by Aubrey Irons
I glance up to see Sierra ducking under the canopy of branches with a sympathetic look on her face.
“Ugh.”
I shake my head and look away. I’m not ready to go there yet with anyone - not ready to tell her where I went last night.
Or who I went there with.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I give her a wry, sideways smile. “Not really.”
“Can I bribe you?”
She brings her hand from behind her back, a plate with two white-bread, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches cut on the diagonal on them.
I grin in spite of myself.
It’s exactly the type of lunch we used to munch on out here on this bench, and I know she knows that.
She smiles and plops down next to me, grabbing a sandwich and passing me the plate.
“Nosey,” I mutter, taking a bite of PB&J.
“I know.” She arches a brow. “So, where’d you go?”
“O’Donnell’s.”
“No, I know that part.”
I raise a brow and she rolls her eyes.
“You dipped into Rowan’s stash. He noticed.”
I laugh and pull a face. “His ‘stash’ is disgusting cheap shit. Tell him if he’s going to go through the trouble of a ‘stash’, he should at least make it the good stuff.”
She laughs and then looks at me pointedly. “And after that?”
I look away.
“Silas?”
I frown and take a mouthful of sandwich.
Sierra groans as she slumps back on the bench. “Oh c’mon, Ivy!”
“What?” I pout. “It’s complicated, okay?”
Its complicated because we’re married. Because eight years later, he still holds everything I am in his hands and I don’t know how to get free of that.
I take a deep breath.
I don’t know if I want to get free of that.
My phone pings beside me and Sierra throws her hands up as she rolls her eyes. “Of course; saved by Twitter or whatever.”
I stick my tongue out at her as I glance at the text from my friend Meredith.
WTF is going on with Blaine’s Instagram?!?
There’s a cold, sinking feeling in my stomach. My hands shake as I quickly open the app, swiping down until I land on his name.
Oh that FUCKER.
He’s been posting all morning, it appears - easily twenty new pictures on his account.
But they aren’t of surfboards, or fucking hiking boots, or whatever micro-distillery whiskey is paying him this week.
They’re of her.
I feel the fire exploding inside of me as my jaw drops. Twenty fucking pictures of the two of them - sitting on a bench in Boston Commons, a clichéd shot of two pairs of lips sipping a smoothie from two straws.
Her lips on his cheek, his lips.
Her face is half-obscured - shot only from the nose down on any picture she’s in, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit who she is. Truth be told, I don’t even give much of a shit that he’s found someone else, which is a weirdly cold feeling.
But it’s true.
I’m not mad - well, not that mad - that he stood me up at my own parents’ house. Or even that he left me for some other girl.
I’m mad that he’s humiliating me about it. I’m mad about having my fucking face rubbed in it.
“Oh that fucker!”
Sierra snatches the phone from my hands before I can stop her, her jaw dropping even more than mine, her eyes looking even more livid.
“Is he for real?!”
“Apparently,” I mutter.
Sierra stares at me. “Why aren’t you mad?”
I frown. “I am mad.”
“Not as mad as you should be.”
I shake my head, looking away. I don’t want to get into how Blaine and I have been rocky for months. How he ended up keeping his own apartment when he was going to move into mine a month ago. How he canceled the plans I’d made for his birthday at the last minute because “something came up.”
How the fact that this whole “I’m just not ready to settle down” bullshit actually being about another girl doesn’t actually surprise me that much.
Sierra shakes her head at me. “Fuck, Ivy! Get mad!”
I drop the sandwich back down onto the plate. “I am mad, okay? I just have a lot of other things on my mind right now, and a lot more to think about that you can even-”
“Oh, what, like Silas?”
I glare at her and she rolls her eyes.
“Jesus, Ivy, he’s not your stupid high school boyfriend anym-”
“I know that!” I snap, standing suddenly and feeling the blood pounding through me.
Sierra’s mouth snaps shut as she blinks quickly at me.
“I know that, Sierra,” I say, quieter this time. “I’ve known it for eight freaking years.”
“Look, I know I was younger when it all happened, but I just-” she makes a face. “Okay, you know I loved Silas like all of us did, but he was bad news, Ivy. I mean even I knew that.”
“People change,” I say quietly.
“People change or you want people to change?”
I look away.
“Ivy,” Sierra puts a hand on my shoulder. “Look what you’ve got now, this empire you’ve built. Shelter Harbor is always going to be home, but,” she shrugs, “sometimes you need to move forward.”
“I know,” I say with a sigh.
“So why don’t you let it go?”
Because he’s my husband, technically.
It’s a stupid excuse, and I know it. I’ve used it for so long to justify thinking about him in my own head, but the truth of it is, if that were really the only thing still holding me to him, I could have done something about that years ago. Filed for an annulment, or abandonment or something.
God knows I researched it.
But that’s as far as I got. Because it’s more than the rings and the piece of paper filed in the Stoborough town records department, or even the ink on our bodies.
It’s that a piece of my heart that left with him that night.
And there’s something about him being here again, something about his proximity that makes the missing piece feel like it might be closer to being made whole again.
One way or another.
Chapter Eighteen
Ivy
Once again, I find myself up on the roof of O’Donnell’s.
It’s funny how this place somehow became my escape over the years - how it still is even now. Long before my brother took over the place, long before I left this town, and long before everything changed, we used to come here.
Maybe it was the view.
I slump down into one of the same two vinyl lawn chairs that have been up here for at least two decades are still here - the ones I’m sure no one even remembers being put here in the first place at this point. I shake my head at the roles they’ve played over the years, from when we were kids to now. Monster fort, lookout post, a place for secrets, therapist chair, gossip chair, a place to explore the feeling of the lips of the last boy you should be kissing.
I got engaged up here.
Service hasn’t started yet at St. Michael’s church over in Stoborough. But we’ve been up the entire night anyways. Besides, it being this early means know one’s here yet. It means the priest is free.
“I know who you are, you know.” Father Murray had said quietly, eyeing me. “I know your father, and I’ve got a feeling he wouldn’t be too happy about this.”
“He will be when we tell him.”
Because telling people and worrying about what they’ll say or how they’ll react is secondary to us.
We’re young, and in love, and this is the be all to end all.
This is our everything, our world.
Father Murray does it anyways. We say the words, we make the vows, we exchange the rings.
The woman who plays the organ and the groundskeeper finishing his shift are our witne
sses. She cries, the gardener is drunk.
And then we have three days. Three blissful days of perfection until it all gets shattered like windshield glass across a highway guardrail.
“Thought I’d probably find you up here.”
I’m not even surprised by his voice. It’s almost an eventuality it seems, running into him in this town.
Eight years of absence followed by not being able to get away from him here back home in Shelter Harbor. And in a way, that’s why I’m even here. It’s why I’m up here, avoiding it all, running from the questions from family.
Because I know as much as I hate him, there’s only one person who’s ever been able to listen to and hear what I need to unload. And somehow I think I knew I’d find him up here.
“Beer?”
I still haven’t said anything at his appearance, but I nod slowly as he hands me one from downstairs.
“I thought you’d upgraded from storeroom to houseboat.”
He grins as he sinks into the chair next to me. “Missed this place.”
“And the kind of girls who leave purple bras all over the office?”
He raises a brow and then chuckles as he shakes his head and looks out over the Harbor.
I can feel a fire rise inside at how cavalierly he brushes it off, as dumb as that is.
It’s been eight years. Eight years later, I’m sure there’ve been other girls. I mean God, look at him. Shadowed eyes, chiseled jaw, and the slight hollow of his cheeks.
Those lips.
That casual, supremely confident swagger.
Yeah there have certainly been other girls.
I look away.
“Yeah, not from me, by the way.” He chuckles as he takes a swig of beer. “Might want to talk to your brother about making sure his girlfriends remember to put their shit back on when they leave.”
I wrinkle my brow. “Yeah gross. I’m not asking my brother about his sex life.”
Silas laughs. “I’ve been meaning to talk to him about his recent choices.”
And I hate how relieved I am that the girl’s bra isn’t from him - that it’s not some lacy purple bra he pulled from some girl’s shoulders as he kissed her, as he slid his hands over her skin.
Because I remember what those hands feel like.
“So what are you doing up here?”
I shake my head, sipping at the beer. “Stewing.”
He says nothing, as I glance over to see him grinning that roguish, crooked smile at me. “I’m still shocked you’re drinking that.”
I frown. “What, beer?”
“Don’t you have like a cleanse or something going on? All kale-juice diet? Hot yoga tomorrow?”
I flip him the middle finger and he chuckles as he turns to look out on the harbor. The lights glitter in his eyes as he pushes his fingers through his thick hair.
And then somehow, I’m telling him. I’m spilling my failure of a relationship the man who left me incapable of succeeding at them.
“Blaine left.”
His head jerks towards me, a frown on his face. “Oh?”
“He wanted to ‘slow things down’, but it was because he wanted to jump horses to some other girl.” I groan, almost embarrassed that I’m telling this to him - unsure of why I am.
Maybe because long before all that, he was my best friend.
“There’s another girl.”
I glance up, and his face is dark, lines etched across it.
“Blaine sounds like a piece of shit for leaving you.”
“You really want to go there?”
There’s a hint of a smile as he shakes his head. “No further questions, your honor.”
He takes a sip of beer.
“When?”
I look at my feet. “The other night.”
He swears under his breath. “Jesus.”
“What?”
He growls as he turns his body towards mine, his eyes flashing in the low light. “Is that what the other night was on my boat? You trying to ‘get back’ at your fucking boyfriend?”
My eyes narrow at him. “You don’t have any claim on me you know,” I hiss. “Not after eight fucking years.”
“You’re my wife.”
I laugh mirthlessly. “This is insane. I don’t even know why I came here.”
I stand, and I’m turning to stomp away back down the stairs and away from this place, but there’s a hand on my arm as he pulls me back.
“You know exactly why you came here.”
I look up into those eyes, and I can feel my heart, my pulse, my heat.
I swallow quickly. “If that’s what you think, then you’re delusional.”
I start to pull away, but his grip tightens as he shakes his head.
“Tell me you still hate me,” he says roughly, his eyes burning right into mine.
“Tell me you still fucking hate me, and that there’s nothing left of what we used to have still in there somewhere, and I’m gone, Ivy. I’ll walk away, I’ll sign fucking papers, I’ll do whatever you want.”
I say nothing, the sound of my pulse hammering in my ears as I let myself drown in those sea-blue eyes.
He moves even closer, so close that I can practically feel the heat from his body against mine.
“But if there’s one fucking shred of what we were still in there,” his words tease across my lips, and I tremble.
His hands move to my hips, like they know them.
And they do.
He doesn’t wait, he just slides them around me, until he’s holding the small of my back, pulling me against him.
And I want him to.
I want those hands there, comforting, holding.
Familiar.
“If there’s one shred of what was in there, Ivy,” he whispers gruffly. “If there’s one shred, then nothing on this earth is going to drag me away from you right now.”
It’s like a flash of light, and a thousand memories pouring through my mind. A thousand little memories of what we were, and every single one ends with a kiss.
And I already know this one will too.
I know it even before I let myself go.
Chapter Nineteen
Silas
Her lips are soft and familiar, and I groan as she melts into me.
I kiss her harder, taking that mouth like I once did so many years ago. But this isn’t any sort of quick kiss behind a garage - no stolen peck on the back porch of the Hammond house before dinner while she blushes and slaps at me playfully.
This is raw, and primal. This is aggressive, and the desperate need to remember slamming through us both.
She moans into my mouth, her sweet body pressing into me, molding against mine and making me remember.
…Like I’ve ever fucking forgotten.
And yet she’s even better than I remember. My hands slide up and down the small of her back, pushing under the hem of her shirt and sliding across the heat of her skin.
I want to remap her body, inch by inch with my hands.
She’s moaning into me as she pulls at my shirt, and then we’re just tearing at clothes. She’s warmer, softer, somehow sexier than she was when we were younger. She’s more of a woman now, less the girl I left behind.
Totally new, and yet so damn familiar.
Her scent, the feel of her skin under my fingertips. The way my hands know her body - how they know the way from the small of her back, to her shoulders, down to her sides.
Her breasts.
I break the kiss, hungrily letting my mouth re-familiarize itself with her skin all over again. And I know that we need to turn back before another crash, but I know there’s no fucking way that’s happening.
Not after this long.
She gasps as we drop back down into one of the chairs. I pull her into me, her legs fall on either side of mine, her lips hungry as she kisses my mouth again.
My hands cup my cheeks, our kisses desperate and needing.
And I still feel like I’m falling.
The skin I’ve missed.
I taste the sweat from that skin, feeling her gasp as I find the hollow of her neck. Her hands pull at my t-shirt, yanking it up and breaking away so she can tear it off of me. But then we’re crashing back together.
My hands slide down over her ass, needing her, wanting her against me. And she moans as she rocks into me, grinding her lap into mine, whispering at the feel of my lips on her collarbone and at the feel of my pulsing cock hard against her thigh.
Her fingers tease over my bare chest as her mouth seeks mine again. I bring a hand between us and run it up her thigh between her legs.
She moans.
She wants this, and I know it’s not just the sex part of it. It’s not just that she wants that to happen.
It’s that she wants me.
My fingers pull at the button of her jean shorts and push inside, but the angle’s all wrong. She gasps into my lips as I grab her instead and flip us around, moving on top of her and letting my lips trace the contours of her neck. I move lower as her nails rake my shoulders, down over her collarbone, across the swell of her breast.
I remember these pink, dusky nipples.
I remember this skin - every fucking inch of it, every taste of it. Because I’ve been craving it for so damn long.
She gasps as I take one of her hard nipples into my mouth, my hands working her shorts from her hips. She writhes beneath me, hands sliding into my hair, her breath hitching as I move lower. My lips trail across her soft belly, lingering at her navel before I move lower still.
They kiss her across the edges of her panties, soft sounds dripping from her lips, her legs trembling. And part of me wants to just rip those panties the fuck off. Part of me wants to shred them away and bury my tongue in her like I’ve been dying to do for goddamn years.
But I also want to unwrap her. I want her like a present I need to open slowly, not damaging the wrapping paper.
I hook my fingers into the waist, slowly pulling them down and kissing across that little seam between her thighs and her pussy. She raises her legs and I pull them the rest of the way off before pushing her legs apart.
