Where the Ivy Hides

by Kimber S. Dawn

  She seems to get it together fairly quickly after my second question. “Umm…yeah. I’ll drive. Sure.”

  We swing by her office on the way out of the building to grab her stuff and make small talk on the way to one of her favorite swanky bars off Seventh Street. Once we’re seated, the conversation starts off and stays mostly neutral.

  It’s easy and I appreciate it.

  I don’t make a big fuss when she orders for me, I categorize it for what it is… a drink with a friend.

  I can still go to meetings. I can still speak openly and honestly with my sponsor, it’s just a drink. With a friend.

  But, like all good intentions, this road too was one paved for hell.

  And one drink turns into many and one hit too many more.

  I didn’t mean to slip and fall so many times. I really didn’t.

  I never wanted to be this girl.

  This isn’t where I wanted to end up.

  The business end of Ryker and mine’s relationship blooms and grows to incredible limits. Which is ironic when compared to how terribly we are doing on a personal level.

  As soon as I step in as the CEO of Seattle’s newest company – Lucky Pipes, both his Northern Cali branch and mine supersede whatever we could have imagined and then some.

  Personally or romantically, if that term can even be placed in, near, or around our two conjoining names as it’s mentioned, leaves a lot to be desired. Pun intended.

  Neither one of us mentions the letter again. Other than to speak business or business affiliated issues, we don’t speak at all.

  It’s funny how much more resilient you are than you think you will be. It’s funny how much further you can be pushed after you think you’re past your limit.

  Every day we’re made to trek forward. Rain or shine. Pain or solace. We’re pushed and shoved to the breaking point only to do it all over again the next day. It’s a tireless cycle some refer to as ‘ruts’. And I swear it’ll be a rut that’ll be the death of me.

  I’m in a rut when my world is knocked off its axis for the millionth time in my life, and I’m fucking certain it won’t be the last.

  Days, weeks, months have passed where the ending credits spell out my weekend celebration being dampened, again, by a family weekend brunch. I still refrain from daily recreational use, but on the weekends, that rule does not apply. My meetings have been a little hit and miss, but with the increase in clients and the success of Lucky’s number thirteen store killing it in Seattle, I guess something’s gotta give.

  My social life mainly consists of being a shoulder for Livvy to cry on because Brian got cold feet and went back to Vermont. I think I’ve always underestimated the amount of illegal drugs there is involved in a heartache.

  And between Livvy and I, there isn’t enough coke without having to involve Bowen. To be honest, I don’t remember if it was I who fell into bed with him again, or vice versa. We just weren’t one day and were again, the next.

  And that’s the rut.

  That’s where I was at when the beginning of the end happened.

  Chapter 19

  I was closing up shop at Lucky’s when my cell phone rang. Without even looking at the screen of the phone I roll my eyes and answer, “An hour tops. Livvy, is Bowen even finished at the hospital, yet? We’ll get there when we get there.”

  Livvy has recently and much to even my surprise, been smitten by our friend, Reese Bonacci. There are a few minute issues that need to be addressed and it may or may not involve Livvy’s substance abuse. But who am I to judge, I’m sure they’ll work it out.

  It may be Reese’s birthday we’re going to attend tomorrow, but she’s gonna dress like it’s hers and I’m going be the one she drags around town for the perfect dress. “The sale ends in an hour though! We should have gone after lunch, I knew it,” she sighs and I hear the defeat, but I just can’t commit to another shopping trip with her right now.

  “Right, well I still don’t understand what’s wrong with the red dress you bought last night. It looks perfect on you. Let me just finish up here, I’ll call you on my way home, okay?”

  After some bitching and complaining on her part, we finally agree and I hang up.

  I hear him before I see him. As I slide my phone in my purse I flick the lamp off on my desk and grab my bags when his voice cuts through the darkness and pierces my dark, hardened soul.

  “How long can you do this, Ivy? Push me away?” His voice is beautiful in Irish tatters. It’s almost agony to hear.

  “As long as it takes, Ryker.” I narrow my eyes on his profile in the dark as I turn around and approach where he’s standing beside the office door. “I’ll promise you this though, you’re wasting your time here waiting for me to conform and become your little complacent whore. Business here only, hon.” I mock his Irish accent.

  “Ay. Right. Not mine, just every other bloody bastard’s whore in a five-mile radius, is that it, love?” He shouts before spinning and heading out the side door towards the bay. “Every bloody time. I get an inch and ya push me back a mile. And fer what?” He trails off as I storm behind him, following him towards where his bike is parked. “I’ll bloody tell ya, fer what.”

  I barely recall him stopping, much less running into his back before his hands circle my wrists and spin me around until I am sitting in front of him on his bike, with my face staring at the metal of his zipper.

  Without process or much thought, when he unzips his jeans, I don’t hesitate. I follow suit. I wrap my fists around his thick shaft and squeeze. When the tip drips pre-cum after a few strokes, I take him into my mouth and suck hard enough to hollow my cheeks until I feel him hit the back of my throat. As soon as I hear him mutter Irish obscenities, I moan around him and suck harder.

  “Goddammit, me Ivy. The fuck are ya doin’ to me, love?” he growls before his fists squeeze in my hair and his hips pump forward.

  Little to no thought or process is also afforded when he scoops me up and shoves me against the tin metal wall of the garage and kisses me again like a man starving.

  His words are guttural even from a life time ago, but they hurt just the same. “As soon as you learn to give into me, Winter Ivy, I’ll give up on you. Deal?” His broken smile cracks my soul. And whatever sting is left hurting by his words, he lessons with his warm kiss.

  Just like always and before I know it… I’m under, again.

  Ryker David Killian is chaos. He’s everywhere and in everything. He drives me mad. He uses me up then leaves me for dead, and I’m okay with that. Because as long as we’re here, right now, and I am his everything, then nothing else matters. Nothing.

  I want to be enough. I do. I don’t want to be his whore. But it looks like I am.

  “Deal.” I whisper.

  Ruts are funny like that. No matter how low you think you are, you can always go lower. And even though a few months ago, I would have rather died than given into him… yet, here I am.

  Giving in.

  Willing to do whatever it is he bids and then beg for the scraps of affection left over from his time with his ‘other someone’.

  And it doesn’t take long for me to find the balance needed to sustain a semi-healthy extra-martial affair while maintaining my extra-curricular, recreational drug use.

  How you may ask?

  By doing what I do.

  Adapting.

  I move forward.

  Part 3

  His

  Chapter 20

  Ryker

  I fell in love with Ivy as soon as I saw her for the first time. I didn’t need her tell me how bad her life had been. I knew it immediately when we met. It wasn’t her quiet, under the radar approach when confronted with social interaction that tipped her hand, it was the longing for normalcy in her eyes when she didn’t think anyone was looking as a ‘happy’ family waltzed by.

  I’ve never met a girl like Winter Ivy, and I don’t expect to meet another one after. Her resilience is just as adamant as her stubbornness,
and if the Lord paid her a cent to follow, she couldn’t afford it, she can be the most aggravating little thing. She still is.

  Ivy’s broken me heart more times than I can count in me life. She’s cheated, she’s lied—right to me bloody face and more than once. She’s betrayed me, and she’s never felt an ounce of remorse for any of it. But I’ll never love her any less.

  Ivy’s like a wounded abandoned animal. All she knows is to fight, all she’s ever known is how to survive. I don’t know if she’ll ever make room in her heart for useless things like love, honesty, and devotion. But she’ll always be the girl me heart’s devoted to. The day I found out she was carrying me child had to be the best day of me life. She still had some barbeque sauce smeared on her cheek from her burger when I found her standing in the parking lot looking like a lost child.

  I would’ve done anything in the world to hear her say her only fear was not being enough to be a good parent, that her biggest fear was me not being there. But she’d already made up her mind. She didn’t want to be a mother. And she didn’t want a family with me.

  I was so certain I’d be able to change her mind. And I was even more certain the baby would. I had a bit of hope when I came into the office and seen that her water had broken, but when I looked into her eyes, whatever hope I’d felt vanished. It took everything in me not to stop that nurse from taking our baby from Ivy’s hospital room the day she was born.

  Ivy didn’t want our little girl, and if she’d been honest with herself, she’d have known she didn’t want me either.

  It was a little bit of luck and a whole lot me mums love and hard work that helped me being granted custody of me and Ivy’s daughter, Lily Blake Killian.

  And sometimes, things work out in ways we never thought possible.

  At first it was difficult. Mum had to stay at work full-time, at least during the first year of Lily Blake’s little life. So, that put me being stretched pretty thin in the beginning. In between working at Lucky’s full time, finding and keeping a decent sitter, and making some time around all of this to spend with new baby daughter and be there for Ivy, I fucked up. I didn’t pay attention to the warnings and AA flags when they started going up. The pain pills were for her pain. Like Motrin or Tylenol, or so I thought. It’s all fifty-fifty in hindsight, though. That’s what me Ivy’d say. When she left me, I have to be honest with ya… I didn’t think I’d make it out alive. It was like me whole world fell apart. And all I had left in her wake was silence and our precious little girl. I like to think of Lily Blake as me Ivy, or as me Ivy would have been had her mum and dad never left her. I wanted to think Ivy’d come around, that she’d find a way out of her rut and realize how much she needed Lily Blake. I just couldn’t seem to get it through me thick Irish skull that Ivy’d never come around, because she’d already given up.

  She let go of our daughter the day the nurse walked from her room, taking her away to her new parents.

  And I didn’t need her to spell it out in a letter to know that I’d failed her the night she left, I guess you can say it was in the air that night. I knew as soon as I walked into the kitchen that I’d fucked up. Hell, in under one minute, I could’ve listed off the ways. But the bottom line is, I fucked up. I tried to juggle it all for as long as I could, waiting for Ivy to come around, but I couldn’t keep up. In the end, I lost the love of me life…I lost me Ivy love.

  For reasons I’ll never know, I repeat the exact same words I used lifetimes ago, pleading with her again, “As soon as you learn to give into me, Winter Ivy, I’ll give up on you. Deal?” I smile in an attempt to hide the pain cutting through me heart before giving in and kissing her soft, wet mouth, even though I know I’ll hate me self for it tomorrow.

  And then just like always, I’m falling for her all over again. My urgency gets the best of me, and I shove her back against the tin metal wall of Lucky Pipes garage before shoving my hands down the front of her blue jeans, and grabbing the wet cotton covering her cunt. “Deal,” she whimpers, awakening the beast within.

  It takes less than one minute to get her jeans unbuttoned and shoved down her trembling pale thighs marred in cuts and scars.

  The sight of her so thin and pale causes something to break away inside me. I want to protect her. I don’t want her to ever feel another ounce of pain or feel sad on rainy days. I want to be the one who makes her smile. Always. I want this bloody always.

  She falls to her knees and has me cock pulled out in her fist, and me own knees buckle before she starts pumping my shaft and licking the swollen head. I know to the marrow of me bones I can’t do this shite. I can’t bloody do it. “Oh no, ya don’t, love. I’ll have my fucking bloody way with ya before I get off this time.” I growl, grabbing her up under her arm and snatching her to her feet. I scoop her up and carry her to one of the work stations off the side of the bay and set her down before tugging her pants off the rest of the way.

  As I step back and appreciate the exquisite visual of what is mine, what has always been mine and what will always be mine, I mutter in a sloppy Irish accent, “Ivy, right now, I’m gonna to make love to you, then after, me and you are gonna have ourselves a little talk. I’m gonna tell you what I want from you, and I’m gonna tell you why you’re gonna give it to me.” I tower over her small frame sprawled across the work bench like the pinup dream girl of the year, covered in tats in nondescript places. “All fucking mine,” I growl again. As I slide my pointer and middle finger between her bare wet pussy lips, I stroke my cock and continue through my clenched teeth next to her ear, “But right now, I’m gonna fucking make love to you, Ivy love.”

  I sink slowly inside her till I can’t get any deeper. With my back bowed, I lean over her small frame and cup the sides of her face, putting us eye to eye with our foreheads together and then cautiously pull out before slowly sinking back in.

  We both convulse immediately. Her hot little cunt grips down on my cock, and I feel the warmth of her cum bathe my shaft and I sigh. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Ivy what in the bloody hell are you doing to me, love?”

  Fucking tears blur me vision and sting me eyes. But I don’t break our gaze. “What are ya doing to me?” I beg before surging back in, deeper and harder. Fucking her. I know I told me Ivy I was gonna make love to her and that was me plan, but in the end I guess I don’t. I fuck her. I fuck her to make the pain she caused me fade. I fuck her for breaking me bloody heart so many damn times. I fuck her, and I mean fuck her, because I can’t bloody stop me self.

  It’s so bizarre, but it’s just this way with Ivy. It always has been. She makes me crazy.

  I love her, bloody hell, I love her. But I fucking hate her when I don’t.

  Control is me issue with Ivy—I have none. I say what I mean, but me actions never spell out the same thing. And like a bloody amateur, all it takes is one look at her, and I’m flyin’ off the bloody handle with every damn one of me physical interactions with her.

  First, I fuck her ignorant against the wall of a restaurant bathroom, and then I fucked her face against her front door. It’s no bloody wonder she keeps referring to herself as my whore. Me words say one thing, but me stupid cock won’t stop fucking her.

  I circle her wrists with me fingers before pulling them above her head until they reach the particle board on the back of the work station wall. Me eyes only glance away from hers for a second towards her hands before coming back to hers and demanding, “Hold on to those hooks on the wall, love. Don’t fucking move them. Ay?”

  Her whimper doesn’t stop the newest onslaught of thrusts. Ever more deeper and harder, I shove into her.

  She mystifies me still, even now. And it does nothing to damper the rage boiling just beneath me surface. “Do you like to see me like this, Ivy? Completely out of control and without rational thought unless I’m bloody buried to the balls in ya? Why does it always have to be so bloody complicated with you? Huh, Ivy?”

  With her hands clenching the hooks above her head until her fingers blanch, she sav
es me life by keeping her eyes on mine and meeting my every surge forward with a shove back as I spit me unrequested terms at her. “I don’t want ya fucking off with the British yank, I want ya to keep your bloody nose clean, and stop the fucking drinking and smoking, and get your bloody head out of your arse.”

  It takes a will of a million champions, but I force me self to stop. I force me self to grab the reins and take control.

  Still bowed over her, I grab her wrists and use them to link her arms around me neck before settling on top of her, cupping her face, “I love you, Ivy love. You’re it for me. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Because I’m it for you. Ay?” I use me thumbs to sweep her tears away. “I never had to catch you love, you just have to find your way.”

  Chapter 21

  Ryker

  I’ll never forget the day I finally knew all the way to me bones that Winter Ivy was the one for me. I’d always thought of her as the prettiest girl I’d ever known, but I just never saw me self as the lucky schmuck getting a girl like her.

  Back then, I was seeing red for a month before everything became clear. Funny how the world is, ay? Oh, I’d seen Ivy looking at Reesie with hearts in her eyes for about that long when she finally got her head knocked straight by yours truly. I still can’t believe I resorted to telling Coach White me Ivy’d been the girl with the punk who stole me wallet. I still hate the way it feels when ya remember something from your past and you wish you would’ve done it differently.

  But looking back, I’d call it a by-any-means-necessary situation, kinda like every day of me damned life, lately—just so long as it ends with her on the back of me bike and her mothering me baby girl.

  It’s just like I told her, I don’t have to be the one to catch her, she’s gotta bring herself back to me.