Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
IVY
Snow kicks off his board in a fine spray as he skids to a halt.
I push the swing with my foot, rocking it in a slow arc. The past few days have been the calmest since I landed in this mess. Asher’s been gone. Atlas is quieter than usual. Sinead and Daniel are acting like they’ve known each other for years.
Asher shakes the powder from his jacket.
I pause my movements.
Snow clings to his dark hair before melting against the heat of his skin. He looks good. Annoyingly good. Good enough that I want to shove him back down the mountain.
“You’re alive,” I say, all bright and fake.
“Disappointed?” His mouth curves into a grin, dragging me back to who he used to be. To the version of him that I ruined.
I hold his stare. “Undecided.”
He unclips his bindings, stepping off the board. I’d spent three days of silence wondering where he was, who he was with, and whether he was fucking Camille in private the same way he liked to in public.
“Good to see there’s at least some part of you that hasn’t changed,” I say, blowing steam off my hot chocolate.
“What else exactly is it that you think has changed?” he asks, his tone level as he climbs the steps.
I bat my lashes. “Would you like the list?”
He hesitates, and I wonder if for a brief moment he remembers how we used to banter, but then he brushes it off and drops down beside me.
Heat crawls up my throat as I try to squash the memories of how his body felt weighing mine down just three nights earlier. I know I’m being pathetic, weak, a fucking cliché, but my mind is the only place I don’t have to perform.
When I first met him, I appreciated how we could sit in silence and not feel alone.
That hasn’t changed. But all it does right now is remind me that I should apologize, only if I start, my apology won’t end there.
It’d go deeper, and onto bigger shit that I’m not sure he’s ready to hear much less I am to say.
“Have you fucked Atlas?” His words snap my head toward him.
Jesus fuck, where did that come from?
“What?” All fight drains out of me because every time I look at this frustrating man, I fold.
He doesn’t have to know it, and I sure as hell would never show it, but it’s there.
A weight I carry everywhere, my biggest regret, and I’m not talking about all the nights I crawled on top of his dick either.
“Why?” I ask, because I what the fuck is he talking about?
“You don’t ask the questions, remember?” He softens, turning into me. “He’s not always who he says he is either, you know...”
I choke on my laugh. I won’t even dignify that with an answer. He can fucking brew on it while he’s balls deep in Miss Universe.
“Oh,” I say, jerking back a little. “And you are?”
“—And you are?” he fires back, smirking. I wouldn’t have caught it if I wasn’t dissecting every micro-expression.
I need to stop that.
My focus shifts back to the yard, lifting my mug. “I had no intention of fucking anyone, nor have I, but since you like to broadcast exactly where your dick goes…”
My throat tightens around the memories.
“I may be inclined to change my mind. I have to ask, though.” I pivot my body into him, resting my elbow on the swing’s edge and offering him my undivided attention. “What does Camille think about all this? Or does she truly have no self-respect.”
His left eye twitches as he leans back, stretching his arms across the swing’s full width.
I flinch as if his touch physically hurts, and the deepening of his smirk proves he noticed.
Bastard.
Our bodies cannot exist around each other.
“One?” He lifts a brow. “I never planned on being married. Not even to Camille.”
The way he confirms it as if she’s the bar he’s set is enough to almost send me over the edge.
I tuck stray bits of my hair behind my ear. “I guess you’re still young enough to find someone you want to marry.”
His eyes narrow. “Yeah, because that’s it.”
My mouth opens to answer back, but he shakes his head to cut me off.
“Shut up, Ivy,” he rasps, the words dragging slow over a chuckle. “I don’t wanna talk about this shit anymore. I don’t care about any of it. I just want you to suffer the same way I did.”
I wince, not caring if he sees, my chest tight with the words trapped inside.
“And what makes you think I haven’t already? That I didn’t during that first year?”
He goes still, those wolf-bright eyes as cold as ice. “Because you haven’t tried to kill me again.”
My phone vibrates over my belly, cutting into our conversation. I turn it over to see Leon’s name flashing across the screen.
“Hey!” I answer, ignoring Asher beside me.
“Are you ready?” Leon asks around shuffling in the back.
I place my mug down on the table in front of me.
“Ready for…” I ask, trying to think of all the things I may have forgotten since being so wrapped up in this mess.
Leon groans. “I fucking knew you’d forget. It’s La Journée du Nous.”
Shit.
I fly to my feet. “I forgot!”
La Journée du Nous is a family tradition Nonna created after mine and Leon’s first massive fight. A promise we all made that it didn’t matter where we were, who we were with, when that day came, we all dropped everything and flew to whatever destination she chose.
“Yeah,” Leon growls, too tired to be completely annoyed with me.
Will Asher even let me out?
“She’s choosing home this year,” he adds, as if that’s going to make it any different.
Désamour.
“We’re flying out tomorrow.” Leon pauses. “You can leave, right?”
Words catch my tongue. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Ivy…” he warns, and I know a Leon lecture is about to drop if I don’t hang up.
Pressure coils me tight. “I said I’d figure it out!”
Silence.
Leon has always been the one who sees through me without needing to dig. He’s always just… known. And right now, he knows I have no idea if Asher will let me walk out of here.
“Tell her I’m coming,” I force out through gritted teeth.
He scoffs. “I’m telling her nothing until you’re on a plane.”
The line cuts and I pull the phone from my ear, staring at Leon’s contact photo, a blurry shot of him mid-laugh from two summers ago.
Asher hasn’t moved from the swing, and I don’t have to turn to know he’s looking right at me.
“Important?”
It’s a simple question for a not-so-simple answer. I have no idea what to say right now and considering one wrong word might fucking ruin any chance of him saying yes, I flash a smile instead.
“Maybe. I just need to—” My thumb jerks over my shoulder before I’m dashing for the door and heading inside. Warm air hits my skin as I quicken my pace down the hall and into my room.
A small overnight bag sits on the bottom shelf of my closet, and I waste zero time tossing it onto the bed. My hand dives between the mattress and the frame, moving around until I find my gun.
I haven’t been to Désamour since we left. It’s home. It always has and always will be home. I should be excited to go back, since the opportunity has never come up, but all I’m left feeling is…
Nausea.
Asher’s voice cracks from the doorway. “And—where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
I freeze, Desert Eagle swinging off one finger.
Atlas appears behind him, hands raised as if to stop whatever war is about to erupt, only to do a double take on what I’m holding.
His brows jump. “No offense, but you shouldn’t be allowed weapons anymore.” He turns to his brother. “Tell her she’s not allowed weapons anymore.”
There’s no escaping. Even if I could run, I don’t want to. “I have to go home for a family tradition.”
Asher looks to the side, chuckling. “Not happening.”
My chest caves in, strangling my reply. “Asher…”
The magazine slips out of the chamber, landing in the palm of my hand.
I replace it without breaking eye contact. “It’s my…”
How am I going to explain this? He and I have never talked about our families, never shared a single detail personal enough to go deeper than the surface of who we were to each other. It’s why I fell for him, and why I was probably so easily tricked by him. And vice versa.
Wait…
I straighten, pointing at his chest. “You should come. It’s not like we wouldn’t be seen with each other anyway?”
His features don’t give any of his thoughts away as he moves further into the room.
Atlas shrieks, lunging for the weapon in my hand, but my arm snaps back before he can take it.
“You are not touching my gun!”
Fingers close around my elbow from behind. Asher covers the hand that’s holding the gun. I still haven’t worked out which one he’s trying to claim, the weapon or me.
He takes it, clicks the safety, and locks it away.
Guess that answers that…
Footsteps sound outside my door before Daniel appears, his attention bouncing between the three of us.
Asher angles his body to stand in front of mine as if on instinct.
I try to shove him out of the way. “Well, this is the start to every porn ever.”
No one laughs.
Daniel looks between my bag and my face. “La Journée du Nous, I didn’t realize it was so soon.”
You and me both, friend.
I glance up at Asher, expecting to read one hundred silent questions, but his expression is flat.
It’s like rereading your favorite book, one you’ve read so often that you can recite every line, when all of a sudden the words don’t make sense.
I can’t read him like I used to. He’s built a wall around the parts of himself that felt like home.
Asher ignores Daniel. “You ain’t going, Venom.”
He’s going to make this difficult for me. Everything is always going to be difficult.
“I don’t care if you kill me. You can. I don’t care. I earned it, whatever. Death? Death is simple to me. It’s something I made peace with a long time ago. You don’t do what I do and expect not to die, Asher.”
I fight with everything inside of me to not touch him, to not show any kind of weakness that he can use to destroy me, but my body vibrates with every passing second, nausea flipping my stomach upside down.
Fuck it.
I slide my hands up the side of his neck and rest them on his cheeks. “But I need you to do it after we’re back.”