Page 33 of Salvation (Rising From the Ashes #3)

Ivy

“ C an you pass me that green paint?”

Willow and I have been working on the mural for an hour.

We’ve mostly worked in silence, but it’s not been awkward like I thought it would be.

Instead, we’ve let painting become our way of bonding.

For being so young, she’s good. Very good.

On the other hand, I feel like I’m a beginner again, questioning each stroke of paint I add onto the building.

I’m afraid Lily might have made a mistake hiring me.

Willow passes the paint over, then returns to the section she’d been working on. After another moment of silence, she starts to talk.

“So, who was the guy the other night?”

I fumble my paint brush, catching it just before it hits the ground. “How did you know it was a guy? You were in the dining room.”

I pretend to keep my focus on my brushstrokes, but really, I’m watching her out of the corner of my eye. She seems unfazed about having been caught snooping, continuing to paint as if she didn’t just give herself away.

“I had to use the bathroom. I saw you out the front window as I walked by.”

“Of course you did. You’re very resourceful when you want to know something.”

She shrugs. “What can I say, I’m nosy.”

I snort. “You are your dad’s child.”

As soon as the words are out, I freeze, realizing what I just said. “I mean—Campbell, not your dad. Well, kind of your dad.”

“I get it,” Willow says sharply, cutting me off.

“Right,” I say, wanting to hit my head against the brick in front of me. Heat flames into my cheeks. I take my time, mixing paint, needing something to do to feel like less of an idiot.

“So—” Willow prods, “who was he? Your boyfriend or something?”

I keep my eyes on the paint. “No. He’s my ex-fiancé.”

“Well, I guess that explains the complicated part. Did you love him?”

Putting the paint down, I give myself time to think about the question before I answer. Loving Brecks was expected of me, but even if it hadn’t been, I still think I would have loved him—just not like a woman should love her husband. “Yeah, but not enough to spend the rest of my life with him.”

“What about Campbell? Did you love him that much?” She asks the question innocently, as if she couldn’t care less about the answer, but the set of her shoulders gives her away.

They are rigid, pulled up to her ears as she waits, and it makes me sad because I think she might be painting a picture of Campbell and me in her head that isn’t there.

“Once upon a time, I did,” I answer honestly. “But once upon a time was a long time ago.”

Willow stops what she’s doing to look at me, and I look back, memorizing features I would have traced with my finger the day she was born if I had been given the chance. The slope of her nose. The curve of her lips. The dimple that pokes into her chin. I commit it all to memory.

“The guy knows how many seconds he’s been missing you,” Willow says as if love should be an obvious conclusion because of that. “I don’t think it’s as far off as you think.”

I won’t lie and say I haven’t thought about what Campbell said over the last couple of days, especially with Brecks’s last comments still running through my mind, but the truth is, Campbell and I were young when we were in love.

A love like that may linger, but it isn’t made to last. We’ve already proven that true once; there’s no need to test fate a second time.

Willow is still looking at me expectantly, but I can’t feed into her delusions—or my own.

“The only thing Campbell and I have in common anymore, Willow, is you.”

She looks as if she wants to say something to that, but when her phone pings, she pinches her lips together and looks away.

My shoulders sag when her attention is no longer on me, afraid I’ve disappointed her, but it would have been worse to lie to her and pretend Campbell and I are something we aren’t.

Except— five hundred thirty-three million— I can’t get that out of my head.

Willow takes out her phone, frowning at it before shoving it back in her pocket and returning to painting.

An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach when she doesn’t say another word—not because of anything I said, but because of the name I see lighting up her screen before she puts her phone away. Cameron. Her boyfriend.

She did this the other night, too. Her entire personality seemed to shift whenever she looked at her phone, and there’s a bad feeling in my stomach, screaming that it had everything to do with him.

“What about you?” I ask casually, hoping she doesn’t catch on to what I’m doing because I’m afraid she might shut down if she does. “Are you in love?”

She hesitates for so long, I’m afraid she won’t answer. Eventually, she does, though.

“I don’t know. Maybe? I guess I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like.”

Love is complicated.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that because that’s been my experience with it. Expectations, mistakes, disappointments, all crowd in to steal the dream of what I once thought love was. But that’s not how I want Willow to view love. I want her to know that loving her shouldn’t be complicated.

“Love always protects,” I say finally. The familiar verse cuts like a knife, but I know it’s true regardless of how I feel about God. Campbell always protected me, at least he tried. “To me, falling in love should feel safe.”

“Then no. I don’t think I’m in love.” Willow pushes a headphone into her ear, effectively ending the conversation, all while that worry roots in a permanent place in my stomach. We go back to working in silence, only this time it’s shadowed by our conversation.

______________________

Another hour passes before I need to stand and stretch. Willow spares me a glance before returning to her part of the painting. The headphone has stayed in her ear since the end of our conversation, offering no more opportunities for us to talk.

I’m pressing my hand into the small of my back when a small voice comes from behind me. “Are you two twins? Because you look like twins. And I would know because I have one.”

Spinning around, I find Mason, the kid I met at the coffee shop a few weeks ago, staring up at me. His soft eyelashes sweep against his face with each blink, waiting for my answer. With a quick glance around, I look for his mom before turning my attention back to him.

“Hey, Mason,” I say with a smile. “We aren’t twins. This is my daughter. So that’s why we look alike.”

His face screws together in puzzlement. “But you don’t look old. Why do you have a daughter that big?”

I wince, knowing that’s not a conversation to have with a four-year-old. “I just look like I’m not old. I’m actually ancient,” I say, wrinkling my nose. He giggles. “Is your mom around somewhere?”

That same guilty look he’d been wearing the day I met him washes over his face, and he avoids my eyes. “She’s at the coffee shop.”

I glance down the street at the shop that sits just a couple of blocks down, then back at Mason. “And does she know you’re out here?”

He kicks at a rock on the sidewalk, suddenly finding it very interesting.

“No,” he mumbles into his chest, then he looks up, his eyes pleading, “But I was watching you paint from the window, and it looked so cool. I just wanted a closer look.”

I sigh, brushing back a curl that slipped from my ponytail. “Mason, you’re going to worry your mom.”

“She always worries, though, and I never get to do anything fun,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

My eyes slice to Willow and then back to the boy before me. His lip sticks out, pouting, so I squat down, tapping him on the nose and leaning in with a whisper. “Want to know a secret?”

His eyes light up, bobbing his head and forgetting that he was supposed to be upset. My lips twitch as I fight back a smile. “It’s a mom’s job to worry.”

Mason seems to consider this for a moment, his brows screwing together in concentration like he’s trying to figure something out. He leans in too, pitching his voice low in a whisper like mine. “Do you worry about your daughter?”

He looks over my shoulder, and I turn just enough to see Willow out of my peripheral. She’s watching us with a brow raised. I keep my head turned long enough that she knows I’m talking to her when I answer Mason. “All the time.”

Willow turns her head back to the wall and tightens her jaw. I sigh, feeling like I just took fifteen steps back.

A shadow falls over me, and I turn back in time to see Campbell step up beside Mason.

He’s wearing a pair of worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that clings to his shoulders. His eyes are hidden beneath a well-worn ball cap, but I can see his mouth. It’s twisted up into a smirk, drawing my attention, and suddenly it feels like I’m in the depths of summer instead of fall.

When did the sun get so warm?

“Are you telling secrets, sunshine?”

I glare up at him, annoyed because he slips so easily beneath my skin. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

His smirk stretches, and I glare harder. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that secrets don’t make friends?”

“Pretty sure they used to make us best friends,” I mutter under my breath so he can’t hear, but when I meet his eyes again, a spark ignites in them, making me wonder if maybe I said it louder than I intended.

He sticks out his hand, offering me a hand up. I’m tempted to ignore it out of self-preservation, but in the end, I stick my hand in his, gritting my teeth against the electric shock running up my arm.

“What are you doing here, Campbell?”

He takes his time with his answer, sweeping his eyes up and down my body as if searching for something before finally landing on my eyes and staying there. A shiver runs down my spine.

“It’s a public street, sunshine.” His smirk grows wider, but just as quick as it’s there, it disappears again—almost like I imagined it in the first place. “Plus, I wanted to check on you after the other night.”

I stick my tongue in my cheek and look away. “I’m fine.”