Chapter Four – Ivy
Bailey’s headlights sweep across the cottage wall like a tide I can’t hold back.
It’s not even five—birds haven’t decided whose turn it is to sing—and the farm is holding its breath.
I slip the note onto the arm of the couch, swallow around the lump that doesn’t want to be swallowed, and ease the door shut behind me.
Bailey’s idling by the oaks, hair in a messy bun, sweatshirt zipped to her chin. When I climb in, she studies my face and doesn’t ask a single question I’m not ready to answer.
“You sure?” she says instead, voice soft enough not to wake the trees.
“No,” I admit, buckling in. “But if I wait until I’m sure, I’ll never go.”
She nods like she understands the language of flight, then pulls onto the lane, keeping the truck lights low until we hit the road.
“Colson’s?” she asks.
“Yeah. I want to tell Carl in person.”
The town is still blue with almost morning when we roll into the gravel lot. The bay door is half up, light pooling on concrete, and Carl’s already there with a thermos and a grease rag tucked in his back pocket. Of course, he is.
“Well, I’ll be,” he says, eyebrows lifting. “You two beat the sun.”
“Didn’t sleep much,” I say, managing a smile. “I wanted to give you a heads-up. I’m… heading out for a couple of days.”
He nods, like people leaving and returning is just another kind of weather. “We got your car up on the lift. The front wheel assembly’s bent, and there’s some undercarriage rash. Parts are ordered. I’ll call when they land.”
“Could you—” I press my fingers to the zipper of my Coral Bell Cove windbreaker, steadying. “Could you hang onto it until I get back? I’ll handle the bill, I promise. If you need a card on file—”
He waves me off. “We’re not the city. You’re fine. We’ll make her right. You do what you’ve got to do.”
Something eases in my chest. “Thank you.”
Carl tips his thermos toward me. “Safe travels, Miss Ivy.”
“See you soon,” I say, and try to believe the words when they leave my mouth.
Bailey squeezes my forearm, then glances toward the street. “You want me to drive you all the way, or…?”
“I want to walk a bit. Join me?” I ask. Bailey easily falls in step beside me, letting me ruminate in my own thoughts.
We drift through the edges of downtown like ghosts—no destination, no plan, just a gut-deep need to move.
By the time we reach the boardwalk path that leads to the shoreline, my boots have scuffed enough loose grit to fill a bucket. The sky has lightened to a soft blue, but the breeze rolling off the bay chills my face, teasing strands of hair loose from my bun.
I welcome the sting of salt air. It’s honest, unlike everything else.
Across the street from the beach access point is a little souvenir shop—one of those narrow storefronts with faded postcards clipped to spinning racks and sunscreen bottles piled beside novelty mugs. A wooden crab above the awning reads Sandpiper Gifts & Sundries.
I stand in front of the closed doorway for a second too long, blinking at the cheerful clutter. A small light in the corner blinks on, illuminating the room in a soft, warm glow that feels like a hug.
A wall of hats catches my eye. They’re all terrible. Bright colors. Embroidered puns. One says Shell Yeah in glitter script.
We walk the path down to the sand, every muscle aching like I’ve spent the morning climbing a mountain. Maybe I have—emotionally, at least.
The dunes give way to smooth, pale sand peppered with shells and patches of dark grass. A gull cries overhead, diving toward a cluster of seaweed. Farther down the shoreline, a golden retriever chases waves like it’s born for it while its sleep-deprived owner sips from a mug.
I find a spot near the weathered lifeguard chair and sit down, tucking my knees up to my chest. The sand is warm beneath me, grounding in a way nothing else has been in days. Bailey silently joins me.
My phone vibrates, and instead of ignoring it, I look.
Celeste:
Evangeline Quinn
1 Missed Call. 1 New Voicemail.
I stare at her name. My full name, of course. Evangeline Quinn, as if Ivy is a costume I put on for award shows and press junkets. She rarely uses my stage name.
I don’t listen to the voicemail. I don’t need to. I can already hear her voice in my head.
“You need to get in front of this. We’re hemorrhaging media control.
“Your tour crew is waiting on you.
“There’s a makeup campaign pending. You can’t ghost them.”
What she means is you can’t ghost me .
I turn the phone off and bury it in my tote bag, the sand curling into the hem of my jeans like it wants to keep me here. For a moment, I let it.
I let the wind rush in my ears. Let the silence grow until it feels less like emptiness and more like space to breathe. And I whisper the thought I haven’t dared say aloud yet.
I don’t want to go back.
Not to Nashville. Not to my label. Not to the glassed-in apartment with the view of things I don’t care about. I don’t know what I want yet. But I know what I don’t.
The sun starts its slow ascent by the time I brush the sand from my jeans and stand, the hem damp where the tide’s crept in.
I don’t feel better, exactly. But I feel… quieter. Like all the noise in my head has shifted from screaming to a dull, manageable hum.
Bailey and I start walking past the beach grasses and driftwood piles.
The Needle Palm Resort sits at the far end of Main Street, tucked against a bluff with long porches, shuttered windows, and ivy climbing its siding like it’s been painted on by a movie set designer.
It’s all old-money coastal charm—the kind that wraps itself around you like honey and makes you feel like you belong, even if you don’t.
I pause at the end of the drive, heart thudding louder than the rhythm of my steps.
The sign above the front gate reads: Welcome to the Needle Palm. Stay a While.
Stay a while.
God, I want to.
I shake my head and turn to Bailey. “I’ll call a cab from the corner. Easier that way.” Easier not to turn this into a parade of goodbyes I’m not ready for.
We walk the block in silence, the sky lifting from cobalt to lavender. The kind of morning that makes even the cracked sidewalks look soft. At the corner by the café, Bailey stops with me, thumb hovering over my phone until I give in and unlock it.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she says, gentle but immovable. “But you do owe me a text when you land.”
A laugh breaks out of me, fragile but real. “Bossy.”
“Efficient.” She grins, then pulls me into a quick hug that smells like flour and honey.
I breathe her in, and stupidly, my eyes sting.
Bailey isn’t an industry person or a hanger-on or someone who’s keeping receipts.
She doesn’t want tickets or a tag or a cut—just proof I’m okay.
It’s so simple it feels radical. The kind of friendship you don’t pay for, the kind that checks in and only asks for a three-word text back.
I tuck that feeling somewhere carefully, because it’s new and it matters.
“Come back,” she murmurs against my hair.
“I will,” I whisper into her shoulder, and hope the promise finds its way to the person I’m really saying it to.
Headlights wash the corner. The cab rattles up like it’s held together by faith and duct tape.
We load my one bag into the trunk. Bailey steps back, gives me a two-finger salute that somehow doesn’t make me cry, and I slide into the passenger seat with my phone already open to her contact, thumbs typing.
Me:
Will text when I land. Thank you—for everything.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver asks, eyes kind in the rearview.
“Tidewater Regional,” I say, the words landing like a dare I don’t want to take back.
He nods and pulls onto the two-lane, tires hissing over last night’s dew. We pass fields stitched with fence lines I recognize too well, the turnoff to Otter Creek Farm receding in the mirror until it’s just trees and sky and the ache I swore I wouldn’t name.
“You visiting family?” he asks after a mile.
“Something like that.” I tug the zipper of the windbreaker higher under my chin. It smells faintly like soap and sun—like a place that isn’t mine and somehow feels like it could be.
We don’t talk much after that. The road unspools, straight and unforgiving, and I count mailboxes to keep from counting the ways I heard what I wasn’t meant to hear.
At the edge of town, the water flashes silver, then disappears behind billboards for fireworks and farm equipment.
My phone stays face down in my lap. If I flip it over, I’ll either be brave or stupid, and I don’t trust myself to know the difference right now.
The airport is small enough that the parking lot feels like an afterthought—one terminal, three flags, a flight board with more canceled than on time. He pulls to the curb where the glass doors slide open and shut on other people’s arrivals and departures like it’s nothing.
“Here we are,” he says, easing into park. “You want me to wait?”
I wrap my fingers tighter around the strap of my tote. “No… thank you.”
“You sure?”
No. Not even a little. “Yeah,” I lie, and manage a smile that doesn’t make it to my eyes.
He tips the brim of his cap, which reminds me to tug my own on. “Safe travels.”
I hand him cash, more than the meter asks for, because leaving always costs more than you think it will. Then I step out into the thin morning and the automatic doors sigh open like they’ve been expecting me.
Inside, the air is cold enough to make my teeth click.
I stand just past the threshold, heartbeat loud, and tell myself to move.
One foot, then the other. Ticket counter.
Security. Gate. All the ordinary steps people take every day when they’re not running from a sentence said by a man who made them believe in quiet.
Rowan’s name lands in my chest again, heavy as a dropped stone, and the ripples push me forward. I keep walking until I can’t see the parking lot anymore.
I don’t cry. Not yet.