by Cindi Madsen
“Ivy…” Jackson rubbed his eyebrow, the way he did when he was frustrated or tense. “Are you ever going to let me in?”
I shrugged. Then I clenched my jaw against the tears trying to climb up my throat. An ache settled over my heart, and all my doubts rushed forward. I knew this wouldn’t work. We couldn’t even survive one week away from our house. The spell had broken, and now I was standing in pumpkin guts and rags, exposed for what I truly was: a girl who couldn’t be in a relationship long term.
With a resigned, slightly disappointed expression on his face, Jackson leaned in and kissed my forehead. If that didn’t say good-bye, I wasn’t sure what did. “I’ll call you later, okay? We just need to spend some time together, and we’ll figure this out.”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t agree, because I was afraid that more time would only result in falling harder, and I already saw the ugly crash coming. The resulting fallout would be wide-spread, his family hating me, my best friend torn between taking sides.
I thought of my mom and Dixie and how they didn’t even talk anymore. My mom wasn’t talking to me, either. While a tiny part of me was relieved by that, the other, bigger part stung at losing her, even if she only remembered me when it was convenient. And, of course, I couldn’t stop worrying she’d fall into a depression and try another stunt that landed her in the hospital. Or worse.
My life was spinning out of my control, because silly me, I’d loosened my grip on it for one little month, and now it would be a bitch to get back.
But I was pretty sure it was the only way to avoid a crash that would wreck not just my life, but Jackson’s in the process.
Chapter Thirty-Four
In case anyone was wondering what a commitmentphobe’s worst nightmare was, the answer would be a bridal shower. That would’ve been enough to leave me in hives, but adding the female half of Jackson’s family to the mix was an extra form of torture.
If it was for anyone besides Savannah, I would’ve skipped it and spent a lazy Saturday in bed. I still hadn’t told her that Jackson and I’d had a big fight and that we hadn’t really talked since Wednesday morning.
He’d called a few times while I’d been working, and I didn’t know what to say, so I’d done the mature thing and let it go to voicemail. I’d sent a text so it wouldn’t look like the exact same radio-silence treatment that’d proceeded our first crash and burn, but I knew as soon as we had a face-to-face conversation, it’d be over. While that would help me regain control and help minimize the pain from breaking up, I also couldn’t help wanting to put it off just a little longer.
Because clearly, I wasn’t in control.
“Deep breaths,” Savannah said as she sat down next to me. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I wouldn’t rule it out.”
“Then I’d have to give you mouth to mouth, and while that would take our friendship to a whole new level, it might be an awkward one. Especially since I just ate half a bag of Doritos on the drive over.”
A sputtered laugh spilled from my lips. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. No passing out.”
“How’s life?”
“Lifey.”
“How very verbose of you.” She crossed one leg over the other, showing off cute pink heels with a bow on the toe. “What about things with my brother?”
A string in my heart tugged, and it hurt like a bitch. “We… I…” I shook my head and shrugged.
Savannah’s face dropped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Yes, it’s your fault for asking your friend a perfectly normal question, not mine, for being a not-normal female who can’t deal with emotions or relationships.”
Savannah grabbed my hand. “You just need some training. I’m not sure you know this about me, but I have this twelve-step program…”
A laugh that was too close to a sob came out.
“All I know is that the night you came over for dinner, you both looked happier than I’d seen either of you in a long time. I’ll resist talking about happily-ever-afters, since you’re still on the skeptical side of the fence, despite my many attempts to drag you over…”
“You are relentless. I think I still have scars from it.” I lifted my arm like I was examining it for leftover damage.
She clicked her tongue at me as she shoved my shoulder. “What I’m saying is I believe that there’s a guy who can restore even Ivy Clarke’s faith in love, but that requires you giving a little, too, and maybe—just maybe—I think that guy might be my brother. You know, not everyone’s happily-ever-after ends here, at a bridal shower and a future that involves a walk down the aisle.”
“I think you’re failing at resisting happily-ever-after talk,” I teased.
Savannah gave an innocent shrug. “So sue me.”
The games began before we could talk much more, and while I wanted to tell my best friend that she was totally right, I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in love. I’d just seen the destruction it caused when it turned bad, and I’d seen it turn bad a lot.
Countless times through the years I’d had to hold everything together while Mom cried, unable to get out of bed for days. It ended that way again, and again, and again. She seemed to lose a piece of herself every single time, too. A mix of real memories and ones I’d only seen in scrapbooks flashed through my mind, of her in every era, always with a different guy, and her style and even hair reflected the changes she’d made for them. But the image my mind landed on and held was her in that hospital bed.
She still had the hope of happily-ever-after, but I’d lost it, and too much had happened for me to get it back.
I’d tried to tell myself otherwise, but I was broken.
I recalled Savannah saying that Jackson liked to fix things, and I was sure when he saw me, he saw a woman in severe need of fixing. But I was too far gone, and he’d be so much better off with someone else. Pretty much anyone else. I didn’t want him to break me more, and even more, I didn’t want to break him.
Lucinda smiled over at me as we transitioned to gift time. “Isn’t this fun? Maybe soon we’ll be having one of these things for you.”
What?
“I mean, once you and Jackson are engaged.” She patted my knee. “No rush, of course, I realize you guys just started dating, but I’ve been dreaming of grandchildren for a long time, so if you want to try to race Savannah and Linc, I wouldn’t mind.”
The air left my lungs in a whoosh, and no oxygen would return, no matter how much I tried to inhale. His mom was already planning our wedding?
Yeah, I was so out.
I stood, clawing at the fabric on the neck of my dress. “I need some air.”
“But, hon, we’re outside.”
I wove around the guests and the table of food but then froze in place when I spotted Jackson. He was walking with a steady, determined stride, and he was heading right for me.
I glanced back, debating whether talking to him or sprinting back to my seat a few yards away would be worse, and I still couldn’t get any freaking air. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
Was this what a panic attack felt like?
Jackson strolled right up to me, jaw set. “You’ve avoided me for three days—don’t even try to count your one superficial text, because we both know that was just another evasive maneuver. I think the very definition of desperate is showing up to your sister’s bridal shower.” He muttered a curse, and I glanced back to see the females in attendance giggling and gasping at a piece of very tiny lingerie Savannah had pulled out of a gift bag.
Under other circumstances, I’d laugh, but laughing required use of my lungs, and I still didn’t have that. The walls were closing in, and my brain screamed that this was all too much. “Jackson, please, not here. I need…” I fought against the dizzying wave that made the ground unsteady under my feet.
“I thought if I just showed you I planned on sticking this through, no matter how hard you tried to push me
away, that eventually you’d let me in. I’ve tried to be patient and tiptoe around so I don’t scare you off, but Ivy, I’m crazy about you.”
I ran a shaky hand through my hair—apparently, we were doing this here. Time to rip off the Band-Aid and get all the pain over at once. “I told you this wouldn’t work. I tried to tell you. We couldn’t even make it one week without a big fight. We need to call it before either of us gets hurt.”
Too late, my brain screamed as my heart bled misery at having to say good-bye, but I clung to that logic, because there was hurt and there was shattered. The fact that I was having a panic attack over the very idea of more, even with this guy who I cared about more than I’d cared about any other guy before, screamed that I could never make it work.
Jackson took both my hands in his. “Ivy, come on. People fight. They don’t always agree—you and I won’t always agree. In fact, knowing us like I do, we’ll probably disagree a lot.” He gave me a watered-down version of his usual smile. “It just means we’ll get to make up a lot.”
Making up. With kissing and arguing foreplay and sex—holy crap, I was going to miss all that, but I couldn’t think about every amazing thing I’d miss about Jackson or I’d never have the strength to go through with what needed to be done. “You think I’m broken. That you can plaster over the crack, or find the right part to fix, and I’ll be whole. But this is who I am. I’m unfixable.”
“I don’t think you’re broken. I think your trust is broken. I think too many people in your life treated you like you were temporary. I know you lost pieces of your heart along the way, to each new stepdad or stepbrother and sister, and even to Dixie. To your mom. To whatever idiot guys weren’t strong enough to love a girl as strong as you.
“I think your idea of love is broken, and I’m not trying to fix you. I’m trying to show you that it doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to end…we can make it work.” He squeezed my hands. “I know you don’t have a lot of faith in love left, but put it in me instead.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, and no amount of jaw clenching or blinking would hold them back, so I let them go. “I don’t think I can—I’m just not built that way. Our time together was fun, and I’ll always be glad we had that, but I’m not who you want. You think you do now, but you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind. You are who I want, and if you’d just push everything else away and let yourself focus on you and me and how much better life is when we’re together, you’d realize you need me, too.” He pulled me closer and rested his forehead against mine. “I’m in love with you.”
He gave me a couple of seconds to let that sink in, but it only caused more pain, more misery that I couldn’t go down this path.
“That’s right, Ivy Clarke. I love you, and I needed you to know that. But I can’t force you to be with me, and I can’t make us work all by myself. I’ll give you space or time if that’s what you need to figure out you love me, too. Just don’t give up on us before we give it a real shot.”
The lump lodged in my throat grew and constricted even more of my air supply. “I’m so sorry, Jackson, but it’s never going to work, and I don’t want you waiting on me to change my mind, because you’d be waiting forever.”
The muscles of his jaw tightened, but he didn’t get mad or sad. He just kept staring at me, so steady. Then he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me, his hand going to my neck, his thumb tilting my chin up for better access. He poured every ounce of passion that’d ever passed between us into it, our arguments and pound-for-pound banter and our steamy nights spent together. Since I was greedy and afraid we’d never kiss again, I met him stroke for stroke, until the world spiraled out from under me, my grip on his forearms all that kept me from falling.
When he pulled back and peered down at me, I didn’t even bother pretending I wasn’t broken—I felt the split deep in my soul. “I guess it’s a good thing that I have more faith in love than you do.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Nothing like fleeing your best friend’s bridal shower in tears to solidify your strong dislike of them.
It’d been two and a half weeks. Long weeks and days that seemed like an eternity. By now, Jackson had surely accepted that I wasn’t changing my mind, especially since I’d fought him on the relationship every step of the way. The thought of him moving on made my heart and lungs feel like they were crumbling into the sea of agony that’d overtaken my chest, but then I reminded myself it was for the best. For him, anyway.
For all my rules and clever ways to avoid it, I was experiencing a broken heart, no question. Guess that’s what I got for breaking pretty much every one of them with Jackson. It was always doomed to end up this way, yet that didn’t stop it from being so painful that I wanted to stop pretending I could still function, curl up in a ball and cry, and never get up.
I’d never wanted to experience this level of desperation, but there it was, staring me in the face, mocking me while also lulling me over and telling me to give in. To give up. To succumb to the darkness.
Heaven only knew how bad it would be if I’d let the relationship go on for longer.
My GPS informed me the address was on the right side of the street, and I maneuvered my car into an empty spot. I wished this trip wouldn’t make it completely impossible not to think of Jackson, but after tossing and turning for several nights over the job as the acquisitions manager, I couldn’t take it. Not only did I also get a bit of a skeezy vibe (which admitting to, even mentally, made me think of Jackson once again), it felt wrong to convince older people out of their homes where their children might’ve grown up, just to make a bigger profit. Maybe some of them would be happy to have the money or to downsize or even upsize, but knowing me, I’d tell them how they could flip it themselves and make even more money and refer them to Jackson if they needed help doing it. That was a surefire way to piss off management and end up fired, not to mention penniless. I’d rather not have that mark on my work background, and if that meant slinging drinks at the bar for the rest of my life, so be it.
At this point, I couldn’t even summon up a bit of caring about my career, something I’d been so desperate to change for the past couple of months.
Shoving my feelings as deep as I could get them to go, I climbed out of my car and pushed into the store. As someone who frequented antique shops, I was surprised I hadn’t been in this one before, although it was different from most. After a pleasant conversation on the phone, Betty-Joe Crocker invited me to come check out the place for myself.
“Ivy?”
“That’s me.” I extended my hand and shook hers. She was several inches shorter than I was, with a sleek gray bob and half glasses with a thin gold chain. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Just pull up a chair.” She gestured behind me. “You’ve got several to choose from.”
I looked back at the various chairs and picked one that I loved. The wooden back had the great detailing a lot of older chairs did, with a flower carved into the top and swirls that ran across the arch and middle piece. Naturally it made me think of Dixie’s house, and I wished for a moment that the new owners—whoever they ended up being—would let me decorate, because I could reupholster the seat and make a beautiful mismatched set that still somehow went together.
That’d look amazing with the light fixture Jackson put in there, too.
I really need to stop mentally decorating that place and pick a stupid paint color for my condo wall.
Betty-Joe explained how she’d owned the business for forty-two years but that she was finding it harder to keep up these days. “Jackson’s always so nice to refer people to me. He’s come over and helped me move furniture in and out, too. I try to pay him, but he won’t hear of it. I already didn’t know how to ever repay him, and now here he goes, sending me someone to help.”
I almost replied that I needed to find out more before I agreed to the job, but she’d put it in a way that made it hard to contradict he
r. Plus, now I was thinking about Jackson and how he’d shown up and taken care of my rodent problem, even before I’d officially hired him at a fraction of his usual rate.
Of course, I paid plenty for that with the disgusting dead mouse in the fridge prank. I shuddered a little, but I also fought back a smile.
Shaking myself out of my Jackson-heavy thoughts, I focused on putting my best foot forward here and now. “I’ve been shopping for antiques for years, but I also like to refurbish old beat-up furniture and turn it into contemporary pieces that sort of marry the old and the new. If that makes sense. I brought examples…” I handed Betty-Joe a folder with pictures of the pieces I’d done. Lately I was someone who walked around with a folder of my work. I supposed I should go fancy and call it a portfolio, but that seemed more like something professionals did, not someone who painted old furniture as a hobby.
“These are…” She looked up at me, and I held my breath. “They’re really good. I think you could sell them for a fortune. Become the next JoAnna Gaines.”
I blushed, which wasn’t something I thought I did before this moment. “Oh, no. Nothing as fancy or big as that.” Obviously, I loved Fixer Upper, and while I’d been a bit hard on HGTV, I attributed some of my furniture inspiration to that show.
“I’m serious. There’s real money to be made with stuff like this. The people around here eat it up.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and studied me. “Between this and Jackson vouching for you, I’m ready to cut through all the bullshit and talk business.”
I hadn’t been aware we were bullshitting, but I instantly liked her for putting it like that, even though I also worried that Jackson might not be in the mood to vouch for me these days. Although I also knew he’d never call her and take it back. “Lay it out for me, then, Betty-Joe.”
She grinned. “I like you.” The position entailed accompanying her to estate sales, helping her sort through the crap, and bringing back the hidden treasures. If I wanted to work my magic with some of the pieces, I could “have at it.” She informed me that neither of her daughters wanted to inherit the business, and if this arrangement worked out, she’d be looking at retirement in a couple of years.
