Chapter Twelve – Ivy
The minute I close the cottage door, I tape a hand-lettered note dead center where anyone with eyes can’t miss it.
PLEASE DON’T KNOCK. I’M RESTING / WRITING / TRYING NOT TO FALL APART. TEXT ME IF IT’S IMPORTANT.
Bailey helped me pick the wording over text— kind, clear, a little funny, she said.
I added the last line because honesty has to count for something.
The paper looks ridiculous under the sweet brass heron lamp and the whitewashed planks Rowan sanded smooth himself, but I need the boundary more than I need aesthetic harmony.
The cottage breathes around me—quiet, pine soap, and clean cotton, and the faintest echo of hay from my sandals by the door.
The bed is made like a promise. The little kitchenette hums. Outside, the cicadas start their sermon, and a dragonfly shoulders the heat like it’s paid to. I should be fine. I’m not.
I’m not because three nights ago, a man who doesn’t run from anything ran me a bath and washed my hair with the care of someone handling a relic.
He carried me to his bed like weight has never meant burden.
He slept on the floor with one hand curled around mine and didn’t move when I woke and pressed his knuckles to my cheek like a talisman.
No one has taken care of me like that. Not in years. Maybe not ever.
Now I can’t tell whether my skin is hot from the fever I finally outran or from the memory of his palm smoothing the towel over my shoulder blades. I only know that every cell in me—tired, wobbly, lavender-scented—keeps turning toward the house like a sunflower toward light.
So I do the only thing I trust to sort the knot. I make tea strong enough to stand a spoon, tuck my hair in a braid, open my notebook, and write until my hand cramps.
The first pages are garbage. Lines that read like notes to myself from a hospital hallway— you’re okay, keep breathing, don’t flinch when the world asks you to perform calm.
Then a melody threads through that sounds like rain on a tin roof.
Then a chorus that says stay without saying his name. I chase it until my eyes blur.
My phone buzzes across the table.
Bailey:
Leaving you a basket on the step in 10 (soup + honey + my last two scones because I love you). No opening the door or I’ll mace you with elderberry syrup.
I huff a laugh that’s really a breath of relief.
Me:
You’re a saint and a tyrant.
Bailey:
Both can be true. Hydrate or I text Mrs. W.
I could argue, but I don’t. I set a timer for water and go back to the page.
Twenty minutes later, the boards on the porch whisper under a careful weight.
I stand—because I can’t not—and watch from the kitchen window.
The basket is there (gingham cloth, of course Bailey), and then there’s another shape, broader, framed by the oak’s shade.
Dark tee, ball cap, forearms clean and nicked.
Rowan sets a Mason jar beside the basket like he’s leaving a peace offering to a skittish animal.
He doesn’t try the handle. Doesn’t call my name.
Just looks at the note for a beat, tips two fingers to the brim of his cap like a promise kept, and walks back down the steps.
The tea in my mug goes cool while I stand suspended in that small, ridiculous grace. I should be the one who knows about cameras and angles and lines you don’t cross. He’s the one teaching me that quiet can say more than any speech.
I slide the basket inside with a toe and read Bailey’s Post-its stuck to everything like leaf tags.
soup: heat low and slow, no boiling (you’re not pasta).
scones: eat now, apologize never.
honey: from Wildflower Stan, medicine + dessert.
PS: if you don’t text me by 4 pm with ? ? I’m breaking your “do not disturb” and bringing soup sirens.
I text the peace-sign emoji. I add a heart. Bailey responds with fifteen more hearts and a GIF of a woman fanning herself with a church bulletin. My laugh lands in the quiet and stays.
I eat half a scone on the floor with my back against the cabinet, knees up, notebook balanced on my thighs.
The song keeps tugging at my sleeve. By midafternoon, there are three verses and a bridge that remembers the shape of his hand on the back of my knuckles and the small circle his thumb traced in the dark like he was keeping time with my breath.
When the sun slants to that late hour where everything turns honey thick, I drive to the market because I need produce and a human face that isn’t mine in a mirror.
Coral Bell Cove’s farmers’ market is the least anonymous place on earth—four dozen people, two dozen folding tables, and one hundred percent certainty that someone will know the way you take your coffee.
I keep my sunglasses on for the drive and slip them up when I step under the awning because the kind of attention here isn’t the kind that needs a shield.
Neighbor eyes. Soft and nosy but hopeful.
I see the jars first—honey like a bottled sunset under a hand-painted sign: Stan the thumbprint on the glass when I lifted it later, cool and sweating in my palm. I swallow. “Thank you. For… not treating me like a headline.”
She snorts. “I live with men who forget their own birthdays unless someone writes it on the calendar. If you were a headline, I’d still need you to bring a dessert to the potluck.”
I buy a jar of wildflower honey and two peaches that smell like July.
Mrs. Wright tucks a small bag of pecans into my tote when I’m not looking.
“For when you decide to bake something instead of running,” she says, and pats my cheek like she’s blessing me.
“Tell Bailey to stop stealing my scone recipe.”
“She would rather perish,” I say solemnly.
“Figures.”
On my way out, I pass Bailey herself, hair in a messy bun, book in hand. She points two fingers at her eyes, then at me. “ Drink water ,” she mouths. I mime a salute and mouth back, “ I’m okay .” She narrows her eyes, reads my pulse without touching me, and nods once.
Back at the cottage, I set the peaches on the counter and forget about them for an hour because the air is thick and the page is louder.
The song turns its head and shows me a new angle—a minor climb that feels like walking toward a door you want opened and aren’t sure you should knock on.
I play it twice on the guitar I swore I would give back, but now I’ve grown fond of.
The sound fills the small room, and something in my chest loosens like a stuck window.
As if summoned by music, boots thud on the porch boards. The door stays closed. The steps stop.
Silence lengthens. My skin prickles.
“Ivy?” His voice is a low question through wood. Gooseflesh ripples along my arms like I’m the field and wind just remembered my name.
I step closer, palms damp, throat dry. I stare at my own note, at the way the ink bled on the y. I should tell him to come back tomorrow. I should protect the little, fragile edge of peace I carved out. I should—
I open the door.
Rowan stands one step down, as if he made himself shorter before I thought to be afraid. Cap in his hand. T-shirt soft with wear. Eyes steady and sleepless. When his gaze drops to my mouth and returns politely to my eyes, I feel it everywhere I have a pulse.
“Hey,” I say, because full sentences have abandoned me.
“Didn’t want to ignore your sign,” he answers, lifting a Mason jar sweating with condensation. “Brought you more tea bags.”
“I appreciate that.” I keep one foot braced against the door because if I don’t, I’ll invite him into a very small room with a very large amount of unresolved tension.
“I can leave the canister on the rail.”
Or I can stop pretending not seeing him is safer. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can… hand it to me.”
He steps up one board. The porch light hasn’t clicked on yet.
The day’s last amber is doing the work, slanting over his jaw, catching on the tiny white scar at his temple I’ve started measuring my restraint by.
He passes me the jar. Our fingers don’t touch.
It still feels like a spark jumps, a low, clean heat that has nothing to do with summer.
“How are you?” he asks, plain. Not a polite formality. A census of the soul.
“Better.” It comes out true. “Hungry. Less feverish. Loud in my head.”