Page 4 of Salvation (Rising From the Ashes #3)

Ivy

N othing can prepare you to face the first man to break your heart again. And yet, here I am, doing just that. I thought facing him would be the worst part of returning to Benton Falls, but I was wrong.

So very wrong .

The worst part is looking into the eyes of that same man and seeing hatred staring back—as if I were the villain in his story.

Maybe I was, but he was also the villain in mine.

Blue eyes lock with mine, and my breath catches in my throat. Neither of us speaks because what is there to say after sixteen years?

Everything.

Nothing.

I can’t decide which of those is true.

Once upon a time, Campbell Richards was my prince charming. He played that part well until it no longer served him. I left Benton Falls at sixteen, hoping I would never have to see him again, but life has a way of putting me exactly where I don’t want to be.

“Ivy,” he says my name like a dagger plunging into my heart. His voice is deeper now, sharper. He used to caress the syllables of my name like it was the most precious thing he could say, but there’s hatred in the way he says it now.

Beautiful blue eyes search mine, and time stands still. For a few seconds, I’m back in a time when the man standing before me was just a boy. Not just any boy, but the boy I loved—the boy I gave myself to. Then I blink, and he’s no longer a boy but a man.

All the ways he’s changed stand out, screaming at me to notice.

His jawline is sharper, covered in a stubble he didn’t have when we were sixteen.

He’s shirtless, revealing broad shoulders that fill the doorway, and he’s at least a couple of inches taller than he was back then.

He’s heartbreak personified, and my poor heart knows that all too well.

“What are you doing here?” He asks after a couple of minutes without me saying anything.

I don’t know what I expected. It’s not like we parted on good terms, but with Campbell, I always expected—more. But that’s the problem. When you expect more from someone, it’s earth-shattering when they let you down.

Campbell didn’t just hurt me; he shattered me and left me to pick up the pieces.

“We need to talk.”

Need to, not want to.

I don’t want to be here, standing at his door. I don’t want to be in Benton Falls, period. There are too many memories. Good and bad, and the good ones seem to haunt me more than the bad.

But life never seems to care about what I want. It has a habit of throwing me exactly where I don’t want to be. This time, it came in the form of my grandmother’s passing.

She passed away a month ago, and my grandfather a year before her. I was their last living relative, and I inherited everything. For the last month, I’ve been settling their estate and getting everything in order, and now it’s time for me to do the same in Benton Falls.

I’d be lying if I said that’s the only reason I’m here, though.

My hands are shoved into my pockets, and I run my thumb along the edge of a paper—the one I found after my grandmother’s death. I’ve been clinging to it—left with so many questions I thought I already had answers to.

Campbell crosses his arms over his chest, causing his biceps to bulge, and I will myself not to look.

He leans his shoulder against the door frame, appearing casual, as if my presence doesn’t tear him apart from the inside.

But I suppose I always had more invested in this relationship than he did.

We made choices together, but I was the one who had to face the consequences. I was the one who had my heart broken.

“After sixteen years, now you want to talk?” he asks, anger flashing in his blue eyes. There’s an accusation in his tone, and my mouth drops open.

He acts as if he isn’t the reason I had to leave Benton Falls—as if he isn’t the reason I lost everything.

“No, Campbell. I wanted to talk sixteen years ago, on the day I told you I was pregnant, but you weren’t very talkative.

So, I guess now will have to do.” My voice shakes with anger.

This is not how I wanted to do this. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I should have known it wouldn’t go any other way.

Sixteen years of pent-up hurt breeds resentment, and I have a lot of resentment.

Campbell flinches, whether from my words or my tone, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. I want him to feel everything I’ve felt for the past sixteen years. I want him to know every ounce of devastation I felt because he left me to feel it on my own.

“That’s ironic, Ivy,” he says, the deep baritone of his voice void of any emotion.

He doesn’t explain what he means by that. He just stands there, looking at me.

A sharp pain radiates from the center of my chest. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of it was supposed to be like this.

“You know what, Campbell,” I say, pulling the paper from my pocket and shoving it into his chest. When I found the letter from him after my grandparents died, I thought, or foolishly hoped, it meant he hadn’t abandoned me, but I was wrong.

That much is obvious now. “I thought I needed answers, but I was wrong.”

I pull my hand away from him, hating how my skin burns from that one moment of contact.

The paper falls from Campbell’s chest, but he doesn’t move to grab it.

He’s frozen, eyes stuck on my left hand.

I jerk it behind my back, attempting to hide the three-carat, over-the-top diamond ring nestled on my finger.

There’s no reason for me to, but suddenly, it feels like a betrayal, even though I haven’t seen the man in front of me in years.

His eyes slowly come back up to meet mine, and my heart flips in my chest because the version of Campbell standing in front of me is one I’ve never known.

There’s no life behind his eyes when he says, “Go home, Ivy. Back to him. Whoever he is. We have nothing to talk about.”

I stand there watching as he pushes off the door frame and steps back, closing the door between us.

I should knock and demand answers, but like a plug has been pulled, the energy drains out of me—and I turn and walk away.

______________________

As I walk up the sidewalk to my grandparents’ home, I want to turn around and run. This home was never good to me. Neither were the people in it. And yet I loved them.

My suitcase bumping along the sidewalk is the only sound in the otherwise quiet night. Mahogany doors greet me as I walk up the porch stairs, and suddenly, I’m nine years old again.

When my mom died, a social worker picked me up after school and told me I would be going to live with my grandparents.

The first time I walked up these stairs and stared at this door, I was a little girl filled with both devastation over my mom’s death and hope that the people behind the door would love me as much as she did.

Then the door swung open, revealing the harsh lines on my grandmother’s face, and I knew, even at that age, that she was nothing like my mom.

Stepping up to the door, I unlock it and push it open, the heavy wood causing the hinges to creak.

The black and white tile echoes beneath my feet as I step into the foyer and drop my bags, studying the place that still haunts me.

The walls are bare, and some of the furniture I remember is no longer here.

It looks empty, but I guess it did when I lived here, too.

Even with paintings and furniture, it always felt empty.

This was never a home because it was always more like a museum.

A hollowness knocks at my chest as I study my surroundings, letting my fingers trace over the staircase’s beautiful wooden railing and trail along the bare walls until I bump into an entryway table.

Looking down, my eyes fall on the book sitting on top, collecting dust. The words Holy Bible stand out like a gold flag, and resentment gathers in my chest.

There’s another Bible like this one sitting in their home in Florida—the house they moved us to when we left here—and just like this one, it’s the first thing anyone sees when they walk in the door. After all, Jane and Henry Cunningham were devout, respectable Christians.

A sharp snort escapes through my nose, and I turn away from the book, unable to look at it anymore.

My phone rings, breaking the silence, and the sound bounces off the walls, a testament to the enormity of this place. I sigh, dropping my hand from the wall as if being caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing, and reach into my back pocket, pulling it out.

Brecks, my fiancé’s name, fills the screen. My bottom lip slips between my teeth, worrying it as I stare at the phone.

I know I need to answer. He’ll want to know I made it here safely, and despite our relationship being set up by my grandparents, Brecks is a good guy—better than I deserve.

Just before the phone stops ringing, I swipe my finger over the screen and press it to my ear as I walk over to the window and stare unseeingly across the yard.

“Hello,” I say, thankful my voice doesn’t come out as shaky as I feel.

“Hey, babe. I thought you were going to call me when you got there.” Brecks’s deep voice comes through the phone, and I close my eyes, suddenly very tired. I let my head fall against the glass panes, cooling my heated skin.

“Sorry. The—uh—high school had a football game. I stopped by.”

There’s a pause on the other side, and I wonder if this will be the time he sees it—the cracks in my armor that are starting to show.

On the outside, I look the same. Same untameable curly hair that my grandmother called unruly.

Same brown eyes that are too big for my face.

Same old Ivy. But I’m not. Too many things in my life have left me irrevocably changed.

“I didn’t know you liked football,” Brecks says slowly, and I glance down at my ring.

That’s part of the problem. Brecks doesn’t know me at all.

It’s not his fault. I’ve only let him see the polished, classical artist my grandparents raised me to be, but shouldn’t it say something that I’ve never been comfortable enough to let him in all the way?

“I don’t.” It’s not a lie—not exactly. I never liked the sport, but I always loved to watch Campbell play.

Another beat passes where neither of us speaks. I listen to him breathing, trying to figure out what to say. How to fix this. How to fix me. But I come up blank.

Finally, Brecks breaks the silence.

“Did you see him?” There’s an undertone of resentment in his voice, and I sigh, my chest aching. I’m tired. So, so tired.

“Brecks—” I say, the exhaustion leaking into my voice. “I just—can we do this tomorrow?”

A heavy huff crackles through the phone. “Just come home to me, Ivy. When you’re ready, come home to me.”

He doesn’t wait for me to reply. The phone call ends with a soft click. Lifting my head from the window, I spin so my back is against the wall and sink to the floor. I set my phone down beside me and turn the ring on my finger around and around and around.

Brecks asked me to come home, but I don’t know that I’ve ever had a home.