14. Ivy
IVY
I hadn't planned to come to the hospital. After Ivy left the office, restlessness settled over me in waves I couldn't shake. I tried to focus on correspondence, reviewed quarterly projections, even attempted to return calls that had been piling up for days. Nothing worked.
The image of her face when she'd confessed how overwhelming everything had become stayed with me.
The exhaustion in her eyes, the way her voice had cracked when she talked about her mother's treatments.
I'd offered what comfort I could in my office, but it hadn't felt like enough.
The memory of her responses to my touch, the way she'd looked at me afterward—vulnerable and grateful and still guarded—made my chest tight.
I paced my office for another hour, watching the sun set over the harbor through my windows.
The building had emptied, leaving me alone with thoughts I couldn't organize.
Every rational argument I made for staying away from her personal crisis crumbled against the pull I felt to be wherever she was.
By seven-thirty, I found myself in the hospital parking garage, wondering what the hell I was doing.
The rational part of my mind knew this was a mistake.
Showing up here crossed boundaries we hadn't discussed, inserted me into family territory where I didn't belong.
But rational thought had abandoned me weeks ago where Ivy was concerned.
The oncology floor was quiet, the hallways filled with that particular hospital smell—antiseptic mixed with something else I couldn't identify—that made my stomach tighten.
I'd spent time in hospitals before, mostly for business associates or charity board obligations, but this felt different. More personal. More frightening.
I found the coffee station near the nurses' desk and bought two cups, then made my way toward the room number Ivy had mentioned during one of our brief conversations about her mother's treatments. The coffee was terrible, but it gave me something to do with my hands.
She was sitting alone in the waiting area at the end of the hall, her head leaning against the wall, eyes closed.
The sight of her there—small and tired and carrying the weight of everything by herself—made my chest ache.
She'd changed clothes since leaving the office, trading her work attire for jeans and a sweater that made her look more vulnerable.
"Ivy."
Her eyes opened, focusing on me with surprise that quickly shifted to something else—wariness, maybe, or concern.
"Duncan? What are you doing here?" She flicked her eyes around in a nervous glance that made me tense.
I hadn't even stopped to think about if Bill would be here or what that would mean.
I held out one of the coffee cups. "Thought you might need this."
She accepted it, her fingers brushing mine briefly. The contact sent warmth up my arm, a reminder of what had happened between us in my office earlier. "Thank you. But you shouldn't be here."
"Where's your father?"
"In the room with Mom. She's sleeping, but he doesn't want to leave her side." She gestured to the chairs across from her, at least eight feet away. "You should sit over there. If Dad comes out and sees us together…"
I understood. Bill finding me here would raise questions neither of us was prepared to answer.
The distance between us felt both necessary and frustrating as I settled into the chair across from her.
Close enough to see the worry lines around her eyes, far enough to maintain the illusion that we were strangers sharing a waiting room.
For several minutes, we drank our coffee in silence.
The waiting area was empty except for us, the only sounds coming from the nurses' station and the distant hum of medical equipment.
Ivy looked older than her twenty-four years, worn down by responsibilities that would have broken most people her age.
Her auburn hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she kept checking her phone, though I'd never seen her have that particular nervous tick at work.
"Thank you," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "For listening earlier. For…" She paused, color creeping up her neck as she remembered what had transpired in my office. "For everything. I shouldn't have unloaded all my baggage on you."
"You didn't unload anything. You told me what was happening in your life. There's a difference."
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You never seem to fall apart. I envy that. You're always so controlled, so together. I bet you've never sat in a hospital waiting room wondering if your world is about to collapse."
The comment hit deeper than she probably intended. I studied her face, seeing genuine curiosity there alongside the exhaustion. "You think I don't fall apart?"
"Do you?"
I considered the question, weighing how much truth I was willing to share. The coffee tasted bitter, but I took another sip to buy myself time. "I fell apart once—completely. And I swore I'd never let it happen again."
Her expression shifted, becoming more attentive. She set down her coffee cup and leaned forward slightly. "What happened?"
The words came slow and with much difficulty, dragged up from places I'd buried them deep.
"Meranda Hawkins. She was my business partner for two years.
We started the partnership as colleagues, but it became more than that.
Not officially—we were careful to keep it professional on paper. But it felt real to me."
Ivy's full attention was on me now, her hazel eyes reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead.
"I trusted her. Completely. She had access to client lists, financial projections, strategic plans. We worked late together, traveled to conferences, spent weekends reviewing deals. I thought we were building something together—not the business, but something personal."
The betrayal still stung, even years later. The memory of walking into the office that morning to find her desk cleared out, her security badge deactivated, and a resignation letter that had been copied to our biggest competitor.
"Then she used everything I'd shared with her to negotiate her own deal with Harrison & Associates. She took half our clients and left me scrambling to rebuild. The contracts she'd negotiated, the relationships she'd cultivated—all of it was preparation for her exit strategy."
"That's horrible."
"It wasn't the business loss that destroyed me.
I've lost deals before, recovered from setbacks.
It was realizing that while I'd been falling in love with her, she'd been calculating how to use that against me.
Every intimate conversation, every moment I thought we'd shared—it was all part of her plan. "
The humiliation had been worse than the financial damage. Lying awake at night, replaying conversations and wondering what had been real and what had been performance. Questioning every smile, every touch, every word of encouragement she'd offered.
"The worst part was that she was good at it. So good that I never saw it coming. I prided myself on reading people, on understanding motivations and strategies. But she played me perfectly."
"How did you find out?" Ivy squirmed in her seat as if she would've liked to sit closer to me, put a hand on my back. I'd have liked that.
"Nick Martinez called me the morning she left.
He'd heard rumors about her new position and wanted to make sure I knew before the official announcement.
By the time I got to the office, she was already gone.
Security footage showed her there at five in the morning, copying files and cleaning out her desk. "
Ivy winced. "Did you confront her?"
"I tried. She wouldn't take my calls. When I finally tracked her down at Harrison's office, she acted like it was purely business. Said she'd outgrown our partnership and found a better opportunity. As if two years of what I thought was intimacy meant nothing."
"That's horrible, Duncan. I'm sorry."
"It made me stop believing in loyalty. Made me swear off real love, or at least the kind that makes you vulnerable. I decided that business partnerships should stay business, that mixing emotion with business was a recipe for disaster."
I looked at her directly, seeing understanding in her expression. "Until recently."
She shifted in her chair, and I could see her processing my words, grasping the implications.
"I used to think trust was binary," I continued.
"You either trusted someone or you didn't. But Meranda taught me it's more complicated.
You can trust someone with your business secrets but not your heart.
You can trust them to show up for work but not to stay when things get difficult.
You can trust them to be competent but not to be honest."
"And now?"
"Now I'm questioning everything I thought I knew about trust. About risk. About what's worth fighting for." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "About whether the possibility of something real is worth the risk of being wrong again."
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Bill's voice carried from the direction of Barbara's room as he spoke to a nurse about medication schedules and visiting hours. Ivy tensed, glancing toward the sound with obvious anxiety.
"I should go," I said, standing quickly.
"Wait." She stood as well, her voice uncertain. "Could you… would you mind driving me home? I took a taxi here, and I'm not sure I trust myself behind the wheel right now. I keep thinking about Mom's reaction to the treatment, and I'm afraid I'll get distracted."
The request surprised me, but I nodded. "Of course."
We waited until Bill's voice faded back into Barbara's room, then made our way to the elevator. The ride to the parking garage was silent, but the air between us felt charged with unfinished conversations and the weight of what I'd shared.
My car was parked on the third level. As I started the engine and pulled out of the garage, Ivy gave me directions to her father's house.
The drive would take twenty minutes, winding through neighborhoods I'd driven through countless times but never really noticed.
Now I found myself paying attention to details—the way the streetlights illuminated the sidewalks, the houses with warm lights in their windows, the sense of lives being lived behind those walls.
"How's your mother really doing?" I asked as we merged onto the highway.
"Scared. She tries to hide it, but I can see it in her eyes. The T-cell treatment is experimental, and the side effects are getting worse each time." Her voice was quiet, thoughtful. "I keep thinking about what happens if it doesn't work. What we'll do, how we'll tell the kids…"
"The kids?"
She caught herself, color rising in her cheeks. "I meant—the neighborhood kids. They know her, they ask about her."
I sensed there was more to the story, but I didn't push. "She's strong. She raised you, didn't she?"
That earned me a small smile. "True. But watching someone you love fight for their life… it changes everything. Makes you realize how much time you waste on things that don't matter."
I glanced at her profile in the dim light from the dashboard. "What matters to you?"
"My family. My mother getting better. Finding a way to be honest about the choices I've made without destroying the people I care about."
The conversation turned softer as we drove through the quiet neighborhoods. I found myself talking about things I rarely discussed with anyone—how work had stopped fulfilling me the way it used to, how success felt hollow when you had no one to share it with.
"I've been living someone else's life for years," I admitted. "Following a pattern I created when I was younger and more ambitious. Build the company, make the deals, accumulate wealth and influence. But lately, I wake up and wonder what the point of any of it is."
"So change it."
"It's not that simple. I have obligations, people depending on me. Board members, employees, clients who expect consistency."
"Do you? Or do you have people who've gotten comfortable depending on you? There's a difference between being needed and being used."
The question was more perceptive than I'd expected. "When did you become so wise?"
"Life has a way of teaching you to cut through nonsense pretty quickly when you don't have time for games."
We were nearing her neighborhood now, the houses getting larger, the lawns more manicured. I recognized the area—old money, established families, the kind of neighborhood where Bill Whitmore belonged. I slowed the car, not wanting the drive to end.
"Ivy," I said, my voice more serious. "You feel different to me. Lucky, maybe. Since you've been back, I've started questioning everything I thought I wanted. Started imagining a different kind of future."
She turned to look at me, her expression guarded.
"I'm falling for you. Hard. I might very well love you already."
She shifted away from me, creating physical distance in the small space of the car. "Duncan?—"
"Don't." My voice was firmer than I'd intended. "Don't push me away. I know this is complicated. I know there are obstacles and consequences and a thousand reasons why it shouldn't work. But I'm not going to let you shut me out because you're scared."
"You don't understand?—"
"Then explain it to me. Help me understand what you're so afraid of."
We'd reached her driveway. I pulled in and put the car in park, but neither of us moved to get out. The silence felt painful between us, filled with tension and unspoken truths.
Finally, she turned to face me. "Thank you. For the coffee, for the ride, for listening. I needed that more than you know."
"Can I see you again? Outside of work, I mean. A real date."
She hesitated, her hand on the door handle. "Yes. But you might regret it."
"I doubt that."
She opened the door and stepped out, then leaned down to look at me through the open window. "Goodnight, Duncan."
I watched her walk up the path to the front door, her words echoing in my mind. You might regret it. What could she possibly mean? What was she hiding that could be worse than the complications we already faced?
She unlocked the door and disappeared inside without looking back. I sat in the driveway for several more minutes, staring at the house where she spent her evenings, wondering what secrets she was carrying and why she seemed so certain they would drive me away.