by Erin Wright
She made everything look good.
Skating with a soft-on was probably not helping matters.
“Never…” she stuttered, staring at him with horror as she easily navigated them around the curve of the rink and into the straightaway. “Well! I know what we’re doing tonight. Never watched The Cutting Edge,” she muttered under her breath with disgust. “What did you do during the 90s? Live under a rock?”
Pretty much.
But he wasn’t about to say that out loud.
They did a few more laps around the skating rink, enjoying it all to themselves except a father-son pair off to the side who were busy trying to keep each other upright. Both of them seemed to be able to ice skate as well as Austin…which was to say, not at all.
They needed an Ivy.
The world was better with Ivys around.
His heart twisted at that thought, because he knew he’d be losing her soon. She’d be returning to California after New Year’s, which was just five more days.
Thankfully, one of the benefits of being an extension agent was that not too many farmers and ranchers were planning next year’s crop and animal rotation between Christmas and New Year’s. This meant that Austin could take the week off without anyone caring a bit. He’d normally take the week to catch up on paperwork – that’s what he did last year, anyway – but he was losing Ivy soon. He’d much rather spend the week with her. Paperwork would always be there.
Ivy would not.
His heart twisted again.
“You okay?” Ivy asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Oh yeah, of course!” he said brightly, and then realized that he sounded overly dramatic. Like he was trying too hard.
Which he was, but he wasn’t supposed to sound like it.
“You just looked like you swallowed a live frog,” Ivy said, smiling as always, but her eyes revealed her worry. They were scanning his face, just like his were scanning hers.
“A live frog, eh?” he asked jovially. Dammit, he was not doing a good job of playing it cool here.
“You know, like…ribbit?” She made the sound of a croaking frog.
A sick, malnourished frog.
He mock-glared at her. “That is not what a frog sounds like,” he informed her. “It needs more gusto, more from the gut.” He pulled his hands away unthinkingly to gesture at his stomach, which meant no more Ivy holding him up.
His arms started pinwheeling and his forward momentum carried him right into Ivy and they were crashing into each other and down to the ground and he threw himself underneath her, trying to save her from hitting the ice, which meant she hit his lungs instead. The air whooshed out of him as the world went a little black around the edges, and he kept blinking, trying to bring the world back into focus and she was staring down at him, her mouth moving but nothing coming out.
Finally, her voice started to filter in. “If you don’t talk to me in the next six seconds, I’m going to drag you to the ER,” Ivy yelled at the top of her lungs.
Right next to his head.
He looked up at her and tried to focus on her face, swimming around in front of him. “I can hear you,” he said, a lopsided grin on his face.
“You can…” she sputtered. “First Iris and now you – I don’t think I could handle someone else with a brain injury!”
He pulled her down on top of him, snuggling her against him. “I think you should kiss me all better,” he said as he felt himself harden against the curves of her body. She glared down at him, indecisive about her response. She wanted to yell at him more – it was written all over her face – but she was also beginning to see the humor in the situation.
“You sure are needy,” she breathed as she inched closer, the wanting to kiss him part apparently winning out.
Thank God.
“You’re the one who promised me that this wasn’t a death-defying feat,” he reminded her, their lips just a hair-breadths apart. “I think a kiss to make me all better isn’t so much to ask.”
“Mmmm…” she murmured, her eyes drifting shut. “I like how you think.”
He pulled her a little closer, her lips opening up as she began to melt into him. She flicked her tongue out, inviting him to come in to play, and he chased her tongue back into her mouth, tasting hot chocolate and joy. He started to harden even more while his mind began to wander into naughty territory. What did her gorgeous curves look like in a pair of bra and panties? If they were a light beige color, edged with lace, she would look like she was wearing nothing at all.
He wanted to explore every curve and swell, memorizing her body before—
“You two need help?” a voice asked, breaking in. Ivy jerked away, shoving an elbow into his side as she tried to scramble off him.
“Oof,” he grunted at the same time that Ivy said gaily, “Oh no, we’re fine!” She was straightening her sweater and adjusting her scarf. “Just fine!”
Austin sat up gingerly, rubbing his side and head, and looked up at the pimply-and-oh-so-bored teenager standing over them. “We’re good,” he told him. “Just getting up now.”
The employee sent them a look that clearly said And no kissing while you’re doing it! before turning to head towards the pay booth to hunker back down with his iPhone, if their entrance into the ice skating rink was anything to judge by. Austin was surprised the teen had looked up from his phone long enough to notice them kissing, although, thinking about it, they had been kissing for quite a while.
After the teen left, Ivy looked at him, and instead of being mortified, she was grinning hugely.
“Why are you so happy?” he asked absentmindedly while considering the best way to get to his feet. He finally decided that flipping over onto his hands and knees and trying to stand up from that position seemed the least likely way to get himself killed in the process. After some scrabbling at the ice and then a hand up from Ivy, which he wasn’t too prideful to take, he was on his feet.
“Do you know what Teenage Ivy would’ve done to get caught making out by the ice skating rink employee? Probably a good thing no one offered it to me as a possibility. I hate to think about what I would’ve been willing to do.”
“Didn’t get kissed a lot when you were a teen, huh?” Austin asked as they slowly made their way towards the exit.
“If by ‘not a lot,’ you mean ‘pretty much never,’ then yeah. That often.” She sent him a laughing grin.
He shook his head in disbelief as they sat down on the bench to change into street shoes and return their rented ice skates. “So are all the guys in Long Valley blind as a bat?” he asked as he pulled the laces loose and wiggled his feet out.
“Four Eyes and Metal Mouth, remember? And even after I got contacts and my braces were removed, all of the guys already ‘saw’ me. You know? They’d known me since I was in kindergarten. They didn’t bother looking at the new me.” She shrugged. “And anyway, if you’d met Teenage Ivy, you probably wouldn’t have liked her either. I was a snob sometimes.”
Street shoes on, they wandered back out, returning their rentals to the booth as they passed, the teenage boy not even bothering to look up from his phone.
Ivy rolled her eyes, and Austin wasn’t sure if that was at her teenage self or the teenage boy.
“I was going to be an artist.” She said the word with a French accent and then wrinkled her nose at him. “Truthfully, it was easier to reject the kids before they could reject me. It hurt less that way.” They climbed into his truck, which he turned on to warm up while he continued to listen to her. Although he knew she was telling him the truth, it was still hard to wrap his mind around the description she was giving, versus the woman in front of him. “Kids can be cruel, and I never really fit in here,” she said softly. “Considering I was born and raised here, that was really hard. It took me a good long while to figure out where I belonged. Who I was. What I cared about.”
She shrugged, looking out the fogged-up window, refusing to meet his eye as she talked. “I think the
hardest part of all was living in Iris’ shadow. She was everything I wasn’t. Popular. Loved. Smart. Tall. Athletic. People didn’t shove her into lockers or into toilets.”
He let the silence stretch out between them as she stared and stared out the passenger side window. Finally, she turned towards him, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Well anyway,” she said, her voice scratchy. She cleared it and tried it again. “Life in Sawyer wasn’t always easy, but that’s why I left. Being an adult, I could.” She shrugged. “I just had to wait my time.”
He nodded slowly, putting the truck in reverse and pulling out of the parking spot. They headed out of the parking lot and back onto the main highway that stretched between Franklin and Sawyer.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t really know what to say. In a lot of ways, their lives were exact opposites from each other. Growing up was wonderful for him. Perfect in practically every way. It wasn’t until he left for college that his life fell apart.
Ivy’s life, on the other hand, didn’t really start until college.
It was funny to look at the world that way.
He stayed silent. If she wanted to talk, he’d let her. He would listen to whatever she needed to tell him.
“I wanted to kill myself,” she said softly. So softly he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her right. Surely that wasn’t what she’d said. He took a quick peek at her and the look on her face…
He had heard her right.
Before he could say anything – was there anything to be said to statements like that? – she continued on. “I was too much of a wimp. I sat in the art closet after school – I don’t know where Mrs. Henderson was at that day – and thought about ending it all. I debated my choices. Hanging. Pills. My dad’s handgun. Where I’d do it. When I’d do it.
“And then, I stood up and went home and pretended nothing was wrong. Because I couldn’t actually kill myself. If I were more brave, I probably would have. If there’d been a way to do it where I wouldn’t feel any pain – I’d just go to sleep and never wake up – I’m sure I would’ve done it. I just wanted to disappear, but I didn’t want to cause Iris and my parents any pain, so I wanted to disappear completely.
“I watched It’s a Wonderful Life every year at Christmas, so I knew that the world would be worse off without me. Blah blah blah. But I didn’t believe it. I just didn’t want my parents to have to wonder where they went wrong.
“So in the end, I did nothing at all. Well, except move to San Francisco. I did that graduation night.”
Austin gathered his thoughts, trying to marshal them into some semblance of order. He had to let her know that it wasn’t okay, what she went through. That she wasn’t a wimp. That to choose life was hard, damn hard, and she should be proud of herself for doing it.
But before he could get his words lined out, she said softly, “I had only come home once since graduation, before this trip up here. I was doing my very best to pretend that Sawyer didn’t exist, Long Valley didn’t exist, Idaho didn’t exist. When people asked me where I was from, I’d usually give them some flip answer about having lived a lot of places, which wasn’t true. I’d lived in Sawyer, Idaho and in San Francisco, California. That’s it. But I didn’t want to claim Idaho, not even in passing. But…”
She took in a deep breath, and she turned to him in her seat, sending him a genuine smile this time.
“But I’m glad I came. I’m glad I met you.”
He reached out across the console, and took her hand in his. “Me too,” he said softly.
He would tell her everything later – how proud he was of her, making it through this life that hadn’t been kind to her. How beautiful he thought she was, inside and out. How happy he was to have met her.
But for now, he’d simply hold her hand, and be there for her.
Chapter 15
Ivy
Ivy guided her horse, a beautiful palomino, down the rocky path carefully. Large stones plus deep snow weren’t a good combination for the health of a horse, especially considering the fact that she was pretty sure that Adam Whitaker, the vet in town and owner of said palomino, would actually want her back in one piece.
Strange how that worked.
“It’s beautiful out here today,” Austin said over his shoulder to her.
“It really is,” Ivy said wonderingly. She had borrowed Iris’ warm winter jacket for this outing, along with some long johns and wool socks, and it was amazing what a difference that made to her mental state of being. It was bizarre to think that she was enjoying a horse ride in the dead of winter in Sawyer, Idaho, but…
She was.
She tightened her hands around the reins, looking down at the beautiful gloves Austin had given her. She found herself staring at them often – they were quite possibly the most gorgeous gloves she’d ever laid eyes on. Iris whispered to her that she’d heard through the grapevine (meaning Declan, of course) that Austin had spent a couple hundred dollars on them.
That seemed crazy to Ivy – who had that kind of money to put down on Christmas presents?! – but the quality of the gloves made Ivy believe the price tag was real. They felt like heaven, wrapped around her hands.
“Are you getting cold?” Austin asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.
She looked at him, squinting against the glare of the sun off the snowdrifts. Next time, she needed to wear her sunglasses.
There will be no next time.
She pushed that depressing thought away and sent Austin a cheerful grin instead. “Nope, I’m good. Why do you ask?”
“You were staring down at your hands,” he said with a low chuckle. “I thought you were trying to send beams of heat at them with your eyeballs.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t I wish that was how it worked,” she said, still laughing. “Us wimpy California girls would appreciate that superpower, that’s for sure.”
He tossed her a sexy grin over his shoulder. Not intentionally sexy; just sexy because it was Austin. He probably looked good enough to eat with a spoon after working a cattle drive for a week straight. He had those kinds of genetics. It just wasn’t fair.
“Hmmm…superpower. You’d waste a superpower on keeping your hands warm?” he asked teasingly. The trail widened out a little, and she nudged her horse forward to pull it up even with Bob. Austin stabled his horse out at Adam’s place, so it’d been a quick trip to trailer them both up and bring them out here into the national forest.
“Waste?” she repeated saucily. “You are obviously an Idaho boy if you think it’s a ‘waste’ to keep your hands warm. And anyway, I’d use my heat beams on other things too. No more cold feet! And if I could really turn up the power, I could cook dinner with just my eyes.” She looked at him and batted her eyelashes. “Seems like a damn good idea to me!”
He laughed, and she unthinkingly reached over and put her hand on his arm as she chuckled with him. He looked down at her hand and then up at her. Their gazes caught and the air crackled around them. Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve, and Ivy knew how she wanted to ring in the new year.
She cleared her throat. “So, you didn’t say what you wanted as your superpower,” she said huskily.
“Hmmm…” He pretended to think deeply about the question, as if his life depended on the answer.
“I mean, other than light beams coming out of your eyes. Obviously, that would be the best superpower, but since I already have that one, you have to pick another one.”
“Is that how it works?” he said quietly, laughing.
“Of course! Haven’t you paid any attention to the Marvel universe? Not a single character has the same superpower. That would just be boring. Duh.” She gave that last word her best Valley Girl flair, which earned her another laugh from Austin.
“Well…” he said contemplatively, “I guess I’d pick the superpower of being able to go back in time. Time traveler.”
Her first instinct was to tease him – that sounded like a lamer superpower than heat beams fro
m her eyeballs so she could cook dinner easily – but as she looked over at him, her breath caught. She didn’t know what was causing that look on his face, but somewhere along the way, Austin had become serious on her.
“So why do you want to become a time traveler?” she asked softly. He’d listened to her yesterday; it was only fair she listened to him today.
It surely couldn’t be any worse of a story than hiding in the art closet at the high school and bawling your eyes out while contemplating suicide. She was pretty sure that particular story won the Shitty Story Contest.
She’d never told anyone that story, not even Iris, and having him listen yesterday…it meant a lot to her. She felt better. Freer. Lighter.
She wanted to offer the same support to Austin.
She waited patiently – not usually one of her strong suits – while he mulled through what he was going to say. He wasn’t someone to blurt things out – unlike her – and so she’d learned over the past month to wait longer and be more patient with him. Rather than taking silence to mean he had nothing to say, she’d learned to take silence to mean that he was still thinking about what to say.
Which was a totally different thing.
His brow furrowing, he looked off through the trees and rocky hillsides. “Monica Klaunche and I dated for five years. For the record, that’s one more year than Declan and Iris dated before Declan contracted temporary insanity and broke up with Iris for fifteen years. Well, so maybe not temporary, but definitely insane.”
Ivy laughed softly, but just kept watching his face closely. The idea of him dating someone else for five years was oddly painful, but wherever this chick was now, she was obviously not still Austin’s girlfriend.
Not that Ivy had any say over who Austin did or didn’t date. She would be heading back to California soon.
Or would be as soon as she could figure out how to pay for a plane ticket.
He let out a sigh, drawing Ivy back into the present. “Monica had always been this sweet girl – big smile, friendly to everyone, and I thought I was in love. You can’t be with someone for five years without thinking it’s true love. We were going to wait until I graduated from college and took over my dad’s farm before getting married. I wanted to be able to provide for her, you know?”
