Chapter 43
Micah
Ivy’s dad stands in my driveway with a shitty fucking smirk aimed right at me.
His wheat-colored hair has thinned, and it’s brushed back from his face.
He’s clean shaven and too thin, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes hard.
His three-piece suit looks ridiculous on a muggy Florida morning, but Franklin cares more about presentation than practicality.
Always has. Probably always will. Julian grins like he thinks he pulled an ace out of his pocket.
Little does he know that Franklin has no influence over me.
I’m not impressed by money or power, things Ivy’s father holds in high esteem. Maybe that’s why he always hated me.
“Dad?” Ivy calls, coming down the steps to stop beside me. She’s pale, her blue eyes flashing with indignation. I put an arm around her shoulder and pull her close while her father glares like she’s a piece of gum on the bottom of his shoe.
“You aren’t any more welcome here than that asshole.” I jerk my chin toward Julian, who huffs in indignation.
“There’s an asshole here,” he whines, “but it isn’t me.”
“Enough, Julian.” Franklin regards the man with a look of utter disdain, then turns back to me. “I’ll make this simple. Ivy and Nell don’t belong here. Ivy, get your things. We’re leaving.”
The audacity of this man. He actually thinks all he has to do is snap his fingers and Ivy will scurry her way back to him. And maybe there’s a version of her that would have, but I’m confident she’s grown past that since she’s been with me.
“See now,” I say, with a quick glance at the woman I love, “you’re wrong on that one. Ivy and Nell one hundred percent belong here.”
“He’s right, Dad.” She lifts her chin, her voice clear. “This is where I belong. Where Nell belongs. Here. With Micah.”
“No.” Franklin doesn’t even look at his daughter. “They belong back in Seattle with their family. Where I can take care of them.”
I frown. The douchebag is still addressing me, like Ivy doesn’t have a choice in the matter, like he and I oversee her life. “They are with family,” I reply. “And they don’t need you to take care of them.”
A harsh laugh. A roll of his steely eyes. Franklin Cole is not impressed. “You think you’re financially prepared to raise a child? On a firefighter’s salary?”
“I’m doing just fine financially, thank you very much, but what I mean is that Ivy doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. Not me. Not you. Not that insignificant twat over there. She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”
Once, when I was little, I had the bright idea to put a dandelion puff in my mouth when we were on vacation at Everglades National Park. Julian’s face looks a lot like mine did that day. I count it as a win.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Ivy asks, stepping forward to face her father. “And why were you lurking in the car like a freaking mob boss?”
“I came to ask you the same question. What are you doing here, Ivy?” Franklin smooths his lapels and swoops his hands over his hair, cool as a fucking cucumber. “And I sat in that car because I knew Julian would be as ineffective with you today as he’s proved to be since this debacle started.”
I fight back a grin as Julian swallows another dandelion puff.
“Hey!” he cries, holding up his hands. “Ineffective is a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“Get in the car, Julian,” Franklin says without sparing the man a glance.
“What?” He recoils, swallowing dandelion puff number three. If I didn’t loathe the men in front of me so much, I’d be handing out high fives. Watching this dick get put in his place is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.
“I think the man told you to get in the car like a good little boy,” I say with a shrug.
Sputtering and stuttering, Julian gets into the car like a dog with his tail between his legs.
Ivy folds her arms across her chest and sighs. “What happened between me and Julian isn’t your business, Dad. Neither is what’s happening between me and Micah.”
“You’re my daughter. Everything you do is my business.” Franklin’s steel-colored eyes make me think of thunder and lightning, of dark clouds boiling in the distance.
Maybe there’s a reason Ivy doesn’t like storms.
She shakes her head. “My business is my business.”
“That’s simply not true. Everything you do affects me. I either pay for your decisions financially or through the simple inconveniences of finding solutions to problems you created.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I ask. “Who talks to their daughter that way? She’s a grown woman who doesn’t need her daddy looming over her, making her feel like crap all the time.”
Franklin’s calm composure cracks and he steps into my personal space.
He’s a tall man, meeting me eye-to-eye, but he’s never been a big man and age hasn’t been kind to him in that department.
“You have been bad for my daughter from the moment you two met,” he says, his upper lip curling.
“She had the grades and the drive to get herself into a good college, to pursue that medical degree. She could have been anything she wanted, but because of you, she’s just a mother, unable to provide for herself, running from one man to the next. ”
“Because of me?” I arch a brow. Someone derailed Ivy’s trajectory and it sure as hell wasn’t me.
The look on Franklin’s face says he thinks he has me. “Are you implying that child isn’t yours?”
“I’m implying I didn’t know she existed.”
“That’s rich.” Franklin lifts his chin, peering down his nose at me. “Even in this you can’t take responsibility for your actions.”
I scoff. “If I’d known, I would have been honored to take responsibility, and they would be so much better off for it. Ivy would be in school. Nell would have known her father. I’m a Hutton. We take care of our own.”
“Oh, Micah.” Franklin leans a hip on the hood of the Suburban.
“You’re a Hutton in name only. Constantly in trouble.
Constantly underperforming. And Nell is just like you, despite my efforts to the contrary.
It’s bad enough Ivy turned out to be such a disappointment, but your daughter is a scourge on the Cole name.
We will never down the humiliation of having a granddaughter like her. ”
I’m lurching forward before I know what I’m doing. My hands grab Franklin by the collar without my permission. I yank him towards me, holding him nose-to-fucking-nose as he squeals in surprise. “Take that back.”
Ivy gasps, startled into motion. I release her father and step away before I do something I truly regret. That’s two men I’ve had by the shirt in twenty minutes. They push me much farther and someone will have a real reason to get lawyers involved.
“I’m not surprised you resorted to violence,” Franklin says with a self-satisfied sneer. “He’s beneath you, Ivy. You see that, right? Not worth his family name. The best thing I ever did was make sure you two disconnected.”
“The best thing you did?” Ivy cocks her head, her eyes narrowing. “What did you do?”
“I looked after you, Ivy.” A bead of sweat appears at Franklin’s hairline. “The way you needed me to. You’ve never been strong enough to do the hard stuff on your own.”
“What did you do?” Ivy asks again, biting off the words.
“I made sure he didn’t have a place in Nell’s life.” Franklin jabs a finger my way. “I made sure he stayed here, where he belonged and you stayed with us, where you still belong.”
And just like that it all comes into focus.
“You deleted my texts.” I shake my head, huffing a laugh. “How the hell didn’t I see it sooner? You took her phone and read every message I sent, then just deleted them.”
I think back to how utterly devastated I was back then. How I poured my heart out to the girl I loved, vulnerable, miserable, telling her how much I needed her and begging her to respond. And Franklin read it all, he knew I was teetering on the edge, and didn’t fucking care.
“Of course I deleted them,” he responds like I’m an idiot for thinking he wouldn’t. “And you would have done the same thing in my position. It was better for everyone that way.”
“It wasn’t better for me!” Tears sparkle in Ivy’s eyes and indignation colors the edges of her voice. “It wasn’t better for Micah. It wasn’t better for Nell. It wasn’t better for any of us!”
“But it was,” Franklin says. “Think of where you’d be if I hadn’t intervened.”
“Look at who I am now! You broke me, Dad. Thinking Micah abandoned me when I loved him with everything I was? That was the first chink in my confidence. Then listening to you tell me I’m worthless, watching you judge me and my daughter, more chinks.
Then you making sure I had no way to support myself?
Chink, chink, chink. No school. No college.
No job! No friends! You made me completely dependent on you… ”
“You made you dependent on me,” Franklin thunders. “You should be thankful I was able to support you through it.”
“Support.” She shakes her head, so angry she’s trembling. “You saw how hurt I was when I thought Micah didn’t love me and you just let it happen. I knew you were difficult but never thought you’d be cruel. You saw I was drowning and held my head under the water.”
Franklin brushes her words away like they’re little more than gnats.
“I did no such thing. I facilitated the meeting with Julian. I sat down with his father and suggested you two would be a good match, even though you had an illegitimate child. He talked to his son and made sure your relationship ran smoothly despite your obvious inadequacies.”
I open my mouth, ready to put Franklin fucking Cole in his place but Ivy beats me to it. Gone is the meek woman who stepped into The Pact looking like a deer in the headlights. In her place is the spitfire I fell in love with.
“What century do you live in?” she asks, gesturing wildly. “You facilitated the relationship? Illegitimate child?” Laughing, she runs her hands into her hair. “Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?”
“I’m your father and you’re my only daughter. I’ve only ever done what’s best for you.”
“You ruined my life.”
“You did that on your own. I’m the one who stepped in and put the damn pieces together. It’s time to come home, where you belong. Your mother’s beside herself. She won’t come out of her room. She cries herself to sleep and I’ve had enough of her nonsense. You don’t belong here. You belong with us.”
“Nell and I are happier here than we’ve ever been. If Mom’s miserable, maybe you should look in the mirror for the reason why.”
“Ivy Maria Cole. You will not speak to me that way. This is the kind of influence he’s always had on you, making you forget your place.”
“Her place?” My eyebrows hit my hairline and my fists clench. “I don’t make her forget; I help her see. She’s not a damned pet, Franklin!”
“You know what, Dad? I think you see the worst in everybody because that’s all you are inside.
You assume their motivations are horrible because yours are even worse.
I’m not leaving with you, and I’m done letting you make me feel like everything I do is a mistake.
It’s time for you to leave.” Ivy points over Franklin’s shoulder, towards the road, then leans against me.
I wrap an arm around her, so fucking proud I could burst.
Her dad tugs on his shirtsleeves and sighs. “If this is the choice you’re making, fine. Just know that you’ll have to live with it. You can’t come crawling back to me when it all blows up in your face.”
“I would never come back to you.” Ivy lifts her chin and squares her shoulders, standing straight and strong.
“I’d be letting myself down if I ever let you back into my life.
And for the record, this won’t blow up in my face.
This? With Micah? This is the real deal.
A once in a lifetime thing. I couldn’t stop loving him any more than I could ask my heart to stop beating.
And the way he loves me back? The way he loves our daughter?
It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
So, get in that car, get out of this driveway, and never, ever think you can talk like that to me, or Micah, or Nell ever again. I will no longer tolerate your abuse.”
Ivy’s nostrils are flared. Her head held high. Whatever shred of control the people in Seattle still held over her, she just tore it to threads and dropped it at her father’s feet.
With a shake of his head and a haughty sneer, Franklin climbs into the passenger seat Suburban and Julian backs out of the driveway, cutting off a big ass truck as he turns onto the road.
I pull Ivy into my arms and hold her close. “Thank you for saying all those things about me.”
“No, Micah. Thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for keeping your promise.”