I stare at him. “You came back for my dad?”
“Rowan invited me.”
I make a mental note to bury my older brother. Alive. In a very deep hole.
God he’s more attractive than he ever was. The boy I once loved became a man over the last eight years. He’s bigger all over - thicker chest, broader shoulders, more muscle on his arms. The smattering of teenage tattoos from when we were young have grown to full sleeves, and the smooth chin I used to kiss is now scuffed with a five o’clock shadow that was never there when we were young.
When I was eighteen and madly in love.
When we got married.
When he left.
“I thought you were in Ireland.”
I say it quietly. I don’t actually know that he was, just rumors and conversations overheard. I never wanted to know for sure where he’d gone off to, because it made it easier to stomach that he’d left. He wasn’t somewhere else –somewhere tangible - instead of next to me, he’d just disappeared.
Silas takes a deep breath, his eyes locked on mine. “I was.” His eyes search my face, though I don’t know what he could possibly be looking for. “Dublin.”
“For eight fucking years?” My voice is shrill, and I hate that it is.
“There-” he stops himself and shakes his head. “Yes.”
I’ve gone over a reunion with Silas Hart in my head nine thousand times in my head over the years. Every conceivable scenario, every variable outcome, every possible conversation. At first, they were silly, stupid fantasies - he’d tell me how he’d been kidnapped, or thrown into a secret jail for years, and how the thought of me alone had kept him alive.
God I was an idiot back then.
But they soon turned more real - more grounded in the reality that the man I’d loved and given my heart to had willingly walked away and stolen it with him. And then my dream-conversations changed to me being this confident, self-sustained woman who casually laughs at the silly boy from her past who shows back up looking for forgiveness.
And yet here I am, letting every insecurity come pouring out like the same silly little princess who married the thief and thought there’d be a happily ever after somehow.
“Ivy-”
“Do they have fucking email in Ireland, Silas? Phones?”
He sighs as he drops his gaze to the boardwalk beneath our feet, the ocean sloshing gently beneath it.
“Well, this is going well,” he finally says, looking up with that grin on his face and that token glimmer in his eye.
“Don’t,” I say testily.
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t try and be funny, or cute-”
“Oh?” He grins at me. “So you do at least still think I’m cu-”
“Silas.” My eyes flash, his name almost choking in my throat. “Stop, please.” I shake my head. “I’m not that girl anymore.”
The grin drops from his face as his sea-blue eyes narrow in on mine. “And what girl is that, Ivy.”
“The girl you used to know,” I say, summing every ounce of firmness from deep inside and keeping my voice even.
“I’m not anything like that girl anymore.”
He shakes his head, a pained look creeping into his eyes. “Ivy-”
“That girl died when you left her.”
I whirl before he can answer, walking away down the pier as the echoing sound of the wheels of my suitcase follow in my shadow.
Chapter Four
Silas
I blink as she storms away, that newly golden hair of hers blowing out behind her and that silly suitcase banging across the boardwalk in her wake.
“Wait a second. Ivy-” I jog after her, snagging her arm and pulling her back around.
“Hang on a sec-”
“I did, Silas!”
When she whirls on me, there’s fire and a pain in her eyes that I’ve never seen before.
It’s a look that kills me.
I never had to see the rage. I could picture the sadness and the anger, about a million fucking times over the years.
But I never got to see it right there in front of my face.
Not after I left.
Not after the night that changed fucking everything. The night that shattered the perfection I’d held in my hands for a brief second before it all streamed away like the blood and rain of that night. I never had to look her in the eyes after that last time in the hospital lobby.
I left because of the heat, but also because I couldn’t bear to hurt the only real family I’d ever known any more than I had after that night. It was bad enough that I was dating Jacob Hammond’s daughter - me, the wrong guy from the wrong side of town with one of his princesses.
But after that night, and the crash, and Rowan?