Ivy crossed her arms over her chest, armor for her heart. “That’s just it. I don’t think I want a life with you.”
His posture stiffened, and he narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t be rash.” Seth reached for his water glass on the side table and took a long drink.
Ivy twisted the ring from her finger and set it with a clunk on his coffee table. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
The glass he held slipped a fraction, sloshing water onto his hand. He fumbled it back onto the table and methodically wiped his hand on his trousers. The vein on his forehead appeared.
He reached her in two strides and towered over her slight frame. She backstepped, bumping into the couch behind her. Seth placed his hands on her shoulders. The touch was gentle, but it blocked her escape.
“Let’s sit down and talk this out.” His voice was calm, tender. Though his words sounded like honey, he’d use them to cut her to the quick if given the chance.
“There’s nothing to discuss. I don’t want to marry you, Seth.” A bead of sweat dripped down her back, and her knees shook from the adrenaline coursing through her.
“Here you go again. Driven by emotion. I know losing your grandmother has put you in a weird place, but that’s no reason to throw our future away.”
“My family and I were grieving, trying to process her loss, and you were blowing up my phone begging me to leave so that we could talk about our relationship.”
“You left the gala without a word to me and then would barely respond to my calls. I was worried about you.”
You weren’t worried about me, you were worried about losing control of me. She took a slow, steady breath. “If you were concerned, you would’ve showed up. Supported me while I grieved.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t guilt trip me. I was stuck here prepping for a big case. I told you that.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We can work this out if you’ll calm down and be rational.”
She pressed her trembling lips tight and lifted her chin to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to work this out.”
“How can you say that? Do you have no conscience? No shame about the embarrassment you’ll inflict on my family? When you accepted my proposal, you made a commitment.”
She nodded at the ring resting on his table. “I gave the ring back.”
He jerked his head backward like she’d slapped him. “That’s what commitment means to you? That when you run into a rough patch, you simply back out? No harm, no foul? I knew once you were around those people again, they’d poison you against me.”
Do not let him twist this. Ivy repeated the mantra over and over inside her head, drowning out his voice. “That’s not what this is about. And those people are my family.”
His fists tightened at his sides. “Gorgeous women were falling at my feet, their rich daddies pushing them in my direction, and yet I chose you. I stood up to my family, even though they didn’t approve.”
Chose me? Targeted me is more like it. She attempted to step around him. He blocked her with his body.
“I want to leave. Now. Let me pass.” Fear raced through her veins, fear she would not let win.
One corner of his mouth curled upward. “If you walk away, I’ll tell everyone I ended it. I’ll let them in on the little secret about how emotionally unstable you are and how I couldn’t risk someone like you ruining my family’s name. That will do wonders for your counseling career, don’t you think?”
He was bluffing. Surely he was bluffing.
“Are you really going to throw away all the good I’ve done for you because I made one mistake?” Seth tilted his head. “See, there, I can admit it. I should’ve taken you home instead of dragging you to that gala. Can’t we move past this?”
How many times had she heard those exact words when they disagreed? She’d thought herself so magnanimous, always choosing compromise over conflict. She was an idiot. “It’s not just this one thing. And the fact that you can’t see that and the fact that I am just now realizing it is proof that we shouldn’t be together.”
“Don’t think for one second I’m going to let you dump me and then skip off into the sunset living the life I built for you. I can make sure it all disappears. Are you ready to give up that nice apartment I put you in? The car? The clothing allowance?”
“Nothing is worth losing myself more than I already have.”
His eyes lit as though he’d struck gold. “What about those kids you help at that job I made happen?”
Her stomach roiled. She took a breath, attempting to calm her throbbing pulse and the rising acid burning her throat. “Move out of my way.”
He stepped back and she edged around him. Ivy took two steps before his voice followed her, quiet and icy calm.
“How are you going to get home, Ivy? In the car you drove over here? The one in my name? I’ll report it stolen. Blue lights will light up the sky behind you before you make it five minutes down the road.”
Ivy pulled the keys from her pocket and smacked them down on the glass table next to the ring. “I’ll find my own way then.”
He darted forward and grasped her wrist as she straightened her posture.
Ivy bit back a cry of pain at his grip.
His teeth were clenched. A flush crept up his neck. Dr. Jekyll transformed into full-blown Hyde. “You can’t do this to me.”
She put her body weight to full use, attempting to wrench free. He released her. She stumbled backward and twisted, trying to catch herself. When she fell, the apple of her cheek struck the corner of the coffee table. The world exploded. Her hands flew to her face and a groan rose from her chest.
Seth stood over her, shaking his head. He dropped the keys into her lap. “Go home and cool off. Come back when you’re ready to have an adult conversation instead of flailing about like a toddler.”
Ivy stood and staggered out the door, hurrying to the car, covering the injured side of her face with her hand. She should leave the car and all ties to that man, but this was the fastest way out of there.
By the time she reached her apartment, her cheek was so swollen she couldn’t open one eye and tears leaked from the other.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
SEPTEMBER 9, 1994
From the living room came an insistent wailing, an unending caterwauling. Harvey was in foster home number ten, and the foster parents had just brought home their newborn baby. He crept around the corner and watched, awestruck by the way the woman gazed at the child with consuming adoration, even though the odd-looking thing scrunched its red face and let out furious demands to be satisfied.
No one had ever looked at him like that. Weight too heavy for his skinny eleven-year-old frame slipped over his shoulders. This tiny person had eclipsed his existence; surely he’d be shuttled to another foster placement, or perhaps another children’s home soon. No one really wanted preteen boys.
Harvey blinked awake, shoving the dreamed memory away. A ray of light sneaked through the lean-to. His brain told his body to move, but he’d become one with the ground. He inched up with a groan, wincing at the earsplitting cries of the tiny person next to him.
Ivy lay beside him, fists clenched against her red face, mouth wide in midcry. He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckle, and her crying ceased as she jerked her head toward his touch, mouth gaping. He couldn’t resist a smile, despite his sleep-weighted eyelids. “Well, little bird. Hungry again, are we?”