by Max Monroe
They were angry and knowing. He could sense the dangerous game I’d undertaken a mile away, and he didn’t like it one bit.
The irony, of course, was that I wasn’t enjoying it much either.
I just couldn’t stop.
Noticing the plate of food in Camilla’s hand for the first time, I softened my features and put a hand to the small of her back. “You want to go to the bar? Get a drink and have a place to put your food down?”
She nodded, the interest in her eyes growing with the addition of gratitude.
I put pressure to my hand as a guide and pushed her away from Sam and Ivy, and I did it without looking back.
I was already broken and bleeding. Visual confirmation of what I’d just done, what I’d sabotaged between Ivy and me, I feared, would be fatal.
“So there I was, shoveling food down my throat, and he was introducing me to his best friend, Jeremy. Like I was something special,” Camilla shouted from the bathroom while she washed her face.
My hands were shaking, and my eyes tingled with unshed tears from my spot under the afghan on the couch. I could see out the holes in the fabric, but it acted as a cloak for my emotions.
“Mm,” I mumbled, barely loud enough to mean anything, but it was enough for Camilla. She was on a roll about Levi, and she didn’t really need my participation. All she needed was a willing listener—and I was doing a good enough job of pretending to be that.
“Jeremy is so nice, by the way. So is his wife, Liza. Apparently, Levi babysits their kids—daughters—sometimes.”
I smarted at the knowledge she had of him—knowledge I barely had; knowledge I’d only garnered by mistake.
My emotions were all over the place as I tried to lessen the violent turmoil inside.
Levi wasn’t mine to claim. He was a jerk and a con and a fucking opportunist. He’d played on my weakness and the innocence of my sister today, and that made me want to cut off his air supply.
But Camilla was on a high from the royal tenderness with which he’d treated her, and the irrational part of me was jealous. Jealous of the unclouded joy she felt, as blameless as it was, and jealous of the man he’d been with her.
It was obvious by the way she spoke that it wasn’t all an act. He’d given thought to her feelings and her comfort in a way that spoke to experience. He’d offered her a hand to get down from her stool at the bar, and he’d walked slowly with a mind to the length of her legs. He’d opened the door to the banquet hall to aid in her exit, and he’d held her hand to ease her journey over the slippery ice outside.
I’d fumbled my way behind them, Sam and Mary looking on with concerned eyes. I knew I’d looked sad, but I’d done my best to give them a smile anyway.
“He asked me all these insightful questions about my job and what it was like to be the woman behind the scenes,” Camilla continued, completely unaware of my suffering.
Which was good.
None of this was her fault, and I had no interest in bursting her bubble. It didn’t hurt anything for her to think Levi was good in all the ways that counted, and she didn’t owe me anything. Levi and I weren’t a couple, despite what all of the physical contact we’d managed had made it seem, and we weren’t destined for one another. If anything, we were two peas in two very separate pods, better off without each other.
I just had to convince my heart to get on board the reality-bound train along with my brain.
Camilla exited the bathroom, flicking out the light behind her and plopping down on the couch next to me. I used the blanket as a shield—whether it was more active trying to keep her words out or my black mood in, I wasn’t sure.
“So then he tells me about his mom and how she was this really proud, sure woman. Apparently, she left him and his dad when he was pretty young, intent to make something of her life. I don’t know. I guess Cold was too small for her.”
My head popped out of the blanket like a fucking groundhog at the shimmering, unheard news.
I knew next to nothing about Levi’s family life after weeks of time together, but my sister had a whole fucking backstory after a single afternoon.
“Where’d she go?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
Her eyes got big and her voice, dramatic. “Get this. Hollywood. She wanted to be a star, he said.”
I reeled, metaphorical arms whirling in an effort to stop myself from falling clear on my ass.
“Holy shit.”
She nodded. “I know. There’s so much irony. But he was pretty circumspect about it.”
My eyebrows drew together, trying to picture Levi being cautious about anything. He certainly wasn’t ever careful with my feelings.
“He went to the bathroom after that, but Jeremy’s wife Liza filled me in a little. Evidently, Levi’s dad was some big guy in town. Big money, big plans, that sort of thing. But he didn’t give much attention to the wants of his wife. No one was really surprised when she left, trying to find other things.”
“But she left her kid?” I snapped, disgust ripe in my voice. I couldn’t stop myself from picturing a little version of the raven-haired, blue-eyed man I knew. He had to have felt so alone.
“I know,” Camilla agreed, shrugging. “I guess some people mostly see themselves.”
I nodded, but to say I was disengaged as a listener would be an understatement. I was too busy reshaping my view of the man I knew, all over again. Every time I stopped to breathe, it seemed like something else came out in his defense.
“Anyway…Levi came back, so we shut up about it then. We kept it light, and he asked me about how my time had been in Cold and if I missed home at all.”
She sighed dreamily.
“He really cared what I had to say. I haven’t had a conversation like that…you know, one that truly cared for my needs emotionally and physically…in a long time. God, probably forever, actually. Guys in LA are always such egocentric pricks.”
I nodded again, swallowing back the vomit in my throat. Levi Fox had capabilities I never even expected. He had the power to be the kind of man a woman wanted forever. My body rebelled again, threating to hold my rational brain hostage in the emotional cage my little obsession with him had created.
But I fought. I wouldn’t let the emotional nausea win. I refused.
I just had to face the facts.
Levi Fox, it seemed, was a gentleman.
He just had no interest in being one with me.
I’d spent the full day after Grace’s post-death birthday party doing actual police work. As a police officer, as you might suspect, days doing such work were a regularity.
At least, they had been until recently.
Ever since Ivy and the film crew had come to town, I’d been spending way more days out of uniform than in it. Hell, I had three un-cashed checks from Trigate films sitting on my kitchen counter to prove it.
Thankfully, years of experience went a long way in making sure a little time off didn’t make me rusty, and the good people of Cold had given me plenty of calls to keep me busy.
I’d been dispatched to Jeb Wilson’s house after he and his brother got into yet another fight about milk cows.
Dairy cows, as a rule, have to be bred to maintain lactation, but the bull used isn’t so cut-and-dried. Jeb and Jimmy had been fighting over which bull to use for decades. It’s like a farmer’s version of a football rivalry. And just like the bar on Monday nights, this set of adversaries often came to blows.
I’d pulled over a passerby in town named Tammy for doing fourteen over the speed limit in a school zone, and I’d been called to a possible robbery at the Pit Stop convenience store.
The robbery was actually a man in a hoodie with a pack of gum in his pocket, but I’d been dispatched all the same.
Several people in town had stopped to chat at me—and I did mean at.
It was amazing how little talking I could get away with in some of those conversations, but it seemed people were usually just looking for someone to listen. As a public
servant, I made it a point to do so. Not when I had more pressing calls or public safety was in question, but when I was killing time between one call and another, absolutely.
After the pseudorobbery at the Pit Stop, a quick chat with town biddy and gossiper Hilda Vosser, and a short stint patrolling traffic, another call came in—on set.
Lights and sirens blaring, I hauled ass all the way there, worried about Ivy despite all my efforts to stop it. I didn’t trust that fucking producer not to put his hands on her in anger.
I was half apoplectic by the time I got there, working myself into a cold sweat at the thought of Boyce’s uninvited hands on Ivy in violence or something else, but in the end, it’d been nothing more than a false alarm, and Ivy wasn’t even there.
They had a panic button-style system that sent an immediate notification to police, but it still had some kinks.
I told myself the call to the set was the moment I started thinking about Ivy.
The way I was hell-bent not to feel.
The way I’d treated her yesterday.
The dirty asshole I’d been by toying with her sister, just to get a rise out of her.
But the truth was, I’d been thinking about her all fucking day. For the first time in years, I felt the genuine urge to apologize.
It was one thing to hold her at a distance or to keep the private details of my life to myself, but it was another to actively, deceitfully antagonize her.
There was something to the passionate anger she made me feel, and admitting a need to confront it was the first step. I didn’t suspect I’d be calling her to ask her on dates anytime soon, but I couldn’t ignore her either.
Years of my life I’d spent as a walking zombie, but after a couple of weeks with Ivy Stone in town, comfortably numb was a memory.
I was angry. I was charged. I was passionate. I was vibrant again.
I was living.
And she was the reason.
When I came to the stop sign at the end of Tilly Lane—the last intersection between where I’d been and my house—I had a decision to make.
A right meant home. A left meant Ivy.
My tires didn’t even stop rolling as I made my choice.
The road to home stretched before me like a beacon, and I put my foot to the throttle, eating pavement. This route was the rational choice, the safer one. This road was one I’d driven before and one I could predict. This was the way to the life I knew, the life I’d been living—to shelter, security, and nothing more.
I glanced in my rearview mirror for less than a second, but that was all it took.
That one moment of question. That one sliver of hope. That one reflection on what it would be like to have more.
My tires screeched, the pavement a sliding surface under the momentum of my cruiser. I barely had it stopped before I threw it into reverse and turned around.
The lights inside her house blared as I pulled up in the gravel drive outside, and my heart beat recklessly. It gave little thought to keeping rhythm and did a poor job of keeping itself from banging into the walls of my rib cage, but it was still pumping blood—and that was all I needed.
I pushed open my door and climbed to my feet, wildly trying to pin down a thought in my head. I didn’t know what I planned to say, and I had quite a few doubts that if I managed to figure it out, she would want to hear it.
But I’d had this emotional epiphany without solicitation, and there was no going back. I couldn’t force the feelings back inside, and I couldn’t pretend she didn’t affect me.
I climbed the porch steps and knocked three times, the wood of the door bouncing effortlessly off my knuckles.
“Coming!” she called from the other side, her footsteps audibly hurried. I took one deep breath and then another, coaching myself quickly as I did.
Be nice.
Don’t get aggravated.
Speak to her consciously. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.
The door opened and she startled, her green eyes widening at the sight of me standing there all official-like in my uniform—apparently, officially mute.
I tried to pull words from my throat, but they wouldn’t come.
I was too distracted.
Her pajama tank was nothing but a thin camisole, and the matching shorts left no more than two inches of her legs to my imagination. Her hair was down and wild, and her makeup-free face looked sleepy.
“Hey,” I finally managed, forcing myself to man the fuck up. “Sorry to pop in on you without notice.”
She waved it off with a little laugh. A friendly laugh I didn’t think I’d ever heard from her before. “No problem. I was just napping.”
Something was off. Something wasn’t right. But my head felt so fucking fuzzy, and the thought of her in bed supported a physical reaction that took a whole lot of willpower to tamp down. It wouldn’t have taken much to be noticeable in my uniform pants, and for fuck’s sake, Levi, this was about more than that.
“Do you want to come in?” she offered. My heart abandoned my bid to calm down and sped up again as I nodded.
She swung a hand open in invitation, and I stepped inside.
The silence was deafening. We didn’t speak, there was no TV on in the background, and for as audible as I felt like my heart should be, I couldn’t hear it at all.
“Listen—” I started, ready to spill my fucking guts. The apology. The honesty. She deserved all of it.
But she spoke at the same time. And, as it turned out, it was a good thing that she did.
“Ivy will be home—”
Ivy. Ivy will be home.
Fucking Ivy.
Jesus Christ. This was Camilla. Ivy’s fucking twin whom you flirted with all day yesterday. No wonder she’s smiling. No fucking wonder something feels off.
I should’ve known the instant she’d opened the door. I should’ve seen it in the way her smile came too easy, the way her laugh was so damn friendly, and the way she didn’t look at me like she was trying to figure out all of my fucking secrets.
And Jesus, what an even bigger asshole it made me that I’d forgotten all about Camilla.
“You go,” she said with another, brighter smile.
Yeah, uh…no. I needed time to regroup. To figure out a new plan. To think of something innocuous and civil to say.
“No, no,” I said faux-magnanimously, “You go ahead.”
She giggled, and my chest tightened. Holy hell, I’d created quite the situation for myself.
“I was saying Ivy will be home soon. She ran over to the store to get some eggs.” She shook her head ruefully. “The girl is crazy about her eggs in the morning, and I might have eaten the last of them while she was at work today.”
My smile was brittle as I tried to be politely distant. “Gotcha.”
Melancholy slid into my veins, and the idea of teleportation and time machines had never sounded so good.
If Ivy wasn’t here, I had no reason for being here.
Camilla moved quickly to the couch, moving pillows and blankets and tossing them to the side. “Here, come sit down. You were obviously at work all day. You must be tired.”
I shook my head, but she bustled on. “Come on, take a load off. I’ll get you something to drink.”
I moved to the couch with a nod, if for no other reason than to move on from the debate over whether I should sit down or not. And I couldn’t deny I was hanging on the hope of her admission that Ivy would be home soon.
She laughed and shoved my shoulder playfully when I put my ass to the cushion, but she didn’t take it any further. My back was straight, my arms tensely resting on my knees, and I’d have to scoot another foot and a half to come into contact with the backrest. “Relax, would you?”
I grabbed her wrist as she moved away, suddenly resolute to get this over with. I needed to tell her I wasn’t interested. That yesterday had been way too complicated to explain, but that I hoped we could be friends. That I’d come here looking for Ivy.
“Actually…I kind of need to talk to you.”
She nodded seriously, my tone undeniable, and then took a seat next to me. “What is it? What’s up?”
“About yesterday,” I started, and she smiled immediately. At the reminder of how much I’d fucked myself, I could barely feel my throat to swallow.
I tried to turn the corners of my lips up.
“I—”
She launched herself all at once, the signal she received from my message coming in completely fucking wrong.
Her lips were on mine before I knew what to do, her ass was in my lap, and her knees were in the couch on either side of my hips. She put her hands into my hair and all her passion into her mouth, and my surprised grunt of a gasp was the perfect opportunity to slide her tongue inside.
Well, fuck.
A lone, eerie police car sat glaringly in the drive to my house when I pulled up from my short trip to the store.
I’d gone without thought, needing my stupid eggs so that I didn’t break superstition. It was random, the idea that eating eggs every day first thing in the morning would somehow affect my performance, but I’d been doing it for years. Innocent in its beginnings, eating eggs was something I’d done out of convenience on the first major motion picture I’d ever been a part of. When it opened to a boom at the box office, I’d grabbed on to whatever I could as a part of the reason and ran with it.
The eggs had become a security blanket.
But now, forced to confront the scene of a police car outside and my sister home alone, I realized how stupid I’d been.
All for fucking eggs.
Camilla looked just like me. Sure, there were nuances that the trained eye would notice, but not someone looking to do me harm. Malicious intent was almost never that controlled.
I shoved open my door and left the eggs behind, running wildly toward the house while my heart tried to come right up my throat. Double the intensity of vomit, tears formed in my eyes as I forced it to stay put.
I steeled myself in the last running steps it took to clear the stairs and the front porch, and I turned the knob with violent anticipation.
