I nodded while my heart squeezed in my chest. “No, we’re not. And that’s why you have to trust him. Only him, Honor. He’s the only person you can truly believe.”
She nodded again and I thought my heart would burst in my chest it was so tightly compressed. “What about you?” she whispered. “Can’t I trust you?”
Tears started to fall before I could stop them. “I won’t always be around, Babe. I won’t always be here for you.”
She started crying, too; I knew she could feel the same pull, the same precarious borders of the vortex I stood at. “But you’re going someplace safe, aren’t you? You wouldn’t leave me unless you were going to be safe.”
I crushed her in my aggressive, desperate hug. “I would never leave you unless I had to. And I would never go unless it was to some place safe.”
“I love you, Ivy.”
“I love you, Little Girl.” I kissed her temple and then passed her off to my mom so they could share a less emotional embrace. Although, Honor couldn’t stop sobbing, so it made things a bit awkward when my mother asked her what was wrong and she only started hiccupping louder.
Smith shrugged in a way that oblivious dads could pull off. Except we all knew Smith wasn’t an oblivious dad. My mother glared at him like this was his fault and threatened to call her lawyers. She hurried me down the steps and barked at me to climb in her Escalade.
I obeyed, still not able to control my own tears.
“What is going on?” Ava snapped as soon as we pulled back onto the main road. Smith’s estate disappeared in my side mirror along with the secure feelings I felt moments ago.
I sniffled, “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Ivy. Something is going on and I want to know what it is.”
“Well, since I don’t even know what it is, I probably can’t tell you.”
She whipped her head around to glare at me. “Don’t be a smart ass. First you and Smith disappear together and then you have a breakdown when you say goodbye to your sister. I know you’re up to something. I know it.”
My pulse quickened. I could feel it hammering in the hollow of my throat. But I tried to play it cool. “What are you talking about? When did Smith and I disappear together?”
She let out an exasperated growl and slammed her hand on the steering wheel. “I’m not an idiot, Ivy! You ran off to the bathroom and he followed not two minutes later. I know you were off somewhere together. Don’t lie to me!”
A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me and then I lost my mind a little bit. “Lie to you? How am I lying to you! I went to the bathroom! Am I not allowed to do that anymore? Do I have to pee with you watching me now?”
She gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles stretched white. I could feel her fury from here. It rolled off her in waves of hostile aggression. “Go ahead and lie,” she spat. “I would love nothing more than for Smith to be caught in some nefarious scheme with you. I just need him to make one monumental mistake and then I’ll get Honor. So go right ahead. Sneak off in secret, whisper your little confidences. Do whatever you think you need to. I’ll just be waiting for this to work in my favor.”
“You’re so sick.” The tears were back, spilling over my bottom lashes and trailing down my face. “You’re my mother. You’re supposed to be my mother!”
She didn’t respond for a long time. Her body stilled and some of her ire lifted from her tensed shoulders, but she didn’t even try to argue. “I will have to tell Nix all of this. You might want to remember that for future reference. Nix knows everything. Nix will always know everything.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue. That actually sounded like a warning.
Which… was unprecedented.
“What did he do to you, Ava? What did he do to make you like this?” My words were harsh whispers. I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words louder and I couldn’t even begin to hope that she would answer. I half expected the back of her hand to slap me across the face.
Instead, she glanced over at me with a pain that was absolutely unfathomable. Whatever I thought I had been through in seventeen years, my mother had seen infinitely more in her forty-five. She had more than twice my experience and it was starting to show all over her fracturing face.
After long moments of silence she exhaled a slow breath and confessed, “You don’t believe me, Ivy. You might never believe me… but you should know that all I have ever wanted for you was a better life than what I had.”
My stomach clenched into knots and my blood slowed with a sludgy reluctance to believe her words. But I could feel her truth, the authenticity behind each word spoken. And if what I lived was a better life than what she had experienced, then…
“I don’t believe you,” I said stubbornly.
She tilted her chin in equal defiance and without looking at me, said, “I don’t care what you believe. This is your life. You cannot escape it. You cannot have something different. Nix is your future and if what the Fates are saying is true, you will endure this world forever. Get used to it now. Accept it now. Do not continue to fight him or you will regret every second of your actions for the rest of your life. I promise you that.”
This time there was no hesitancy, no wavering, no internal debate. I believed her.
I believed every single word.
Chapter Twelve
I tiptoed to the door and turned the handle as quietly as I could. It was still early and my mom wouldn’t surface for a long time- especially after the date she had last night with a certain gentleman named Johnny Walker Blue Label.
She had to be facing a hangover of massive proportions if the almost empty whisky bottle sitting on the counter was any indication of how much she’d enjoyed their evening together. Hopefully she wouldn’t even notice I was gone.
I slid out into the hallway and locked the door behind me, holding my breath the entire time. I think I held it all the way to the lobby and down the stairs to the circular drive.
I didn’t take another breath until I was safely locked away in Ryder’s Bronco with the door closed, my seatbelt on and my hand in his.
I looked over at him as the early morning light spilled in through his window, just over his shoulder. The bright, golden sun set his dark hair on fire from behind and his silvery eyes glittered at me. He looked beautiful this morning. High cheekbones, masculine jaw, full lips that seemed to offer me their own greeting. His cotton polo fit him snugly across his shoulders and tapered to his narrow waste. His tattoos were in full view and I wanted to run my fingers over every line and curve that marked his skin. He was the perfect kind of man to me. He was everything I could have asked for all packaged up and set before me like a gift I couldn’t open or a secret I wasn’t allowed to know.
“Morning, Red,” he rumbled in a deep voice still tangled with sleep.
I bounced into him, too excited to hold back the energy that just came from being near him. I bravely pressed a quick peck to those kissable lips and held in my sigh of contentment. “Morning,” I chirped.
He rubbed his lips with the tips of his fingers and looked at me wonderingly. “What was that for?”
“I’ve missed you.”
He leaned forward and reciprocated with a lingering kiss to my mouth. Mine was fast and cutesy. His was slow and building. I felt a fire ignite beneath my skin; just a spark at first, but the longer he moved against my mouth the more it built into a roaring flame consuming me entirely. My skin singed from the heat, my blood boiled from his touch, my body seared while he carefully stoked the embers of this cataclysmic moment. My defenses melted into pools of liquid metal at my feet; my heart burst into a fireball that spread through my chest, eating up every single piece of me that didn’t yet belong to him until there was nothing left, not one single particle that wasn’t owned by him completely. I gave myself over to the flame. I let myself burn on the pyre of Ryder’s engulfing need. I sacrificed myself willingly.
Ryder’s hands cupped my face gently and his freshly-shaved j
aw moved against my infinitely softer skin. He smelled like a fresh shower and his coconut oil shampoo. His calloused fingers rubbed my jaw tenderly and I knew I had never felt more happiness in my life. While death and destruction swirled around me in a tornado of impending doom, Ryder was my rock, my tether to something stable and solid. He was the only thing grounding me from the gale force winds that would carry me away in a moment.
He was the only link I had to a better life… to any life at all.
I couldn’t let him go for even a second or I would be washed away in the stormy ocean waves of my fate.
“I missed you, too,” he murmured against my lips.
“You’re not supposed to kiss me,” I scolded him weakly.
He gave me an indulgent smile. “That’s how I say ‘hello’ to all my friends. Just ask Phoenix; only yesterday I got a little boob action before our league game.”
I punched him on the shoulder but couldn’t stop from laughing. “I’m serious, Ryder. I don’t want you to have to deal with being affected by… this,” I gestured at my body and waved my hand around disgusted with what I was.
His expression intensified and his silver eyes darkened. “Ivy, I don’t have to feel your curse to be affected by you. You affect me every moment of every day. You move inside me, you wrap around my skin and fill some empty part of me. You affect me, Ivy. In every single way. And I never want you to stop.”
Words, sound, thoughts, breath, heartbeats… they all stopped. Everything in me stopped.
Ryder switched back to casual just as fast as he’d turned on the serious. “Don’t think about that too hard, Pierce. You look like you’re on the verge of an aneurism.”
He took off onto Farnam, headed west into the heart of Omaha. I closed my eyes and forced myself to start breathing again, but it was difficult. His words had altered some immovable piece inside of me and I felt like I was freefalling down Alice’s rabbit hole. I didn’t know when I would stop, or which way I would turn next. Emotions I couldn’t name swirled inside me and whether I closed my eyes or opened them, Ryder’s face was all I could see.
He turned on the radio and started singing along to some random, upbeat pop song I was semi-shocked to realize he knew all the words to. His voice was like gravel over the girly lyrics but his smile stretched out across his face and his fingers tapped along to the drum beat on his steering well.
Slowly air began to fill my lungs again and the weight of his confession changed from a chest-heavy pressure to a warm blanket that cocooned me in its sincerity.
I watched Ryder have fun with the song and laughed at all his outrageousness. I didn’t sing with him even though I secretly knew all the words, too. But I had never sung for anyone before and I wasn’t going to start with Ryder.
It wasn’t that I was a bad singer… clearly, I was the opposite. I was a Siren after all. Women like me were legendary for their unmatched talent and hypnotizing melodies. And that was why I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t tempt fate by challenging Ryder’s resilience to the curse.
Ryder maneuvered his Bronco through morning rush hour and before I could complain about the non-existent Omaha traffic, we were pulling into the offices of Arnold, Terkoff and Blane. The parking lot was still filling with cars when Ryder parked in the visitor’s spot; the work day was just beginning.
Smith had texted Ryder last night to say that Mallory would be waiting for us this morning. Ryder called me immediately after he got the text. He knew who Malloy and Smith were, so he could put the pieces together easily enough.
I answered the phone and he had said, “You’re really going to do this?”
I remembered having a paralyzing moment of fear and panic, but after a deep breath, I told him, “Yes.”
He had his own moment of silence and then promised. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make this happen for you, Ivy. Whatever it takes.”
And now we were here.
Ryder shut the engine off and we sat in the stillness of the cab while lawyers in expensive suits rushed by us. Occasionally, there was a paralegal or underpaid secretary sporting worn pumps and frizzy hair, but for the most part, Arnold, Terkoff and Blane was a sophisticated firm that hired young, energetic youth straight out of law school so they could buy their souls at a bottom-dollar cost and then lease it back to them for the remainder of their stressed out lives.
Ryder reached over and took my hand, squeezing it in his long fingers. “Ready to do this?”
I nodded, but then confessed, “No. I feel like I’m being followed, or that someone will be able to tell that I’ve been here or what I’m doing. This isn’t going to work. I feel it. I shouldn’t even try. I’m just going to get you-”
“Ivy, stop,” Ryder cut through all my bullshit and squeezed my hand again. “No more weakness. No more giving in to Nix. You do this because it’s what is right for you. And know that I’m doing this because it’s right for me, too.”
“It’s right for you?” That didn’t make any sense to me.
He tilted his head and flashed me a crooked smile. “Do you really think I’m the kind of guy that would let a beautiful girl suffer for the rest of her life? Don’t you know me at all? I’m the good guy.”
“You’re so full of yourself,” I teased him. But he was right. He was the good guy. It didn’t matter if we had a friendship or that I was a girl, Ryder would do this with anybody that needed him.
“Come on, Red,” he coaxed. “Let’s just hear what she has to say. You don’t have to make a final decision today, but let’s go see if this is even possible first, before you decide. Alright?”
That made this seem easier. “Alright.”
We got out of Ryder’s baby- his ugly baby- and made our way inside the sleek, modern office building. Mirrored windows built a skyscraper of success in the heart of Omaha. Steel beams and minimalist furniture greeted us in the lobby. We had to stand in line through a security check point and I passed my purse over to be inspected, adding to the cool distance the building itself seemed to place between the offices and the people who entered the front doors.
We checked in at a circulation desk and waited while the security clerk confirmed our appointment. The twenty-something ex-military looking guard handed us visitor badges as soon as he hung up the phone and pointed where to sign in. We used fake names, names Smith had passed on to Ryder. I didn’t expect Nix to track me down here, but we wanted to be careful. I didn’t want to get caught over something simple and avoidable.
We took the long elevator up to one of the top floors and stepped into more modern architecture. Everything was white and slate gray. All of the furniture was functional and uninviting; all of the employees were frigid and crisply dressed. Even the flowers on the receptions desk were not actual flowers but long stemmed grasses that were in no way friendly.
“Yikes,” I whispered to Ryder.
He shot me a crooked grin over his shoulder and took my hand.
I felt severely underdressed in my pale peach tank top and ivory and sparrow-print shorts. My gold bangles clanged around on my wrists and my gladiators made a slapping sound against my heel every time I took a step. Ryder was just a little better than me in a teal polo and charcoal cargo shorts. He had the good sense to wear Toms on his feet so they didn’t announce his presence with every step.
I thought he looked good… actually, really good. But in no way did he blend in with the three thousand dollar suits brushing by us on their way to work in their corner offices, carrying their Gucci briefcases.
I had never felt like more of a kid in my life.
“We’re here to see Mallory Hunter,” I told the receptionist.
She looked us over with undisguised skepticism and asked in a nasally voice, “Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. Genevieve Carston,” I repeated the name of Smith’s secretary he told us to use. I had been practicing it in my head since last night. I could not mess this up.
Ryder was going by his dad’s name, Nate Sutto
n.
The secretary looked mildly disappointed to see our names on Mallory’s appointment list. She told us to wait on the couches and Mallory’s assistant would be out to get us soon.
She didn’t lie and soon enough a twenty-something undergrad was leading us to her corner office. By the fit of his expensive suit, I guessed that he was related to someone else in the office. That wasn’t so strange; I had to bet most interns and assistants got their job in a prestigious office such as this one through family connections.
No, the weird part was that he hardly glanced at me. He didn’t check me out. He didn’t try to chat with me. He simply picked us up, led us to Mallory and dropped us off- without even a second glance.
I didn’t have time to ponder that though as Mallory greeted us with a tight smile.
She extended her hand to Ryder and they introduced themselves and then she waved a hand at the chairs in front of her desk.
“I have good news,” she declared, getting right to business.
I slid forward in my chair, just balancing on the edge of my bum. “What?”
“We’ve found a clause in the trust. It’s a rather complicated document and it has taken some creative interpretation, but we confirmed last night, after Smith’s call, that the details of your situation do not have to be decided by a court. Your father’s lawyer, Jared Arturo, has the authority to make the call if he can be convinced that your life is in danger and that it would benefit your health and wellbeing to have the bulk of your trust early.”
“What do you mean if he can be convinced?” Ryder sat forward, too. We still held hands. He had never let mine go. And I couldn’t let go of his.
Not ever.
Not until someone else made me.
Mallory leaned back in her chair and regarded us carefully. “Let’s say Ivy were in danger but because of circumstances would only be worsened by an increase of her income. Such as a drug problem. Or for a reason that she would like to keep hidden from her mother but shouldn’t. Such as an unplanned pregnancy and she was considering an abortion. Those might seem like dangerous scenarios to a seventeen year old, but would be neither helped nor solved by throwing an obscene amount of money at them. Do you understand?”
The Fall (The Siren Series) Page 12
