27. Ivy
Chapter 27
Ivy
M y mom sets a cup of tea before me and adjusts the cardigan slipping from my shoulder. After closing, I came here to tell her that the news she always suspected is now out. Of course, she was not even slightly surprised. Instead, she smiled and gave me a tight hug. And I’ve now spent the past hour recounting the appropriate details to her about how things have been going between Tripp and me.
I put my phone back down and look up at her. “Tripp told Wes.”
“How did that go?” she asks, sipping from her own teacup.
I don’t have time to answer before the French doors from the backyard open and there is Wes. His hand is swollen and bruised, and it doesn’t take long for me to understand what Tripp meant by telling me not to freak out when I see him.
I’m in love with Tripp, I have been for some time. Of this, I’m certain. But what happens if my brother never forgives us? The knot in my stomach tightens at the sight of his hand and what it means.
“What are you doing here?” Wes snaps when he sees me.
“There will be none of that,” our mom scolds, rising from her seat once again and moving to the freezer. She withdraws a bag of frozen peas and hands them to him. “What did you do to your hand?”
“I’m sure Ivy already knows.”
“Wesley.” There is authority in her tone.
He doesn’t say anything, instead he takes the peas and disappears back out to his carriage house.
“I have to go too, Mom. I have a feeling that I’ll find the matching half to Wes’s hand with Tripp.”
She nods and gives me another hug before I leave. With her arms wrapped tight around me, she says, “Pass this one on to Tripp too.”
My mom’s support helps that knot in my stomach to loosen some. If Ruth is on board, then it should be no time at all before everyone else is too, that’s the magic of our mother. And if there’s ever a time I need that magic, it’s now.
The sound of knocking causes me to spring to my feet. Tripp is here. I cross the room and quickly move through the multiple locks he’s installed in my door. Throwing it open, a gasp escapes me at the sight in my doorway.
It’s an early stage, but there’s swelling and the start of some bruising on his face. His achingly handsome face. He sweeps me up in an embrace as he moves into the apartment, balancing a pizza in his other hand.
“He hit you,” I whimper against his chest. “I can’t believe Wes hit you.”
He pulls back and tilts my chin up to see my face. I can feel moisture threatening my eyes as I scan his injuries. “It looks worse than it is,” he assures me with a kiss.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur as I gently brush my thumb along his cheek.
“I’m not.” A soft smile pulls at his lips, and he holds the pizza box up beside us. “Dinner?”
We take a seat on the sofa, and he opens the box, handing me a slice of my favorite pizza. “The hot honey pizza?” I look at him in surprise.
“You think I don’t know your order by now? Come on, we used to get Oak + Harbor after almost all our lacrosse games in high school. And every break you were home from college, that’s what you’d tell your mom you wanted.” He looks up at me with all the warmth and affection in the world, and my heart flutters in response.
“I remember the time Wes only got a large of the Mediterranean pizza he likes, extra olives, so you picked every single olive off for me.” I sniff at the memory of a sixteen year old Tripp caring about me even then, and take in the bruised features of twenty seven year old Tripp before me now. “But what happens now that…”
“We’ll figure this out.” He reaches over and brushes his thumb along my bottom lip. “No doubts, Sherlock. Not for one second. You’re worth it all and more.”
“No doubts,” I reply softly. “Not now, not ever.” Loving Tripp isn’t something I ever had to think about. I simply know it to be true.
As intoxicating as a date night out with him is, the slow, comfortable evenings are what I’m really starting to treasure. There’s something so vulnerable and real about sharing the quiet hours with someone. Tucked under his arm, I read a book while he scans a fishing report. Every so often, he drops a kiss to my head or brushes his thumb back and forth across my arm. It’s the most at peace I’ve felt in some time.
Tripp
“You look like shit,” Millie remarks, passing me a paper cup from the café.
“You remember I’m your boss, right?”
She snickers, stepping back and crossing her arms. The look on her face tells me that she’s studying me like a crime scene. “So, what’s the story?”
Looking over her shoulder through the department, I spot none other than the culprit stepping into the lobby. I’m not sure what my friend is doing here, but he doesn’t look happy.
Turning my attention back to Millie, I reply, “I think everyone is about to find out. You might want to get some ice for round two.” I motion to my face before nodding towards Wes.
She looks between me and him, her eyes widening. “This is because of Ivy.”
“Everything in my life is because of Ivy,” I say matter of factly. “And I like it that way. But he,” I motion to my friend who is now steps away, “does not.”
Wes reaches us, giving a curt nod to Millie. “Can you give us a minute?” he asks.
“I actually think I should stay, in case our sheriff gets assaulted again.” She sounds more like my partner again, compared to my deputy. We never left the other one hanging when responding to calls. I just never thought that it would be necessary with Wes.
He takes a seat across from me and shrugs. “Fine, stay. I’m just here to talk though.”
“Go ahead then,” I tell him, motioning for Millie to close the door.
“You are going to stay away from Ivy, starting today.”
A bitter laugh escapes me, I can’t believe it has come to this. Leaning forward, I clasp my hands together and rest my forearms on the stack of papers scattered across my desk. “You want me to stay away from her? What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re done screwing my sister. You’re not going to use her like you did Kelly.”
I fly out of my chair, the sound of it ricocheting off the wall behind me echoes through the room. “Fuck you.”
Kelly is the tourist from Boston that happened to come to town when I needed a distraction from my grief. The woman I decidedly did not treat in a way that would make Pops proud. I felt like the worst guy after that, and apologized profusely when I came out of my fog of heavy, fresh grief. To be fair, she didn’t seem to mind and said she didn’t need to leave Boston to find a hookup, but that she didn’t want to be the one to say it.
Wes was going for a kill shot with that one. He knows that I feel bad about how I handled it all. He knows I would never think of Ivy in that way. Even if he wasn’t there to see what I was going through, he knew what losing my grandfather was doing to me.
“I would never use Ivy. I love her more than anything in this world. So no, I won’t be staying away from her, and hopefully you can get over that. Because I feel wicked bad about this. And so does Ivy. We care about you, and you come in here with shit like that?”
“You feel bad, but you jump into bed with her before you tell me? If you’ve loved her for all these years like you claim, you don’t think you could have slipped that into a conversation before screwing her?”
“I am sorry about that.” He’s got me there. I sink back into my chair, my eyes flitting to Millie watching in awe from the corner of the room. Outbursts aren’t like me, of course she’s surprised. I shake my head and sigh. “It doesn’t matter though. I literally can’t stay away from her. I’m the sheriff and she’s the target of ongoing aggression in my investigation.”
“Yeah, seems like your professional boundaries are being crossed there then. So put Millie with her and focus on doing your damn job.” Wes stands, apparently deciding this discussion is over.
I watch him storm out of my office and through the lobby before I throw my head back and stare at the ceiling. Maybe I am distracted by how I feel about Ivy, and clearly the vandal is counting on that. His notes taunting her about her boyfriend prove as much. It’s time I try to be truly objective.
“Have time to go over everything with fresh eyes?” I ask, looking up at Millie. She purses her lips, clearly holding back an opinion. But she nods in agreement instead of voicing it. “Alright, then.” I wait for her to take a seat before continuing.
“We need to start with the idea that this is focused on hurting me. And it started when I won the sheriff position. There were four of us that ran for it. I can’t believe this, but I think we start there.”
“Any chance it can still be Jackson or Reid?” she asks hopefully.
“Reid hasn’t come back to town. So, there’s something going on there, but I don’t think it is related. Jackson has a witness placing him on his boat in the harbor two days after the break-in. He still had his keys.”
Millie drags her hand down her face and groans. “Which means, if you hadn’t taken Winston’s recommendation to run, the person doing this could be sitting in that sheriff’s seat right now. That is terrifying that we could be reporting to someone so awful.”
“Well don’t feel too comfortable yet, my recall has begun.”
“I would have never imagined. I mean we have some characters around here—but this is a tight knit community, a community that loves you!”
Shrugging, I turn to my computer and pull up the profiles of my previous competitors. “People do surprising things when they’re scared.”
“Then let’s get the bastard and make sure they all feel safe again.” She sits forward and looks at the screen with me. There were four of us that ran for county sheriff.
Two of my fellow candidates have harbor keys.
One of them was at the Taylor’s roast.
But there’s no way.