Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IVY
The past twenty-four hours have been a nightmare. My mother is far worse than she ever was when I was a kid. She’s so fucking cruel. And she kicked Cally twice, and it tore my goddamn heart out.
Just before Xander walked in, I was desperately trying to decide how I was going to remove Cally and me from the situation. But then he stormed in, and I’d never been so relieved to see anyone in my life.
“You didn’t call me,” he murmurs against my hair. We’re standing in the middle of his living room, just holding each other in the quiet.
“When?”
“At any time, Red. I told you to call me if you needed me.”
I sigh and close my eyes, listening to his strong heart thud against my cheek. The same cheek that still stings from the slap my own mom cracked against my face less than an hour ago.
“It’s not your mess, Xander.”
He drags his hand down my spine, and I let out a little yelp when he suddenly lifts me in his arms and carries me to the couch.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” I tell him.
“I’m fine.” He sits with me on his uninjured thigh, and I move to wiggle away, but he clamps his arms around me. “Stay.”
“Your knee—”
He shakes his head and rests his forehead against my temple. “Stay.”
With a sigh, I relax against him and wrap my arms around his neck so I can bury my face against his skin.
God, he smells good.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, and then his voice rumbles with “I have a sister.”
Frowning, I pull back so I can see his face. “You have Ava and Harper.”
Xander brushes his thumb over the freckles on my left cheek, and his eyes follow the movement. It sends a lovely little zing through me. Warmth and longing and contentment settle in, and it feels . . . nice.
“I have a new sister,” he clarifies, and my eyebrows climb in surprise.
“What?”
He licks his lips, and I don’t know why I think he needs it, but I can feel in my chest that this man needs a hug.
So I shift, straddling his lap now and putting all my weight on my knees, and I wrap my arms around his neck again and hug him to me.
His arms are steel bands around my back. He buries his nose in my neck, and I rock him, just a little, and hold him tight.
And God, does it feel good.
To feel our hearts beating and to have silence around us as we simply sit and hold each other. I don’t think anyone has held me—truly held me—since I was a baby.
“Who is it?” I whisper.
“Indigo.”
What?
I swallow and pull back just far enough to see his face. “Seriously?”
Xander nods. “She found her birth certificate. We share a mother.”
Jesus.
I have so many questions, but I don’t know if I should ask them.
“Okay.” I push my fingers through his hair and love the way it feels so soft and silky. “Well, that’s pretty cool.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Not cool?”
“I’m—” He shrugs a shoulder, and I feel like a jerk.
“I should have asked you how you’re feeling about this. You can talk to me. I’m Switzerland over here. No skin in this game.”
He brushes my hair back over my shoulder, and I silently admit to myself that being this close to Xander is heaven.
Leaning against him, sitting on him, could become an addiction.
“I guess I never really thought about what my mom did after she abandoned us. I was almost four when she left.” He goes back to ghosting his fingertip over the skin of my face, and I want to purr.
I want to lean into him and beg him never to stop touching me.
“And I didn’t want to think about her new life.
I didn’t wonder about what she was doing, and how she could just carry on and forget about the four children she left behind. ”
I stay silent as he swallows hard.
“Six years after she skipped out, she had another baby. And she’s such a piece of shit that Indie wasn’t even a year old when she left her too.”
“God,” I whisper.
“I feel like a jerk for not being excited about finding out I have a long-lost sister who wasn’t so lost. I like Indie. She’s great. But fuck.”
“It doesn’t make you a shit person to have mixed feelings, Xander. Of course you do. Even if it’s not any of your fault, it’s okay to be angry and hurt. At least you know Indie isn’t an asshole. It could have been a stranger.”
“How do we know there aren’t more?” he asks, his voice so quiet. “Are more people going to show up and say that our piece-of-shit mom is also their mom?”
Well, I hadn’t thought of that.
“There’s no way to know,” I tell him honestly. “Maybe. Probably not. Do you have any idea where she is now?”
“Yeah, I know.”
My eyes widen.
“No one knows that I know. Not even my siblings. As far as they’re concerned, she left and never came back. And that’s true. She’s never been back here since she skipped out with Indie’s dad.”
“Where has she been, Xander?”
He frowns and swallows hard, and when he doesn’t answer, I lean in and hug him again, and he clings to me.
“She wanted money.” I don’t ask; it’s a statement. Because I already know.
He nods against me.
“How much did you give her?”
“Nothing.”
Surprised, I pull back and blink at him. “Really?”
“Really. She wasn’t mean like your mom. And she didn’t come to me in person. She called.”
“How did she get your number?”
“I have no idea. I changed it after that call. Told everyone that I lost my phone.” He licks his lips. “She called out of the blue, said she was proud of me and needed a million dollars.”
I narrow my eyes. “I’d like to punch her in the face.”
His frown eases. “I laughed at her and hung up. Didn’t say a word to her.
Because I was just a baby, not even in kindergarten, when she left.
She didn’t give me anything at all growing up.
I do remember her being loving and fun, but Jesus Christ, she’s been gone for the better part of thirty years.
So no, she doesn’t get to ask me for anything now. ”
“I’m sorry. Do you think Indie did what she did today because she has ulterior motives?”
“No, I don’t.” He shakes his head. “Indie doesn’t want anything from us. She just didn’t want to keep the secret.”
“I can appreciate that.”
His hand drifts up my arm, my shoulder, and under my hair to the back of my neck, and he gently pulls me to him, so he can lean his forehead against mine.
This might be the most intimate I’ve ever been with a man. Because this isn’t about sex. It’s connection.
“You can feel however you need to feel,” I whisper to him. “It’s all okay. And it might change each day for a while.”
His lips twitch up into a half smile. “You’re smart. I knew that you were exactly what I needed right now.”
I can’t believe that this is Xander being flirty and nice, just because he’s that way with everyone.
That’s not what this is anymore.
“Thanks for letting me crash here for a couple of days,” I whisper.
“There’s no way I’ll let you go back there while she’s there. Absolutely not.” He gently presses his hand over my sore cheek. “Why did she hit you?”
His jaw clenches.
“Because I put cheddar cheese on her sandwich and she doesn’t like cheese.”
He waits.
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Ivy.”
“If only. I would have gotten Cally and me out of there today. She kicked her twice. My poor girl.”
“No my poor girl,” Xander growls and pulls me in for another hug. “You should press charges, Red.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe next time.”
“There won’t be a fucking next time.”
Xander is really good at the whole hugging thing.
“At least I left my work bag here yesterday, so I can still be productive.”
“We’re taking the day off, remember?”
I grin. “What are we doing instead?”
“We didn’t get movie night.”
“Do I get to choose the movie?”
Xander scoffs. “Of course not. Wait, what would you choose?”
I press my lips together and then say, “The Notebook.”
“Fuck no.” He shakes his head. “No. Just you uttering those words means that you never get to choose a movie ever.”
“Hey! Not fair.”
“Totally fair. I want to watch Aladdin,” he says, keeping a straight face.
“Excuse me?”
“I have to brush up on all the kids movies for Bellie Boo. So I can sing the songs to her.”
Welp. There went my vagina, my uterus, and my ovaries, all up in flames.
“Okay, looks like we have homework. But I’m making popcorn first.”
“We need a lot of popcorn,” he says as he stands with me still in his arms, and I smack his shoulder. “Ow! What the fuck, Red?”
“Put me down. You can’t be lifting this much weight on that knee. I won’t have it.”
He rolls his eyes and sets me on my feet.
“You’re violent,” he says.
“And don’t you forget it.”
Cally’s curled up on Xander’s chest as we watch the end of Aladdin, and he keeps rubbing her back with his chin whiskers.
I might have taken a secret video of it because it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. My cat is purring like crazy, and I can’t blame her a bit because same.
“I need a shower,” I announce, and Xander’s eyebrow kicks up. “I didn’t take one this morning. I was worried that my mom would do something to Cally, and it’s driving me nuts.”
“Got it.” Xander kisses Cally one last time, then sets her on the seat next to his, takes my hand, and pulls me out of my chair and doesn’t let go of said hand as he leads me out of the media room—that might as well be a freaking movie theater—and down the hall to a bedroom.
He opens the door and gestures for me to go inside.
The whole room is decorated in greens and browns, and there’s a balcony that looks out to the mountains and the pond behind the house.
“Wow, this is nice.”
“There’s a bathroom through there,” Xander says. “It should have everything you need, but let me know if it’s missing anything.”
I blink when I see my bag on the bench at the end of the bed. “When did you bring that in here?”
“When you were making popcorn. Get cozy, Red. I’m gonna go work out on my upper body for a while. I’ll be in the gym if you need me.”
Jesus, I’d like to watch that.
I manage to keep my face neutral as I nod. “Okay. Thanks. The room is great.”
He smiles and then walks out, pulling the door closed behind him, and I let out a breath.
I need a Xander break.
He’s been nothing but sweet today. Amazing. Open and vulnerable and then funny when we watched the movie.
And I need to breathe for a bit because a girl could get way too addicted to him.
I’m on the verge of making a complete fool of myself, when all the poor man has done is be a good friend.
Okay, so we might have felt like more than that earlier on the couch, but it’s not like he’s kissing me and tearing my clothes off.
Damn it.
I walk into the gorgeous en suite bathroom, taking in the amazing green tile in the shower and the stunning marble countertops, and discover that the floor is heated, so my feet won’t get cold.
My feet are always cold.
After I start the shower and let it heat up, I strip out of my clothes and set them aside to wash.
I don’t have a ton of clothes with me, so I’ll have to do laundry every couple of days.
I was in such a rush to get the hell out of there, I blindly grabbed whatever was handy and shoved it in the bag.
I might only have six pairs of underwear, a sock, and thermal underwear.
I have no idea.
Smirking, I walk back out to the bedroom to open said bag and grab the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and razor that I know I took from my bathroom, and then return to the shower and let the hot water loosen all the muscles that have been so tense since the fire yesterday morning.
It feels like that was a year ago now.
This bathroom is incredible. It’s warm, and this shower feels so good that I wash my hair twice before I work the conditioner in and then get to work shaving all the things while it sits and does its job.
Finally, when there’s nothing left to rinse and I’m all wrinkled, I turn off the water and reach for a towel.
But there aren’t any towels on the rack.
How did I miss that?
It’s fine. I can just go out to the bedroom and text Xander and ask him where the towels are. No biggie.
I wring out my hair the best I can, twist it up so it doesn’t drip all over the place, and tiptoe—why do we tiptoe when we’re wet, as if that will prevent making puddles on the floor?—to the door and open it, and then squeal when I find Xander on the other side, his hand raised to knock.
“Oh God!”
I dart behind the door and feel my face flame.
Oh God.
“Uh, Red?”
“I’m so sorry, I was going to grab my phone so I could text and ask about towels. I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t mean to flash you.”
“You’re still flashing me, wildcat, I can see you in the mirror.”
“Oh God.” I close my eyes. “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. Why are you here?”
“To bring you towels.” I can hear the laughter in his voice. “I found them in the laundry. Sorry. Where do you want them?”
“WRAPPED AROUND MY BODY!”
He’s laughing now, and I hold my hand out.
Thank God, he puts one in that hand, and I hurry to wrap it around me.
“I’ll move out as soon as I get dressed,” I tell him.
“You’re being a little dramatic,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I can’t have you seeing me naked. No. Just no.”
“Why the fuck not?”
Now he sounds mad, so I open the door wider so I can see him.
“Because, Xander, you look like that.” I gesture up and down his body. “At the risk of giving you a big head, you look like you’ve been carved out of marble. And I look like . . . this.”
His eyes narrow, and to his credit, they don’t leave my face.
“Go on.”
“It’s self-explanatory.”
“Nope. Say the rest, Ivy.”
I bite my lower lip and drop my gaze, and he steps forward, grips my chin between his thumb and finger, and makes me look him in the eyes.
“Say. The. Rest.”
“I look like me.”
Christ, why did my voice have to crack on that last word?
“Yeah you do. You’re so fucking pretty, Red.
All that hair and those big blue eyes. Smooth skin, perfect curves, and fuck.
Now I know you have freckles all over your body, and I’m dying to touch them.
If you think you’re anything but amazing, you’re wrong.
You won’t be leaving, and you have nothing to be bashful about, wildcat.
Now, I’ll leave you be so you can get dressed before I lay you out on that bed and fuck you into next week. ”
Before I can utter a word, he turns around and walks away, and what just happened?