I pinch the bridge of my nose, my mind still reeling from the man I’ve just come face-to-face with. “Okay, I’ll-”
“Look, why don’t you go home?” Ainsley says, as ever, looking at whatever she’s typing on her phone instead of me. She looks up. “Go say hi to your folks, get something to eat, and relax. I actually just reconnected with a friend from college who lives like, thirty minutes from here.”
I raise a brow. “Wow, really?”
“Yeah, she’s gonna come get me for coffee or whatever. You go chill, and when Blaine gets in, I’ll have her bring me back here and we’ll cab it to you or whatever.”
She frowns as she looks up. “Wait, are there even cabs here?”
“There’s like one cab here.”
She rolls her eyes. “Then you can come get us both. Dude, I got this, okay?”
My shoulders slump as I smile wryly at her. “Thanks, Ains.”
“Don’t mention it,” she says with a shrug. “It’s what I do.”
“You’re the best, lady.”
She grins as Stella honks up the street. “Go. I’ll call you when he gets in.”
I give her a quick hug before grabbing my clunky suitcase and stalking up the street, the wheels thump-thumping over every stupid cobblestone and my brain flip-flopping over the boy from my past who just waltzed right back into my life.
* * *
I slam the car door shut in a fury before whirling on my sister. “Okay, you did not tell me that Silas was back in fuc-”
Stella’s brow arches sharply as she coughs and jerks her head towards the backseat. I turn to see my four-year old nephew Carter sitting in his car seat, grinning at me impishly.
“Auntie Ivy!” he squeals, waving a stuffed dinosaur at me.
“Hey, little man!”
I reach back and tickle him, grinning and momentarily forgetting what just happened as Stella pulls the car out into traffic.
I turn back to her, wincing. “Sorry, didn’t know he was coming for the ride.”
She shoots me a look, shaking her head. “Yeah, let’s watch the swearing like a sailor around the four-year old, shall we?”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Where’s Blaine and what’s-her-name? Your assistant.”
“Ainsley,” I say absently. “Blaine took a later ferry so she’s hanging back to wait for him.” I blow air through my lips.
Stella’s brow furrows as she pulls off of Main Street. “What’s this about Silas?”
I give her an accusing look. “Uh, did you forget to mention before I came home that he was back in town?”
Her frown deepens. “Silas Hart is here? Seriously?””
“Yeah,” I growl, turning to stare out the window at the tree-lined streets. “Apparently,” I mutter before raising a brow at her. “Wait, did you really not know?”
“If I’d known, I’d have chopped his you-know-what-off long before your ferry arrived,” she mutters, making me grin.
“What the heck is he doing home is the real question.”
It’s the only question. It’s the question making my damn head spin as I stare out the window, totally lost in it as we pull through my parent’s neighborhood.
Stella coughs.
“Hmm?”
She gives me a look. “What’s he doing in Shelter Harbor?”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Dad’s dedication.”
“Pop-pop!” Carter crows from the backseat.
Stella balks. “You’re sh-” she catches herself. “You’re s-h-i-t-t-i-n-g me,” she spells out.
“Oh,” I smile thinly. “It gets better. Rowan invited him.”
Stella whistles lowly. “Remind me to kill our brother.”
“Me first.”
“So that’s going to be fun with Blaine coming,” Stella says dryly. “Wait, he doesn’t know about-”
I shake my head, looking out the window.
“You haven’t somehow fixed that thing and forgotten to tell me have you?”
“It’s on my to-do list.”
It was never going to be a “forever” secret. But we were young, and in love, and what started as a silly conversation in the back of his pickup under the stars one summer night turned into reality. Because when you’re eighteen and head over heels madly in love, you don’t think about the what-ifs, or what-may-comes.
You only know one moment, sharing one heart with the boy you know without question is the one - the only one who’ll ever matter.
“Distance is going to suck.”
His arms are around me as I sit between his legs, leaning against his chest and staring up at the starry night sky.
“It’s only New York.” His lips brush my neck, sending a glow through my body as I sink back into him. His arms growing a little tighter - the move protective and comforting, and it makes me grin. Because it says that even as tough and as brave as the boy holding me is - even as fearless as he is with everything he’s gone through in his life - the thought of me leaving has him holding on to me, like he’s afraid to let me go.
“Besides, you know I’ll be down there all the damn time.”
“It’s an all-girl’s dorm,” I pout, my hands sliding over his arms and entwining in his.
“Then I’ll dress in drag.”
I giggle, turning back to press my lips to his. My eyes flutter open halfway through the kiss, flitting over his serene, happy face as he kisses me, and drinking in this perfect moment.
“I just want this to be forever,” I say quietly, pulling away.
“It is forever, Ivy-girl,” he murmurs, those eyes of his darting across my face, that roguish grin stretching across his face.
I sink back into his arms as we both look up at the stars again.
“What if it really WAS forever,” he says after a moment.
I rake my teeth across my lip as the grin pulls at the corners of my mouth. “What do you mean?”
He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. “You know what I mean. What if it really was forever? What would you do if I asked?”
I can feel this feeling of pure euphoria exploding through me, my eyes shining at the corners and the glowing feeling of his embrace buzzing through every nerve in my body.
“Well, you’d have to get me a ring first,” I say primly, surpassing the giggle that comes to my lips.
“What if I already had my eye on one?”
I smile hugely as I turn back over my shoulder to look up into his face. “Does it come with a receipt?”
He winks. “You really want to know?”
I shake my head side-to-side.
“So, if I got you a ring, and I asked-”
“I’d probably have to say yes,” I manage to spill out before I turn in his arms, wrap mine around him, and kiss him with everything I have.
Two weeks later, we’re saying I do in the rectory of a church two towns away before Sunday mass.
Three days after, my whole life changes.
When it all blew up, I finally caved and told my older sister, because keeping it inside after all that may have killed me.
Him leaving like that almost did.
Suffice it to say, that little piece of trivia has never made it past Stella.
We pull around the corner, and suddenly I’m right back in my old neighborhood - right back where we grew up.
It’s strange being here - so familiar, with everything exactly how it was.
Hell, even Silas is back.
“Your to-do list?” Stella spits out as we pull into my parents’ driveway. The huge old farmhouse-style with the wrap-around porch brings a smile to my face despite the run down memory lane.
“Uh, maybe bump that to the top of your list, Ivy.” Stella frowns. “You don’t have to tell Blaine about him, but if things between you get more serious, it’s going to come up. I mean, legally-speaking.”
I groan. “Yeah, well, I’d have had to have seen him
at some point in the last eight years in order to get a div-”
My sisters waves her hands as she’s nods at the backseat.
“He’s on a big repeating phase,” she says with roll of her eyes. “So…”
“Thanks,” I say with a grin. Stella shuts the car off and opens her door.
“Look, I’ve been pretty flipping busy, you know.”
She wags her brows at me over the top of the car as she opens the back door to get at Carter. “I know, I know, big fancy New York busy-body and all.”
I stick my tongue out at her as she grins.
“I’d just have thought that you’d-”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t okay? We’re still….” I sigh, pushing my hands through my hair as I open mine. “We’re still that.”
Stella gives me a very certain look but doesn’t say anything.
“Look, can we change the subject before we go inside.”
She snorts. “Definitely.”
“How was LA and seeing Kyle and Austin?”
She laughs. “See how long we go without talking? That was like three months ago.”
I make a face and sticks her tongue out at me like we’re teasing kids again.
“It was interesting, and a very long story. He bought a boat.”
I raise a brow. “Our brother or his NFL pal?”
Our youngest brother Kyle is the de facto computer genius of the Hammond family, and has been out in Los Angeles for the past few years paling around with his college roommate-turned-pro-quarterback Austin Taylor. The fact that he’s a newly minted millionaire and never has to work again after selling this computer program he wrote to the U.S. Government seems to be lost on our brother, since he also just took a job with the FBI.
“Oh, Kyle.” She shrugs. “It’s actually a really nice boat. Carter loved it.”
“And he’s really dating the Vivian Ames?”
New boats, swanky government jobs, and dating the gorgeous socialite queen of New York City. Somehow our awkward computer nerd of a little brother became James Bond.
“Oh, she’s spunky, you’d like her.”
I pop the trunk and lug my over-sized suitcase out. “Remind me again how he managed to get out of this?”
Stella rolls her eyes as she pulls Carter out of the booster seat. “Ivy they’re naming a park after Dad. I know you go out of your way to avoid coming home, but it’s sort of a big deal.”
I make a face. “I do not.”
“Whatever you say.”
Carter’s back is to me, and I flip her off, which makes her grin.
“Look, forget about Silas Hart, alright?”
Working on it.
The front door bangs open as our mom comes bustling onto the front porch.
“Oh my goodness! You’re here!”
Stella turns back and arches a brow at me. “Game face, sis.”
6
Ivy
As little as I come back here, and as wrapped up in my own life back in New York I am, there’s something just warm about walking into the house I grew up in. It feels wholesome, and comforting. It smells like Christmas trees of years gone by, family dinners at a full table, and summer vacations all at once, and I can’t help but just feel love the second I walk through the front door.
I guess that’s why they say home is where the heart is.
The same soft white curtains, the same wallpaper, and the same collection of wind-up clocks across the mantel. There are the same photographs on the wall leading into the kitchen - expanded a little with more memories, more friends, and Carter now, of course.
The wall is of course less a few pictures too - there’s one of Carter stuffing Jello in his mouth where I know a horribly awkward picture of Silas and I at prom once hung.
Where that’s gone to I can’t even imagine.
Nor do I need to.
“There she is!” My dad comes bursting out from his study, a big grin on his silver-bearded face, his still-thick hair combed back and to the side like it’s been for as long as I’ve been alive.
“There’s my big shot!”
He’s been calling me that since the first blog took off, and he chuckles deeply, his broad-chested frame booming as he brings me in for a big hug, squeezing me tight. He steps back, beaming like the king of a castle - ever the reverend at a pulpit watching over his flock.
He gives another squeeze before he puts an arm around our mom, and I can’t help but grin at the two of them - exactly the same. Maybe a bit grayer, a bit softer around the edges than they once were. But 40 years, five children, and more memories than I can imagine later, they’re still happy.
Still as in love as the day they got married.
There’s a shriek at the top of the stairs, before Sierra comes tumbling down in her usual whirlwind state. My little sister half jumps into me, shrieking again into my ear as she holds me tight.
“Well don’t knock her over, honey!” Mom chuckles, leaning her head against Dad’s chest.
“What? I see more of her on the stupid internet than I do in real life.”
I pull a face as Sierra sticks her tongue out at me. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.” Her eyes drop to my shoulder bag and her demeanor suddenly shifts. “God, where did you get that bag, I love it.”
“Now where’s that boy of yours?” Mom raises her brows and looks past me, as if Blaine’s hiding on the front porch.
My mom loves Blaine, and I think it’s for two very main reasons. For one, he makes me happy. But for two, he is nothing like the boy who I know broke her heart almost as much as mine. Sunny, cheery, golden-haired Blaine is nothing like the boy who always had a cloud over his right shoulder he could never shake.
Hell, even my dad seems totally enamored with him, which is no easy feat. But I know that part of that is that this man who his daughter is wrapped up in is from the right family, the strong family, without the baggage and the darkness that came with the one long before.
Dad clears his throat as mom bustles back into the kitchen with Stella in tow. “Rowan’s short-staffed right now, so he’s still at work.”
Work being O’Donnell’s, the townie bar up the hill from the piers. Back in high school, we used to steal warm beers off the loading dock out back and drink them on the roof. Now our older brother owns and runs the place.
The preacher’s son, running the town dive bar.
Perfect, really, for the family black sheep.
And I know most people - most people being our dad - think of that night as the kink in the ladder that threw Rowan off his path. But the truth of it is that the oldest Hammond’s been the black sheep since even before the rest of us were born. Given, the hockey scholarship to Boston University may have been a chance of leaving that moniker behind, but that all changed that night.
A lot changed that night.
Of course, Rowan also being Silas’s best friend explains why the little shit seems to have neglected to tell me about who I might run into back here in Shelter Harbor. I may have ended up being just some silly young fling for Silas Hart, but he and Row were like brothers up until the end.
“The end” being the night of rain and sirens and heartbreak.
I clear my head of the memory that I put to bed long before.
Because the boy I fell in love with who was almost a sixth sibling here in the Hammond house - the boy my father taught to shave and drive, the boy who my mom used to teach piano to, the boy who seemed to finally be leaving the criminality and zero direction of his home behind…
Well, that boy turned out to be exactly who he was always meant to be.
A criminal.
A liar.
A thief who stole my heart.
“Ok, dinner’s about ready, gang!” Mom calls from the kitchen. She pokes her head out and frowns. “Oh, shoot, should we wait for Blaine?”
I smile as I scoop Carter up, tickling him until he giggles and squirms in my arms. “I can always heat him up a plate later,” I say, tossing
a shrieking Carter up and down.
My dad chuckles and puts an arm around both Sierra and I, kissing us both on the top of the head like he’s always done as we all head through the house to the backyard.
It’s been eight years.
Eight years later, I’m not the same person I was, and I honestly don’t even care if Silas is or not.
Because I’m past it. I’m taking it off the wall like the goofy prom pictures.
And right there as I step out through the kitchen door to picnic table in the backyard surrounded by family, I decide that I will see Silas Hart one more time.
And this time, we’re getting a fucking divorce.
7
Silas
I sit on the hood of my truck out at the end of Commercial Street, at the edge of the piers where the town sort of runs out into the edge of the woods. From here, the long stone and evergreen curve of Turner State Park circles out around the harbor itself.
The park’s closed after dark, which also means there’s not a soul around down here, which suits me just fucking fine right now.
I reach for the pack of smokes in my pocket like some sort of phantom limb syndrome. They’re not there, of course, but the habit of putting my hand on that pocket remains, even thought I gave them up years ago.
I gave a lot up years ago.
So now I’m home, I guess. Home in a place that isn’t even home anymore - a town that’s forgotten I existed, and a girl who wishes she did.
Oh yeah, coming back here was a great fucking plan.
Of course what she doesn’t know - what I don’t think anyone knows aside from Rowan is that I’ve been a lot closer to home than Ireland for the last year.
Because after five years in Dublin doing everything I always said I wouldn’t get into, I finally threw in the towel and came back to the States.
It’s worth mentioning that five years in the Federal statute of limitations on bank jobs.
Except I never actually made it home until three days ago. A year before, when I touched down at Logan, I didn’t make it past Boston itself. And so I landed in Southie and then spent three years working up the courage or whatever to make it to Shelter Harbor.
Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 81
