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After he hung up, he hit the shower, then pulled on fresh jeans and a shirt, then headed across the hallway, not even bothering with socks.
* * *
After a few seconds of Gabe’s non-stop knocking, Ivy opened the door. He thought he’d looked like hell after his sleepless night walking the streets and drinking, but Ivy looked like death, barely warmed up.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice hoarse from lack of sleep and too much whisky.
“She’s not here,” was the answer he got in return.
“What?” He was too late. Always too fucking late.
Ivy turned and walked back into the apartment. “She went home to Cali. Took the first flight on standby. She figured you wanted space, so she left.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He’s not here either,” Ivy muttered as Gabe followed her to the sofa where they both flopped down, exhausted.
He was immediately assailed by the scent of Hope. Her paintings were propped all over the living room. The fucking herb planter she’d rescued from his place was thriving on her windowsill. “I’m such an asshole.”
“Yeah, you are,” Ivy said, but her voice was so thin and desolate that it was hard to take offense.
“I’ve got to go.” If there’d been seconds to spare, he would’ve stayed to ask what had put the hollow look in Ivy’s eyes. He’d have to call and tell Sean to check in on her later. He raced for the door.
“Wait,” Ivy called after him sharply, making him stop and face her. “Did Hope tell you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said and meant it. He no longer cared about the past, he only cared about now. And he’d been an asshole for not realizing and saying so when he’d had the chance.
“Did she tell you?” Ivy demanded, her voice forceful and her eyes urgent.
Confusion assailed him, curiosity brought him a step closer to Ivy. “She told me about the cheating, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the past.” His feet once more moved toward the future, toward Hope. “Look, Ivy, I’ve gotta—”
“She didn’t cheat,” Ivy whispered. “That’s a lie.” Those words froze him in mid-stride.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Ivy wrapped her arms around herself, much like Hope had in his office last night. She moved to the window. “She’s protecting me. Like she has been for the last three years. Keeping my secret because I asked her to, but she’s too loyal for her own freaking good.”
“Ivy?” It was all starting to feel too much like theTwilight Zonefor his liking. He was a person who liked to have control in any and every situation. He’d surrendered control before, and it hadn’t gone well. But in this situation, with these two women, he was at a total loss, caught in their tide.
Inhaling deeply, as if bracing herself for a blow, Ivy angled her slight frame to face him. “Back in college, I—” She made a choking sound, like the words she was about to say were trapped in her throat. “Shit.” She returned to the couch and sat down. Then almost immediately stood again and rubbed her fist against the center of her chest.
“What happened back in college, Ivy?”
But she only stood there looking like she was either going to pass out or throw up.
“Just take a deep breath and start from the beginning. No rush.” Which was bullshit, of course. He’d already wasted far too much time being an ass with Hope. But he didn’t want to be an ass with Ivy, too. And something told him that whatever Ivy was trying to say was the key to helping him piece together what had happened in the bar earlier.
“Hope and I were roommates in college, and it was a classic situation of opposites attract. She was well off, outgoing, and popular. Obviously, I was the opposite in every possible way.” Ivy twisted the hem of her shirt so hard that Gabe thought she might rip it. “Anyway, in the end, we bonded over our mutual desire to study our asses off and get what we came for. Which was our respective degrees.”
She continued to torment her shirt as she paced the room. Gabe leaned against the doorjamb, striving for calm despite the storm building in front of him.
“For the most part, it was all work and no play. But by our last year, Hope decided we couldn’t graduate without having had at least a taste of a social life. Our peers were partying every weekend, and most weekdays, while we dried up our best years, and body parts, in the dusty library studying.”
Gabe tried to imagine Hope hunched over books in a library, working tirelessly trying to get a degree she had no desire for, just to prove something that didn’t need proof.
“Hope, being Hope, got invited to parties all the time, but she never went. Then one night, at the end of midterms, she came home and saidwewere going to a party at one of the frat houses where her friends lived.” A flash of pain crossed her pale blue eyes.
Dread dropped into Gabe’s gut like a dead weight. He pushed off the doorjamb he’d been leaning against.
