeper into his soul. When he hit the achingly beautiful high notes in the chorus, it was like he peeled open his chest to expose his heart, and the pulse in my throat throbbed in response.
The air in the studio had stilled, the performance hypnotizing all of us. Without realizing it, I had pushed back my chair, my body inclining toward the recording booth where Ian sang not only his life, but mine, too. His words evoked feelings in me that I’d successfully buried for years.
I stepped off the dais and floated toward the glass separating the booth from the studio, as if in a dream. I flattened my hands against the window, whether in an attempt to make him stop or to drown myself in the sensations, I didn’t know. Tears rolled down my face, unabated, and dripped off my chin.
The song ended on a whisper, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Someone sniffled behind me.
When Ian opened his eyes, his gaze met mine through the glass. He covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook. I had to go to him. Running my arm across my nose, I clawed at the door handle to the booth and yanked it open.
Ian’s head jerked up, and he rushed to me and wrapped his arms around me. We clung to each other, while Dennis sat in the corner, his hand pressed against the strings of his guitar, his head bowed.
Ronnie’s voice over the speaker in the booth finally cut through the tension. “That’s our version, and if the record company doesn’t release it as the lead single, they can fuck right off.”
***
After the session, we’d walked to an Indian restaurant a few blocks from the studio and sat across from each other, sipping mango lassi. I ripped off a piece of naan. “I take it the original version of ‘Lost and Found’ didn’t sound like the one you just recorded.”
“Not even close.”
He reached across the table and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “You should’ve been in the studio with me for every song.”
I threw up my hands. “It wasn’t me. That was all you, baby.”
“Inspired by you—like everything I do.”
I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve any of it. “You know what I think it was?”
“Huh.”
“I think telling me about your relapse sort of brought it all home to you again. You ushered those feelings to the surface and tapped into them when you sang the song.”
“Very interesting, Fraulein.”
He raised his hands and drummed his fingers together. He’d become a student of my deflection methods.
“Are you channeling Sigmund Freud? You know, there’s a Freud Museum in Hampstead where he lived the last year of his life after he left Vienna.”
“Spare me.”
He jabbed his fork into a piece of lamb and pointed it at me. “You know what my therapist says about you?”
I pressed a napkin to my face. “You told your therapist about me?”
“Of course. Tell me you’ve never been in therapy without telling me you’ve never been in therapy.”
I had my reasons for avoiding therapy, but now I wanted in on my second-hand analysis. Hunching forward, I asked, “What did he say about me?”
“I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”
“Now you really have to tell me. Don’t say he ordered you to leave me.”
I took a gulp of water. If the therapist had any common sense at all, that’s exactly what he’d tell Ian.
“If he had, I’d fire him.”
Ian fussed around his plate, obviously regretting he’d ever mentioned his therapist, but when he glanced at my face, he realized I’d become a dog with a bone. He sighed. “He said you use sex as a way to form a deep bond with me without actually letting me in, emotionally.”
Damn, that therapist was good. “That’s just ridiculous. He can’t remote analyze me.”
I peered at Ian’s face in the flickering light from the candle on the table. “Do you think he’s right? You don’t think we’re emotionally close.”
He stretched out his hand and toyed with my fingers. “I feel like you’re a piece of me. That without you, I’m not whole. Does that sound like a clichéd song lyric?”
He shrugged. “It’s true, and I would call that emotionally close. Do I think you use sex sometimes to avoid topics you don’t want to discuss? Yeah, but, um, I’m not complaining about the sex.”
“Well, that’s a relief. At least he didn’t tell you to dump me.”
“Never gonna happen.”
Turned out, Ian’s flat was not within walking distance of the restaurant, so we took a taxi to a high-rise building on the south side of the Thames, west of the Tower Bridge. We stepped into a swanky lobby after Ian entered a code at the front door. When we got into the elevator, he entered another code as he pushed the button for the 32nd floor.
Although the elevator ride offered a smooth ascent, I braced my hand against the mirrored wall of the car. “How often do you stay here?”
“Not too often. When I work late or if there are events to attend in the city.”
The elevator doors whisked open onto a floor that I could already tell just housed Ian’s flat. Hadn’t he told me this place wasn’t very big? He lied. He opened the door for me, and when I stepped across the threshold, a chill dripped down my spine. The amazing view of the river drew me to the window, and I zigzagged around modern furniture pieces to get there. “Nice view. Horrible décor. I’m pretty sure the designer who furnished your house didn’t do this place.”
“I bought it furnished.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t like it?”
“The setting is lovely, but it’s so cold in here.”
“I haven’t been here for a month. I’ll turn on the heat.”
He grabbed our overnight bags and veered down a dark hallway.
“I didn’t mean the temperature, although it is freezing.”
I hugged myself and rubbed my arms. “I mean the atmosphere. No warmth or humanity.”
He returned to the room, and his arms replaced mine. “It’s just for one night, Tink. I have a few things to finish in the studio tomorrow morning. You can sleep in or go sightseeing. I hear there’s a good exhibit on the Silk Roads at the British Museum. Then we can have lunch and do something else before Jovan takes us back.”
“I can manage one night here. Can I have some water?”
He pointed at the kitchen. “I think there are bottles in the fridge. I need to make a few calls.”
I wandered into the kitchen, which sported every modern appliance known to mankind. It all sparkled with newness. I pulled open the fridge door and drew back sharply when I saw an unopened bottle of champagne cooling its heels inside. Did Ian know this existed?
I wanted to grab it and toss it out the window, but I might kill someone from this height, and then the police would have another reason to arrest me. Instead, I snatched some water and slammed the door shut.
Ian’s voice from the other room stopped, and I called out. “Baby?”
“Did you find the water?”
He poked his head into the kitchen, his phone clutched in his hand, his gaze shifting to the bottle I held up. “What do you need? I have one more call to make. Also, your phone buzzed in your bag out there.”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “There’s a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
He squeezed the back of his neck. “It’s leftover, not new. You can have some, if you like.”
Digging one hand into my hip, I said, “I won’t drink in front of you. Should I open it and pour it down the drain?”
He whistled through his teeth. “That’s a very expensive bottle of bubbly. Take it home and give it to someone. Don’t worry. I’m not going to creep in here in the dead of night and pop a bottle.”
“Ian, is this where you fell off the wagon? This...place?”
“It is. Don’t worry. It’s not gonna happen again.”
He held up his hands, crossing one finger over another. “I’m not even tempted by that champagne in there. Had forgotten its very existence.”
No wonder this flat gave off bad vibes. “Yeah, I know. I’m not worried about that. You said my phone rang?”
“Yeah.”
I followed him into the other room and slipped my phone from my purse, as he started another call. I glanced at Chloe’s name on the display and then checked for a text message. Nothing. Must not be that important, and I was too tired for Chloe’s drama right now.
With Ian still on the phone, I crept down the hallway to the rooms in the back. I found the master suite with our bags in the corner. The plush, white carpet cushioned my steps as I walked to the window. Who had white carpet?
I pushed aside the drapes and pressed my hands against the cool glass. Lights blinked on the bridge below, and the gray mist clinging to the banks of the river seemed to have seeped into this building and swirled its way up to the 32nd floor.
As I turned, a glint of light at the end of the window ledge caught my attention. A short, squat whiskey glass glared back, the amber liquid in the bottom daring me. I clenched my hands, hot anger coursing through my body. An urge to do violence thumped in my veins again, just as it had when I saw the champagne bottle. My hands itched to pick up the glass and smash it against the blank, white wall. What had he been drinking? Whiskey or champagne? Both? He’d mentioned whiskey for the one occasion, but hadn’t said anything about the other relapse, the worse one.
“Ivy?”
Ian sailed into the room, still high from the studio session and whatever conversations he just had with Ronnie and his business manager.
I pinched the rim of the heavy glass between my fingers and turned around. “You left this here.”
He blinked. “That you can toss down the drain.”
“Is there a half-full bottle of this around here somewhere?”
I cranked my head back and forth as if looking for it in this room.
“I dumped that.”
Cocking his head to the side, he asked, “Are you alright?”
I wrapped my hand around the glass and squeezed. “I just hate seeing evidence of your...downfall.”
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Downfall, is it? That’s a bit harsh. What happened to you’re only human, Ian, and now we can celebrate your two-month sobriety together?”
A smile twisted his lips as he took a light tone, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“It just makes me angry—not with you. It’s like I’m hating on inanimate objects.”
My hand sliced through the air. “And I don’t like this place.”
He strode toward me, snapping the wire of tension that vibrated between us. He took me by the shoulders and skimmed his fingers along the sides of my neck. “You’re right. It’s rubbish. I’ll get rid of it.”
“No.”
I shook my head. “I’m being...I’m just tired.”
He cuddled me close and stroked my hair. “Who tried to call you? Was it Chloe?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t leave a message.”
“Maybe you’ll feel better talking to her.”
“I’ll call her later.”
I waved at the bed, which at least looked comfortable. “I’m going to watch TV. Is that alright with you?”
“Do what you want, baby. I have a few things to finish, and then I’ll join you. Find a movie.”
He took the glass from my hand and turned to leave. “Oh, there’s a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom if you wanna relax.”
I muttered to his back, “Of course, there is.”