Chapter Twelve
Ivy
The bedside clock is a judgy little jerk, asking me what I’m doing eating cheeseburgers at this hour. It should redirect that energy to the menace across the table.
I shift in my Hotel Bellwether robe (my own personal marshmallowy hug) and stare at a plate of lukewarm fries. I press my knees together. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Every time I breathe, my muscles twitch with the memory of him.
My entire nervous system is running hot while my mind plays a highlight reel of “The Cole Hartwell Experience: Extended Unrated Cut.”
The bed.
The velvet chair by the window.
Against the wall—twice, because Cole has good ideas too, sometimes.
Four times.
Four distinct, catastrophically ruinous, absolutely-not-going-in-the-incident-report times. Each one has a location. A sound. A specific moment where Ivy Ellison, professional woman-with-a-plan, turned into this other person who made noises she prays weren’t too embarrassing.
Cole Hartwell completely demolished my no-rival rule. I’ll need a search party to find the wreckage.
I shove a fry into my mouth and can’t even taste the salt. Does the highlight reel care? Nope. It’s still playing, full volume, no skip button.
God, the chair.
I throb at the memory. The ocean outside was relentless, waves crashing as he crashed into me.
His palms, steady and certain, gripped my hips and pulled me right where he wanted me on his lap.
The things he said… the things he commanded.
Naughty things that I really, really liked.
We both knew he shouldn’t be saying them.
“When you grind into me like that, your body is telling me exactly what it needs,” he murmured. “And baby, I never ignore a plea.”
“You’re—”
“Impossible?” His lips curled as his fingers slid lower, finding my clit. “Stop fighting it, Stopwatch. Let me show you how good we are.”
The way he kissed my breasts while his hands guided me up and down on top of him burned away every insecurity I’d ever had about being “too much.” Every touch of his mouth on my skin erased it all.
Then there was the wall.
Fuck.
He didn’t just go down on me. He ruined me. No rushing, no fumbling, only his unhurried tongue working in slow torment. His eyes were dark and determined, like he’d finally discovered his place in the world and it was between my thighs.
I should’ve collapsed. Should’ve begged him to stop.
I did neither.
I haven’t returned the favor yet. Next time, something low and feral in me thinks, I’m going to make him forget every word he knows.
“You’re doing that thing again.”
I blink, dragged back into the present.
Cole sits across from me annihilating a cheeseburger—a testament to the calories we burned together. His robe hangs open enough to be distracting, his hair a mess, his eyes heavy in a way that should not be that attractive at three in the morning.
“What thing?”
“Overthinking.” He gestures with a fry, completely serious. “You get this look like you’re labeling me. Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Put the mental spreadsheet away, Ivy.” He pops the fry into his mouth, “Eat your burger.”
“I am not thinking about you. I’m managing work stuff in my head,” I snap.
He hums, slow, amused. “And what’s the big work crisis…” he glances at the clock, “at three-twenty-nine in the morning?”
“I need to double-check—” I wave vaguely, “—logistics.”
“Uh-huh.” His eyes drag over my poker face. “You’re replaying the wall… the second time.”
I stare him down over my fry.
“No. Logistics, Hartwell.”
His laugh is low and warm, a delicious rumble that does something unforgivable to my heart. He reaches across the table, his thumb brushing a stray grain of salt from my bottom lip. The room gets ten degrees hotter.
“Sure you are, Stopwatch.”
I sip my drink so my mouth won’t spiral.
The distraction doesn’t stick. I’m looking at him again. In that stupid robe. He’s too relaxed and entirely too present in a moment that should’ve burned itself out by now.
This is unsustainable.
My brain agrees that now is the perfect time to ruin everything.
“Why do you want the promotion?”
I immediately wave a hand between us, wishing I could physically shove the question back down my throat.
“Nope. Delete that. We are currently in uh, a work-free zone, which is—strictly—robes, cheeseburgers, and—oh God—an intense amount of ‘horizontal collaboration.’ Not that I’m keeping score—because I’m not.
Or—judging! Or—wait—why did I say ‘collaboration?!’ That sounds straight out of a PowerPoint slide!
I meant—uh—recreation! Yes! ‘Horizontal recreation.’ People say that, right?
It’s a thing. My filter is clearly in the trash with all of the condom wrappers—which I’m not counting! I should stop now.”
His mouth twitches. “Ivy.”
“I’m serious,” I say, covering my face. “It was an accidental slip. Drop it.”
“No can do. You can’t take back a question like that.”
“I absolutely can. It’s one of my many skills.”
“Yeah?” His brow lifts. “Right next to overanalyzing and pretending you aren’t picturing me naked right now?”
“That’s not—”
“Glenmire,” he says.
I blink. “Gesundheit?”
“It’s a town in California.” He says. “My hometown. High desert, one-stoplight kind of place. The whole economy ran on a single extension cord manufacturing plant, which sounds insane when you say it out loud. But that’s what it was, one plant, one heartbeat, and nobody ever stopped to think what would happen if it ever went under. ”
He shrugs.
“Plant shut down. Jobs vanished. Traffic dried up. Businesses started going under, including my family’s diner.”
Something in my chest does a slow, sideways shift.
“I was home from college for the summer. Every night I saw my stressed-out parents at the kitchen table, doing math to keep the place going.”
He picks up a fry, looks at it, sets it down.
“I had no budget. No plan. No fancy strategy. What I had was a hunch and the knowledge that behind the factory, there stood an absurd, oversized ball of extension cords.”
“Sorry, what now?”
“Some local guy had been winding extension cords into a giant ball for decades. He worked at the plant and kept combining scraps. It was enormous, completely pointless, and the single most interesting thing within a hundred miles.”
A laugh barks out of me. “I already regret asking, but what did you do with that giant electrical death trap?”
“You mean The World’s Biggest Ball of Extension Cords?
” he says, grinning as if he owns the title.
“I leaned into the freakshow factor. Set it up outside my family’s restaurant and posted signs.
I invited people to add to the mess. They’d bring their own cord, snap a photo for the ‘gram, and stay for the burgers. Suddenly Glenmire, and my parents’ diner, wasn’t just a drive-through town; it was a destination. ”
“And people actually… came?”
“Oh, I made people come,” he says, all puffed up, and I can’t help but blush. “But only a few stopped at first. Then more. When the press caught wind, visitors were detouring off the highway to see it. Which meant they were also stopping for pie.”
“So your family’s restaurant?”
“Stayed open.” His shoulders lift like it’s no big deal.
“You built a whole campaign around it?”
“Yup. Got the plant attention again,” he adds. “New manufacturer stepped in. Reopened it.”
“And you’re just dropping this over fries?”
“They’re damn good fries.”
I don’t laugh.
I can’t.
Because I realize we have the same heart, despite spending half a year at each other’s throats.
I reach for my drink because if I don’t, I’ll reach for him.
“You couldn’t have led with the extension cord story?” I hear myself say. “Back in January? Could’ve saved us a lot of aggression.”
“Where’s the fun in that, Stopwatch?”
I used to want to smack that smirk off his face; now I just want to kiss it.
“Dare4Change has a megaphone. If I can do that for a single town with a ball of wire, imagine what I can do at scale for other places that are hurting. That’s why I’m gunning for the promotion.”
The weight of my entire case against him falls away. My ribs find more room for my lungs to expand. We want the same thing, we just… do it differently.
And God help me, seeing the heart behind the hustle is a million times more dangerous than mind-blowing sex.
I can’t stop staring at him. That’s a problem. A real problem.
Because Cole Hartwell in a hotel robe is a series of terrible decisions I’ve already made, bundled up in cotton and tied with a bow. His eyes are warm and lazy, and he’s not scheming or pushing my buttons. He’s him unguarded, loose-limbed, comfortable. Sprawled out in my room with me.
But let’s be real, it shouldn’t be me. It should be Sienna. She’s stunning and brilliant, a literal marine biologist who is effortlessly everything I’m not.
So why the hell is he here, staring at me like he doesn’t want to be anywhere else?
Because you were holding the EpiPen.
He almost died today. His body shut down in front of everyone, and I happened to be the girl behind the needle.
I yanked him back from the great beyond.
Which means this (whatever this is) isn’t real.
It’s adrenaline, or post-traumatic growth, or his brain’s twisted way of saying, “Hey, thanks for not letting me die, here’s your reward in orgasms.”
It’s gratitude, pure and simple. I need to stop confusing it for anything more. Right? (… right?)
I continue picking it apart because that’s what I do when things don’t fit. The proof is always there if you dig deep enough.
First, I am too high-strung, too intense for the men I’ve dated.
Second, I don’t trust “the flow.” Because letting go feels too much like losing.
Third, my version of “winging it” is practicing my spontaneous approach until it’s memorized.
My gaze drops before I can stop it. His abs, the plane of his chest, the line of his muscular forearms, all golden and solid and—
God.
Fourth, the literal biggest reason. I’m curvy.