Chapter Eight – Ivy
The morning air is syrup-thick and golden when I step out onto the porch of the guest cottage. Warm, but not stifling—at least, not yet. Bees buzz lazily around the edge of the flower garden. The only sounds are distant birdsong and the quiet creak of the old wood beneath my feet.
It’s the kind of quiet you can breathe.
I wrap my fingers tighter around the chipped mug Rowan left in the cabinet—it says I Brake for Pie , and somehow, it’s become my favorite. The coffee inside is bitter and too strong, but it grounds me. Anchors me to a place that feels… like it might be something more than temporary.
I haven’t seen Rowan since last night.
We haven’t talked about the kiss anymore. Or the way his voice went ragged when he said I didn’t have to go. But I feel it. All of it. Like an echo I can’t shake.
I spent the night replaying every second—the way his eyes darkened when I touched him and the rasp of his breath when our lips brushed. How he looked like he wanted to run and stay all at once. And how I did too.
I mean to give him space today. Let the tension settle. Let things breathe. But I don’t make it past the first sip of coffee.
A sleek black car rolls up the drive like it’s been conjured by my worst nightmare.
I blink, heart stuttering in my chest.
No. No, no, no.
The door opens with that same expensive sigh every luxury car seems to have, and out steps a woman in oversized sunglasses, a linen suit, and four-inch heels that have no business being on gravel.
My mother.
“Evangeline!” she calls, arms wide like this is some twisted family reunion. “There you are.”
I don’t move. Maybe if I stay very still, like a deer in a field, she’ll lose interest. She doesn’t.
Instead, she waves off the driver—a new one—and struts up the path like she hasn’t just dropped a bomb on my morning. The car stays put… at least that’s something in my favor today.
Gravel crunches like a warning before the black sedan even clears the oaks.
Perfume hits the porch a beat before she does—sharp, expensive, uninvited.
Celeste steps out in linen and sunglasses the size of small satellites.
Even blocked, I know her eyes sweep the cottage like she’s appraising a fixer-upper.
“Well,” she says, taking off the glasses with a practiced sigh. “I had to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere to make sure my daughter wasn’t chopped up into tiny pieces and lying in a ditch somewhere. Imagine my surprise to see you hale and hearty—and looking decidedly homeless.”
“Mama,” I say flatly. “What are you doing here?”
She glides past me into the shade of the porch, gaze catching on my sweatshirt, my bare feet, the mug. “You stopped answering your phone. Your team escalated. The label asked for eyes on you, not ‘I need space’ texts from a mystery ZIP code.”
“I told you I’m fine.”
“You’re hiding in a borrowed cottage in a town that doesn’t have a proper juice bar,” she replies, her smile cool and camera-ready. “That’s not fine, Evangeline. That’s avoidance.”
I fold my arms. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“It explains it perfectly.” She taps a cream-colored envelope against her palm.
“We’ve got fittings, a creative call for the fall rollout, two quick stills for the Lanova contract addendum, and a brand segment the network wants on the calendar before quarter close.
All of which you’ve pushed once. I’m not leaving it to chance—or to your reception out here. ”
“I’m not going to Nashville,” I say, steady.
She blinks, tilting her head. “You don’t get to make that call alone. Not when there are signatures, schedules, and seven figures of ad spend with your face attached.”
“I’m a person, not a purchase order.”
“And I’m your mother, not your concierge,” she answers, voice like velvet pulled tight over wire.
“Which is why I came to lay eyes on you, confirm you weren’t dead in a ditch, and deliver this.
” She slides the envelope onto the little table by the rocking chair like a summons.
“Call sheet. Fitting times. Car service details.”
I don’t touch it. “You drove all the way out here to drop off paper?”
“I flew,” she corrects, crisp. “And I’ll be at the Needle Palm on Main Street until tomorrow afternoon.
I’ve told them to hold the suite. A car will be outside this cottage at five.
If you’re not in it, I’ll let the label know you’re refusing to meet contractual obligations.
They will escalate. You will not like how. ”
Across the yard, I see movement—Rowan, half in shadow under the oaks, jaw set but not interfering. Every inch of him is a line that reads I’m here without making me pick a side. It steadies me and makes my throat ache in the same breath.
Celeste follows my glance and takes him in, filing him away with the same clinical efficiency she applies to budgets. “Is that the cowboy?”
I say nothing.
She slips her glasses back on. “I’ll assume it is. Charming. Picturesque. Not permanent.” The smile she gives me is TV-warm and ice-cold. “Five o’clock, Evangeline. Don’t make me send someone to fetch you like a child.”
She turns, her heels finding every rock in the drive and punishing it, then slides into the back seat. The sedan glides away like the whole visit was a commercial break.
Silence rushes in. The porch smells like coffee and last night’s rain. My hands shake.
I pick up the envelope but don’t open it.
And for the first time since the sedan appeared, my lungs remember how to do their job. Slipping back into the house, the screen door snapping behind me as if it’s just as angry about my mother’s arrival as I am, I hover in the kitchen.
I press my palms to the counter, grounding myself. I’m not the girl in the sequined dress anymore. I’m not twelve years old and scared of the electricity bill or the sound of my father’s truck door slamming outside the shack. I’m grown. I’m free. And maybe completely freaking lost.
A soft knock comes at the door. I don’t answer. It comes again, followed by the gentle creak of hinges and Rowan’s voice, low and rough from the field.
“Ivy?”
I turn slowly. He steps inside, filling the doorway with his quiet presence. His hat is gone, hair mussed from the sun. Dirt streaks his forearms, and his boots are caked with red clay, but he looks steady in a way I desperately need.
He takes one quiet step closer, slow enough that I could move if I wanted to.
I don’t. His hand comes up, rough palm warm against my cheek as his thumb sweeps away the tear I didn’t realize had escaped.
His eyes are flint around the edges, soft in the middle—angry that someone put salt in my eyes, careful not to add to it.
“You okay?” he asks, voice low and steady, like walking barefoot through warm grass.
I open my mouth, shut it, then try again.
“No,” I whisper, because lying feels like the wrong kind of hard tonight.
“She just… showed up. Said I need to fly back. Meetings. Photos. ‘Reset the narrative.’ Smile on command.” The words scrape my throat on the way out.
“It’s the machine, Rowan. And I don’t know if I can climb back on without breaking something I finally like. ”
Rowan doesn’t speak. I look at him, expecting judgment. Coldness. Distance. What I get is his quiet understanding. Something deeper than pity.
“She says I still owe her. That I signed over my life when I was eighteen and scared and dumb. Back when I was Evangaline Quinn and not this Ivy product I’ve become.”
He steps closer.
“She’s not wrong,” I add bitterly. “But she’s not right either.”
“You’re not dumb,” Rowan says quietly.
I laugh. It cracks around the edges. “You don’t know me.”
“I know what it looks like when someone’s trying to keep you small.”
The words hit too close to home. I look down, blinking hard.
He’s beside me now, not touching—just close. Present in a way that settles something inside me even as it stirs more up.
“You going?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
Rowan nods, like he understands the weight of not knowing. Like he’s carried that, too.
I reach up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and my fingers shake. Without a word, Rowan reaches out and gently takes my hand in his. Rough palm against trembling fingers. Ground and air.
It’s not romantic, not exactly—no flowers, no speeches—but the look on his face is steady enough to make my throat burn.
“You don’t owe anyone your peace,” he says, low and certain, like he’s telling me which way the tide will turn.
I swallow. “And if I go anyway?”
He nods once, no flinch. “Then go because you chose it. And know this place will be waiting when you’re done—same porch light, same coffee, same quiet.” His mouth tips, the smallest almost smile.
Something inside me loosens so fast it’s almost a dizzy spell.
He lifts a hand, pauses—asking without words—then holds his palm out. “Your phone?”
I pass it over before I can overthink it.
He types for all of three seconds, thumb sure and unhurried, then the screen is back in my hand.
At the top of my favorites list is a new contact: Rowan.
He’s already texted himself a single acorn emoji, so he has my number because of course he chose something small and stubborn and alive.
“If you head to Nashville,” he says, tapping the contact, “and the noise gets heavy, you text me one word: home. I’ll answer. If you want to come back the same day, you send two words: come get. I won’t ask questions.”
Heat pricks behind my eyes again—frustrating, embarrassing, and impossible to stop. He sees it and doesn’t rush in or back away. He just stands there, big and immovable, like an oak that’s learned how to bend for storms.
“I hate that I even have to think about it,” I admit, voice small, honest.
“You get to think about it,” he corrects gently. “That’s the point.”
I nod, looking down at his name glowing on my screen, at the word he spoke to anchor it: Home. The letters blur, then sharpen. I breathe.
“I’m not deciding tonight,” I say.
“Good,” he answers, like that was the right one. “Sleep. Eat. Be a person. The rest can wait.”
The late morning sun lays bright rectangles across the yard, dust motes floating in the heat. I slide my phone into my pocket and meet his eyes.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He tips his chin toward the split in the path—one way to the cottage, one to the house. “I’ll walk you to the fork,” he says, and when our shoulders brush in the shade of the oaks, the touch is as reassuring as anything he just added to my contacts.
At the fork, we pause where both porches throw matching patches of light across the gravel. He nods toward my pocket. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“Neither are you,” I say, and it comes out like a promise.
He huffs a soft laugh, eyes warm. “Nope.”
We linger a breath longer in the hum of cicadas, then peel off—me toward the cottage, him toward the house. His screen door snaps softly behind him, and the quiet that settles after isn’t empty. It feels held.