Thief:A Bad Boy Romance(13)
The engine turns and the truck creaks into gear before I turn it around and head back downtown. I’m heading to O’Donnell’s to see Rowan, and then I should just keep on driving until I hit Boston.
I’d also really like to ask him how it is Ivy had no idea I was going to be here.
Chapter Eight
Ivy
“Hey babe.”
Blaine’s ultra-surfer California accent mellows through the phone. He’s actually originally from Ohio, but the blonde, top-knot and tanned surfer look is kind of his thing - it’s his brand. And believe me, I get brands. So, even though I know the voice is fake, I guess I get it to a certain degree. He’s just owning his own image.
The thought of what Silas would say about someone going through life with a carefully cultivated and fake accent enters my head, and I scowl momentarily. For one, because I know his reaction would be so typically childish, and two, that he’s even entering my head at all.
I’ve gone eight years with forgetting Silas Hart as a full-time job. I am not quitting now.
“Hey!” I say brightly into the phone, standing off to the side of the backyard garden watching Stella and Sierra setting dinner. “We’re just about to start dinner! Are you in?”
“Aww damn, sounds so good! It’s just…” he trails off, and I frown.
“What’s up?”
He groans dramatically. “Ivy, promise you won’t be, like, mad at me?”
I furrow my brow. “Blaine, what-”
“I missed the last ferry, babe.”
My face falls. “Oh.”
“Aaaah, shit, I knew you’d be mad!”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not mad, I just-” I look at my toes in the grass. “I just thought you’d be here soon.”
“Yeah, well hey, I just thought I’d crash here for the night and come on up tomorrow.”
I frown again. “Wait, what? You can just take the late train tonight you know, you’ll be here in like ninety min-”
“Uh, yeah it just sounds like this whole big thing though, you know?”
“What?”
No, I don’t know. It’s quite simple, actually. You get on the train, you sit down, you arrive an hour and a half later in Shelter Harbor.
“Blaine-” I sigh, bringing my hand up to run it through my hair. “I just sort of needed you here today.”
He makes a strained sound into the phone. “Babe…”
“What?”
He makes a clicking sound with his tongue and his teeth. “Babe, you know that’s not really my thing. I mean, you gotta do you, you know? Thought we talked about this, Ivy.”
And we did, too. Well, he talked about it, a few weeks back over dinner at Roman’s in Williamsburg. How we need to “maintain our own strong independence as a couple.”
I frown, shaking my head. “Yeah, no, I know we did, I just-”
I just what? I just saw the man who left me shattered and stuttering eight years ago, and I need to forget about him with you? Like I’ve done with every relationship ever since him?
I don’t finish my sentence.
“So, we’re good then?” he says brightly.
“Yeah, yes,” I say quickly.
“Rad.”
Rad.
“So, I’ll check you tomorrow, kay?”
I nod, eyes closed and blowing air slowly through my lips. “Yeah, tomorrow.”
“Awwwwesome. Great talk, babe, I knew you’d understand. Later!”
The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone in my hand another minute, blinking in confusion before I open up my texts and fire one off to Ainsley, letting her know. The phone buzzes instantly with her reply.
“No worries! Major catch-up with my friend. I can crash here. See U tomorrow?”
I shrug as I type a quick “thanks, I’ll let you know” back, before pocketing the phone and heading back to my family.
“I’m so happy you’re home, honey.” My mom squeezes my hand later after dinner, sitting next to me at the big wooden table beneath the Japanese maple tree out in the back yard. Cafe-style string lights illuminate the garden she and my dad have tended for more than thirty years - an oasis I’m definitely not mad at having grown up with.
She lets go of my hand to pass me a plate of pie, cut from the lattice-top dish my dad apparently baked this afternoon.
Yeah, welcome to the Hammond house - we seriously are this much of a Norman Rockwell painting.