Heart (9 page)

“Ivy, I’m not mad you stole my car. If you
need my car, no matter where we are or what has come between us,
the car is yours. It’s not the point. I’m not interested in
material possessions. I want you to be safe. That’s all. If my car
has to be a casualty to make it that way, then so be it.”

I pressed my lips together, unsure what to
think about that. Eventually my mind spun as fast as my heart and
the question just fell out, “So why do you seem so upset about the
car?”

“Because he didn’t even ask me! He did
everything without asking me and then he handed it over like it was
my reward for helping you. Like I wanted some kind of monetary
repayment for falling in love with you! I told him I didn’t want
it. I didn’t want the damn car or anything to do with you running
away. I didn’t want the reminder and I sure as hell didn’t want to
be bought off while I couldn’t even recover from losing you… while
my world ended.”

“Ryder,” I whispered, but it was the only
word I could force out.

“Ivy, I’m going to say this one more time… I
don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

He gave me a sideways look that I couldn’t
read and the rest of the drive was spent in silence. The gate to
Smith’s house had been left open, so we drove up the long drive and
parked in front of his sprawling estate.

By the time Ryder turned the car off, I had a
thousand questions to ask him, but in the end only one made it
beyond my lips. “If you didn’t want anything to do with it, why did
you keep it?”

He stared straight ahead, without moving,
without even breathing and said, “It turned out that I did want the
reminder. That I couldn’t live without it.” He shoved his door open
and jumped down before I could respond.

Not that I could have responded if I wanted
to. His words had depleted any coherent thoughts in my head and
erased the words I wanted to speak.
Mixed signals much?
Geez.

“Let’s go, Red!” he called from outside. His
voice was muffled through the windshield, but it still had an
effect on me. I still felt the gravelly tenor of the nickname he
gave me skitter down my spine to my very bones.

I had to close my eyes and remind myself to
breath before I found the courage to meet him outside.

He hadn’t been exactly kind to me since I’d
come back into his life, but then at the same time, he had. He had
shown up first thing this morning when he heard I was in trouble.
He had offered to drive me around and keep me safe while I was
here.

He had revived my soul… my heart. I had lived
for so long by just coasting. It was something I was used to.
Shutting off all of my emotions and focusing on goals was one of my
strongest survival techniques and yet it never worked around Ryder.
He forced the feeling back into my body. He demanded that I wake up
and pay attention. And he always got what he wanted with me.

Or most of the time.

I finally jumped down from the cab and joined
him on the porch. We stood there ringing Smith’s doorbell for a
solid ten minutes, but nobody answered.

I let out a sigh and let my forehead fall to
the hot door. I had wanted some easy answers, but it was clear I
wasn’t going to get them.

“Let’s try your apartment,” Ryder suggested.
“Maybe there’s something there.”

“Okay.”

When we turned to walk down the porch steps
his hand landed on my back for a brief moment before he snatched it
back. My skin burned where his fingers had brushed and I
immediately missed his touch, even though it had been brief.

It was the first time he had touched me since
the night I left him.

He was wound tightly by the time we were in
his Bronco again. He didn’t say a word as he started the car and
drove out of the neighborhood.

It was a twenty-ish minute drive from Smith’s
West Omaha estate to the midtown condo I lived in with my mom. The
geography of the city transformed drastically in those minutes.
Sprawling neighborhoods and strip malls gave way to clustered
buildings and old architecture mingled with new. My building was a
new construction project nestled between lower income neighborhoods
and the Mutual of Omaha skyscraper.

“Is it always going to be this awkward
between us?” I asked when we were close to my old apartment.

“How much time are we going to spend together
before you head back?” he returned.

He pulled into the huge circle drive that was
mainly for people coming to shop the high-end Midtown boutiques or
grab some food. He found a spot close to the stairs that led to the
walkway around the shops beneath the condos and parked.

Neither of us hesitated to scramble out of
the car and away from the tension that seemed to follow us
everywhere today. We walked up to the shops that were quiet this
early in the morning. Only a few of the stores had opened up and
the heat kept everyone inside.

My heart stuttered when a punch of nostalgia
hit me. I hadn’t expected to miss this place. I hated my mother and
because of that, I hated my apartment. So many terrible memories
were wrapped up in this place. Yet, my heart still recognized it as
home
. I loved this area of town and I loved this town
especially.

Good memories lived and breathed here, too.
Ryder giving me rides home when we were just starting our fragile
friendship. Hanging out at Delice with Phoenix, Ryder, Exie and
Sloane. Ryder rescuing me from my birthday party last summer. Ryder
texting me or calling me late at night to check up on me.

Okay, so maybe my good memories had more to
do with Ryder than this physical place. Maybe that was the reason
that I felt safe here now. I had Ryder with me and he had always
protected me in the past.

He had always done whatever he could to keep
me safe.

“Do you still work at Delice?” I asked as we
walked into the lobby of the condo building.

He led the way to the elevator and pushed the
up button. “No.”

A swell of sadness crashed through me. “Oh,
really? Why not?”

The elevator doors opened and we stepped
inside. Ryder pushed the button for my floor and turned to face
me.

“My uncle Matt and my dad opened a music
store actually. So I work there now.”

“Oh, wow!” I had expected another thing to
feel guilty for. Maybe that was conceited, but I couldn’t imagine a
reason why Ryder would give up his job at our favorite coffee shop.
He loved it there. But this wasn’t just a reason for him to leave;
it was a really great reason for him to leave. “That’s so cool,
Ryder. What kind of store? Is your dad still teaching?”

The elevator doors opened up on the top floor
of the building. The long hall to my apartment stretched before me.
It took Ryder walking out of the elevator to convince my feet to
move.

He glanced over his shoulder and kept our
chat going. His words helped distract my increasingly anxious
thoughts. “Yes,” he said. “Matty runs the store full-time and my
dad is still teaching. It’s just a musician’s store. They sell
sheet music and instruments and offer lessons. It’s in NoDo, over
by the Slowdown.”

“That’s really… cool,” I finished lamely,
realizing I had already said that.

“Yeah, Red, it’s pretty cool.”

“No free drinks though.”

He laughed.
Really laughed
. His
shoulders shook and the sound came out naturally. I smiled
cautiously and memorized the sound.

“That’s true,” he chuckled. “No free drinks,
which is really a bummer since I used to get so much out of them.”
He shot me a sly look over his shoulder and my stomach fluttered
from delicious memories.

Kisses.

I used to trade coffee for kisses.

“Do you have your key?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t have it. I didn’t
even know why we’d come here. It just felt like I needed to. I
didn’t know if it was instinct or closure that brought me here, but
I knew I needed to see it for myself.

I reached out and twisted the handle. It
wasn’t locked. The door swung open and I felt my eyes go wide at
the untouched apartment in front of me.

I stumbled inside with Ryder right on my
heels. I didn’t make a sound, I didn’t even breathe as I crept
through the entry way and toward the living room. I listened for
any signs of life that would expose my mother or Nix or hell,
squatters. The apartment had been left open and nothing had been
taken.

Did that mean someone had been here
recently?

They hadn’t forced their way inside. The door
was perfectly intact. Nothing was amiss inside the apartment
either. It looked exactly like it had the day I’d left except for
the thick layer of dust that coated everything.

It was a mausoleum of my former life. A still
life portrait. It was the ghost of my past that I wanted to
forget.

I walked to my room and swung the door open.
My jaw dropped and I gaped at the chaos inside.

While the rest of the apartment had been
curiously left alone, my room had been ransacked. The closet had
been completely destroyed. Clothes and hangers had been flung all
over the room. My bedding had been stripped and the mattress had
been ripped open, it hung cockeyed off my bed, half on the floor.
My nightstand had been shoved over and the drawer had been torn out
and dumped in a messy pile next to mattress springs and torn
clothing.

Apparently, someone thought they would find
answers about my whereabouts hidden somewhere in this room. They
were wrong.

I had never kept anything that could
incriminate me except for a small bottle of tattoo concealer and
some old clothes my mother wouldn’t have approved of. Neither of
those things would give anyone an idea of where I’d run off to. And
they had ceased to be interesting the second Nix and my mother
found my tattoos last year.

Ryder whistled behind me. “Did they think you
were hiding in here?”

“I have no idea. What a mess.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t look like your mom was
given any time to pick it up.”

I pressed my lips together. For the first
time since Hermes had visited me, I felt a pang of worry for my
mom. Had she been dragged from the apartment kicking and screaming?
Had she put up any kind of fight?

What about the god-killer? Where was
that?

I spun back around and surveyed the
uncluttered living room. Not one piece of furniture showed signs of
a struggle. The kitchen and dining room were also neatly tidied,
except for the dust.

I walked across the apartment and opened my
mother’s bedroom door. This was a room I had rarely spent time in.
She had always demanded privacy and I had been more than willing to
give it to her. I wanted nothing to do with whatever went on in her
bedroom.

The door swung open to reveal more organized
perfection. I walked inside and swatted at the dust particles
floating through the air, illuminated by the open window looking
out on the park below. I glanced over her king-sized bed made up
with a rich ivory comforter and the desk with stationary and a
fancy pen sitting on top that sat against the wall. I glanced in
the master bathroom, not sure what I was looking for, but certain I
wasn’t going to find it in there.

“Red!” Ryder called from the living room.

I walked back to meet him. He stood in front
of the floor to ceiling windows holding a shoe box I knew well.
“Why do you have that?”

“It was sitting on the floor on a pile of
clothes. I thought it looked out of place.” He opened it
slowly.

I walked over to look inside the box that he
had started to open. “That just has my old tattoo concealer-”

My concealer was not inside the box, which
didn’t surprise me. If Nix or my mom had been looking for
something, I imagined they would have looked through that box
already. Nix had probably burned the small flesh-toned tube.

He, however, did not burn the box. And inside
of it sat an envelope with my name scrawled across the front in my
mother’s neat handwriting. I stared at the letter for long minutes
before finding the courage to pick it up.

It was heavier and thicker than I expected it
to be. I could tell she had used her expensive stationary I’d seen
sitting out on her desk. I couldn’t even imagine what she’d written
me. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted her to say to me. I also
found it slightly unnerving that she’d hidden the letter in this
particular shoe box and set it where I could stumble upon it if I
ever came back here.

Had she known I would come back?

I flipped the letter over and squinted at
more of her writing. On the back of the envelope it looked like
she’d hastily scrawled something last minute. The handwriting was
rushed and sloppy, which was so unlike my mom.

I squinted at it and brought it closer to my
face. It was almost too messy to read.

“We have to go,” I whispered to Ryder once I
figured it out.

“What?”

I turned the envelope so he could see it and
shoved it in his face.

They’re watching the apartment. Get out
now!

“Let’s go!” Ryder suggested on a growl.

I shoved the letter in my purse and ran for
the door. Ryder wrenched it open and I rushed through, racing for
the elevator. I jammed my finger on the down button, but it had
just arrived on this floor and the doors opened automatically.

My breathing stopped and my flight instinct
kicked in hardcore. One of Nix’s goons stood on the inside of the
elevator grinning maliciously at us.

“Caught you,” he grinned.

Chapter Eight

“Run!” Ryder shouted behind me.

I glanced around frantically, while the
gigante lunged at me. I jumped back just as Ryder grabbed a handful
of my tight tank top and yanked me with him. His hand slid to my
back and he shoved me toward the stairwell.

It was going to be a long way down, but right
now it was our only option.