Chapter 3

Ivy's POV

"He is here again."

Denise's whisper hit me the second I stepped out of the kitchen, and my stomach dropped before I even looked up.

"Who?" I asked, already knowing the answer, already feeling it in the way the air in the bakery had changed, gone thick and charged the way it only did when he walked in.

"Who do you think?" Denise tilted her head toward the front counter, where Hazel was standing on her tiptoes, chattering away to Roman Darkwood like they were old friends instead of two people who had met exactly four days ago.

"Oh no." I wiped my hands on my apron so fast I nearly tore it. "Oh no, no, no." I said in horror

"He has been coming in every single day this week." Denise followed me as I hurried toward the front. "And every single day your daughter runs straight for him like he is handing out candy."

"I told her to stay in the back."

"You told her, sure. Does not mean she listens."

By the time I reached the counter, Hazel was mid conversation, waving her hands the way she did when she got excited about something. "And then Mommy said the frosting was too runny, but I said it tasted perfect, and she let me lick the bowl!"

Roman was crouched down to her level, actually crouched, his big frame folded down so he could look her in the eye, and the sight of it did something painful and complicated to my chest.

"Did she now." He was smiling, a real smile, nothing like the sharp dangerous one he had given me that first day. "What else does your mom make?" He asked her

"Everything." Hazel said it like it was the most obvious fact in the world. "She is the best baker in the whole town. Grandpa says so too." She said proudly 

"Hazel." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, and both of them looked up at me, Hazel's face falling slightly, Roman's expression unreadable. "Sweetheart, go help Denise restock the napkins, okay?"

"But I am talking to Roman."

"Now, please hunny."

She huffed the exact huff five year olds perfect before they turn six, but she went, dragging her feet just enough to make her displeasure known, and I waited until she was safely behind the counter before I let myself look at him.

"You need to stop doing that," I said quietly.

"Doing what? He asked 

“Indulging her, she’s way too chatty?" That was the lamest excuse I could think of

"Coming in here every day. Talking to her like that." I added

Something flickered across his face, there and gone so fast I almost missed it. "Is there a reason I should not, she’s a sweet girl?"

There were about a hundred reasons, and I could not say a single one of them out loud.

"She is five," I said instead, "and she gets attached fast, and you are leaving town eventually, and I do not want her getting hurt when you do."

It was not a lie, not exactly, but it was not the truth either, and judging by the way his jaw tightened, he knew it.

"That is not the real reason." His voice dropped low, careful, the way you would talk to someone you were trying not to spook. "Is it?" He asked

My heart slammed against my ribs. "Excuse me?" I exclaimed out loud

"You go pale every time I walk in here. Your hands shake when I get too close. And your daughter." He glanced toward the back, toward where Hazel was loudly informing Denise that napkins were boring. "Your daughter looked at me the very first day like she already knew exactly what I was."

I gripped the counter to keep my hands from shaking harder. "Kids say strange things."

"Ivy." He said my name low, careful, and it landed somewhere deep and unguarded in my chest, a place I had not let anyone touch in five years. "I am not trying to scare you. I just need to know why my wolf reacted the second I walked into this bakery, and why it has not stopped reacting since."

The floor tilted underneath me.

"Your wolf has nothing to do with me," I said, and my voice came out thinner than I wanted it to. "We went to the same school. That is all. We were barely more than strangers back then."

"That is what I thought too." His eyes held mine, steady and searching. "But I keep getting this feeling, this pull, like I am supposed to remember something I cannot quite reach. Do you have an idea what it could’ve been?"

I opened my mouth to lie, to say no, to say I have no idea what you are talking about, and nothing came out at all, because five years of guilt had built up so high inside me that one more question, one more searching look from those same eyes I remembered from a night I had tried so hard to erase, felt like it might finally break the dam.

The bell above the door saved me.

"Delivery for Kaletta's Bakery." A courier stepped in, holding a small padded envelope, and I nearly cried with relief at the interruption.

"That is me." I stepped around the counter fast, grateful for any excuse to put distance between myself and the man watching me like he was one heartbeat away from figuring everything out.

I signed for the package with a hand that was still shaking, and it was not until the courier left and I flipped the envelope over that the relief drained straight out of my body.

There was no return address.

Just my name, written in handwriting I had not seen in five years, handwriting that belonged to a girl who had died the same night I healed the man now standing four feet away from me.

“Marisol” I whispered with fear

My knees nearly buckled.

"Ivy?" Roman's voice sharpened, concern replacing suspicion. "You have gone white as a sheet. What is wrong?"

I could not answer him. I could not do anything except stare down at my own name written in a dead girl's handwriting, my whole body going cold with a fear I had not let myself feel in half a decade.

Because if Marisol was really writing to me from beyond the grave, then everything I had buried to protect myself, to protect Hazel, to protect the man standing in front of me without even knowing it, was about to come clawing its way back into the light.