Unrequited(65)

Her lower lip began to tremble. "I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier, but I was afraid I'd lose you. I need you. I'm so scared. I'm scared I'll be a shitty mom. I'm scared I'll start using again. I think about drinking and then I think about shooting up and then I feel shitty again. It's a crappy cycle. I'm resentful that you watch me so closely, and then I'm scared when I'm alone because I know those habits die hard. I'm a junkie, Winter. God, if you knew some of the stuff I did…you would take this baby from me."

"Ivy, you can do this. I know you can."

"Please stick with me." She sat on her knees, a frail pleading figure. Behind me I heard a rough noise, but I didn't pay him any attention.

"I will. I promise."

"Donovan pinkie promise?" She held out her crooked pinkie. I stared at her thin pinkie waiting for mine. And then I turned. Finn was half in the doorway. He hadn't said a word, but we both knew what Ivy was asking. She was asking me to give up my claim on Finn.

Heart pumping, I lifted my hand. She waited, an expectant look on her face. His face grew darker. After what must have been a decade, I made my promise and hooked my finger around hers. "I'll be there for you no matter what it takes."

She gave me a watery smile. "Thank you, Winter. Thank you. I love you. I'm so glad you're my sister."

She threw herself at me, but this time when she hugged me I didn't feel the same blanket of warmth fall. I heard the outer door close, the snick almost too quiet unless you were straining for it.

When he left, I allowed the truth to slide from my brain to my heart. Finn was the father of Ivy’s baby. My own tears came like a flood and drenched Ivy's hair. And in that moment, I hated them both. I loved them but hated them, and I wanted to run away where no one knew me. Where I would never run into either my sister or her lover. My lover.

God, fuck me. What did I do to deserve this?

I stayed with her until she fell asleep, rocking her like I would a baby. I didn't know if Ivy could parent this kid. I didn't know if I was up to it either. I laid her down on the mattress and covered her up. Outside I saw the truck lights on. He was waiting.



#





FINN


When I saw her walk out of the apartment, I pushed away from the truck. I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't grab her. I wanted to kiss her. No, I wanted to make love to her—as if by fucking, I could somehow tie her permanently to me, or maybe if this was the last time I was going to hold her then I wanted to make it memorable. I thought this was how my father convinced himself that his actions were okay—by putting things off. Tomorrow, I had told myself. I'd tell her the truth tomorrow.

"How?" she asked. She wasn't just asking how. She wanted to know the how, the why, the when.

"My dad died on February sixteenth. Two days after Valentine's Day. In the grand, fucked-up tradition of trying to forget how fucking painful it is to lose your parent, I started drinking."

Winter covered her mouth to muffle the gasp of horror. Few things probably scared her more than hearing about someone going on a grief-fueled bender.

"It wasn't very effective. I knew it early on, but when you found me a month later, I was just figuring that out. I figured out that women, booze, acting like a goddamned fool in general wasn't going to make that ache go away. You…when I saw you at the café and you smiled at me, I thought to myself, if Winter Donovan can get her fucking life together after her parents died, after her sister abandoned her, then so can I. Then you sat and talked to me. You listened as I droned on and on about nothing and everything.”

"Is that how it happened with Ivy too?" Her words were icy cold, and the look on her face terrified me. There was nothing there, like she'd already severed me from her heart.

"No. I'm not going to say you saved me, even though it felt like it, but you made me realize how weak I'd been, and I could have gone one way or another that night. If you hadn't been there," I shuddered, "I'm not sure where I'd be today. And when we left the café, you rocked my world. It wasn't just the sex, although that had been spectacular, it was everything else. The way you saw right into the heart of my grief, the way you held me. I ran from that because what you made me feel was too strong for me to handle in that moment so close to Dad's death. I was scared of love."

"And you're not now."

I tipped her head up and longed to kiss her, but I couldn't. Not yet. "No, my fear now is losing you."

I waited for a response, any response, but I was met with a stare of indifference. I took a deep breath and went on. "Day after Dad died, I was at a twenty-four hour drugstore not so far from my house. I saw Ivy there."