“I won’t do it,” he finally spoke. His voice low, steady.Ivory blinked at him. The room felt suddenly colder. “Why?” she asked.He didn’t answer.Arlo’s words rushed back into her mind like cold water. Maybe this had always been inevitable. She scoffed, half-laughing, half-ashamed. “I’m so dumb. I let myself believe him again.”Willis glanced at her, brow tightening. “What did Arlo say?”She hesitated. “It wasn’t just him. I thought…” Her voice faltered. “I also thought there was more to our friendship. Maybe it’s all in my head.”She turned away—not angry, just tired.Willis watched her walk toward the door. Her bare feet were quiet on the floorboards. He should’ve let her go. Let it end here. But as she reached for the handle, the words broke out of him.“It’s not in your head,” he blurted out.She stopped.“It’s true. The thing you suspect of me—it’s true.”Ivory turned back, eyebrows raised. “What?”He swallowed. “I’m holding back because…”“Because of Arlo?” she finished for him
That evening, Ivory walked into the living room holding a plate of leftovers, only to find Marvin curled up asleep on the couch, clutching one of Arlo’s old hoodies like a teddy bear.She pulled out her phone again. Her thumb hovered over the screen, she wanted to text Willis but she couldn’t find the right words. Suddenly, the phone buzzed. Willis: Still awake?The apartment went still. Ivory sat curled on the couch, a smile tugged on her lips. Willis was truly the bigger person between them. He never stayed angry with her, or were Arlo’s insinuations true? She looked at the message again. Two words. A question mark. How could she let Arlo get into her head like this? She snapped out such thoughts. Of course, Willis wasn’t angry. Not really. She should’ve known that by now—he never held grudges, not with her.Ivory: Can’t sleep.A minute passed.Willis: Me neither.Ivory tried to suppress the forming questions in her head. The silence between replies was full—of things unsaid,
Chapter 81The door opened before Ivory could raise her hand to knock. Arlo stood there, looking disoriented for a moment shocked to see her. His eyes swept over her, a look of nervousness settling in his features. He cleared his throat before muttering, “What brings you by?”Ivory offered a small, tight smile. “We need to talk.” She stepped inside.The house smelled like him, faintly warm— partly harsh. The last time she’d been here, they fought too.Today she hoped it would be different. She made their way to the living room. Arlo sat on a couch opposite her. He tried to do small talk, but there was no warmth in the small talk they exchanged, only thick, suffocating tension that had never quite dissipated between them.“I’m sorry about yesterday…” Arlo blurted out, “I haven’t gotten a handle on the patience thing.”Ivory’s eyes lingered on him before she answered. “It’s… fine. That’s what I came to talk about.”He nodded, his gaze flicking to the empty seat across from him. “And
Ivory woke to silence.The couch groaned under her as she sat up, stiff and aching from a night spent twisted in sleep. Her neck throbbed. One foot had gone numb. The morning light stretched through the blinds, soft and gold, painting soft light lines across the walls.She blinked slowly. The apartment felt… still. Not peaceful, not tense—just still. The kind of stillness that came after too much emotion had already passed through.Her first thought was Marvin.She padded toward his room, only to find the bed empty. A flicker of panic rose in her chest until she turned the corner and saw him.He was curled on the other end of the couch, wrapped in Willis’s jacket like a cocoon. His small fists clutched at the fabric, and his lips were slightly parted in sleep. He looked safe. Asleep, he always reminded her of the baby version of himself—before custody schedules, before separation.Ivory’s breath hitched. Not because he wasn’t safe, but because he looked safer here—like this—than he h
Twenty minutes later, the house echoed with a knock on the door.Ivory opened the door slowly. Her eyes were red from crying silent tears no one else could see. Marvin ran past her before she could speak.“Dad!”Willis caught him in his arms with a surprised but immediate embrace. “Hey, little man.” He held him tight, kissed his temple. “You okay?”Marvin nodded against his shoulder, then looked back at the apartment with quiet dread. “Can we go now?”Willis’s brows lifted, he caught a figure approaching behind Ivory with his arms folded and jaw clenched.“Arlo?” Arlo didn’t respond until he reached the door way. “I was just leaving.”Willis stepped aside, drinking in the tensed air between them.Arlo brushed past Willis, hands clenched in his pocket. He was angry, but not at Willis. How could he hate him? He always respected Willis as a man greater than himself. He would have never done the things he’d done. He wouldn’t have ever allowed Ivory stay in jail for five years. He would
Ivory leaned against the back of her bedroom door, fingers curled tightly around her phone. Her knees still trembled, not from physical exhaustion, but from the kind of emotional dizziness that came with standing too close to a cliff she swore she’d never look over again.She didn’t know how long she sat there, cross-legged on the cold marble floor, eyes fixed on her last message to Willis. Maybe she expected him to call. Maybe she wanted him to come knocking, to pull her out from the storm inside her own head.But he didn’t.And she knew why.Because he was a good man. And good men don’t come running into messes they can’t clean up.Ivory inhaled deeply, rubbing her temple to relax. She thought she was healing. She thought she could stand across Arlo and not feel anything. But today proved otherwise.It wasn’t just his face, or the way he effortlessly lifted Marvin into his arms—it was the ease. The way he folded himself into their morning like he’d never left. Like heartbreak, bet
Willis sat up, phone pressed to his ear. Ivory’s voice echoed softly on the other end of the phone. “You were right,” she whispered. “Everything about him triggers me.”He could hear the crack in her voice. The final admittance. He wasn’t surprised. He knew Ivory still thought about Arlo sometimes. He knew he still affected her in many ways than she chose to admit.Her decision not to pursue anything with him was probably the only way to protect herself from falling back into the arms of the one person who hurt more than anyone else, yet his arms were probably the only place she wanted to be. “Help me move on, Willis,” her voice broke the silence, “I’ll do anything to be free from this hurt.”“Okay,” Willis finally answered, “We uh… we will figure out a way.” When the call ended, Ivory put her phone down and tears flooded her face. Tears of sadness, and heartbreak. Tears of a new beginning. When she had shedded enough tears to find solace, she slowly gave in to the rest her body
The city moved at its usual pace—fast enough to feel like a blur, slow enough to remind Ivory of the days that kept slipping through her fingers. Three months had passed since the hospital incident, but the memory of that hallway kiss, the tension, the heartbreak—it all still lingered like a ghost, silently questioning her decision to end things with him. Ivory stood by the window of Hollis Atelier, coffee in hand, watching the street below. Her brand was thriving. What had started as an answer in time of desperation had grown into a recognizable name, whispered across fashion boards and praised by editors. Yet despite the success, there were quiet moments like this, where she found herself wondering about things that had nothing to do with fabric or runways.She smiled when she saw Willis crossing the street toward her building, brown paper bag in hand. Right on time. Ivory walked to the door and opened it before he knocked.“You always ruin my dramatic entrances,” Willis said, s
The city was quieter now. Or maybe it was just the way life had settled—less urgent, less argument, less hurting. The air had that firm clarity of a season on the edge of turning, but no one spoke of time. No one counted days. And Ivory preferred it that way.Three months. Maybe more. No calls in the middle of the night. No request to get back together and, no Arlo. Well, he came every other weekend for Marvin, always punctual, always polite, but he never lingered, never asked how she was doing. At first, Ivory had been suspicious of the silence—expecting him to beg, to fight, to push again. But Arlo never did. He had stopped chasing her the moment she made it clear that there was no future for them. Her words still hung over Arlo’s head. “You’re right,” she had said, “Our past was ugly, so a future without you is the only thing I can imagine right now.”Now, they were just… two people who shared a child. Two people whose love had turned poison. Ivory stood in front of the floor-