Page 27 of Corrupting Ivy

He placed it in a bag for me; the total came out to just over two-hundred dollars. I damned near choked on my candy when he handed me the receipt, shell-shocked.

“He was rather insistent about you spending it all.”

I folded the receipt in half and stuck it in my back pocket with the rest of the money. “Yeah, well, if he wanted to see it through, he should have stuck around.”

“Okay,” he raised his hands in surrender, “just tell him, I tried.” Mr. Grady swallowed hard, and his silvery brows narrowed. “You seem fine, all things considered.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Mr. Grady.” I scoffed, then grabbed my bags and walked away.

“It’s Coen.” I heard him say as I opened the door and strode across the street towards my home. Once I got inside, I didn’t wait long to dump out my new clothes onto my bed and pull off the tags. Okay, I didn’t wait at all. There was this euphoric feeling about buying something new, and I hadn’t felt that in a long time.

I held up my shorts and had second thoughts. The last time I bought clothes for myself, he’d beat me for wasting his money on revealing outfits. I believe his words were, ‘I won’t have you traipsing around town looking like a whore.’

It took all the courage I could muster to even think about showing Randall. But he came in before I could decide, with a hunger in his eyes that had me begging to be his prey.

And then he left, taking the desire he’d conjured up with him, leaving me angry and dejected. He didn’t know what strength it took, what mind games worked at me, to be there, picking out clothing.

It wasn’t just that I couldn’t afford the jeans, that much was uncomfortably true. It was the painful memories it summoned, the fear it invoked. I’d been free fromhimfor months now, but still, his power consumed me with every waking moment, my choices still dominated by his reactions.

Now I wanted to reinvent myself without fear, but breaking old habits seemed impossible.

Knuckles rapped against my door in a rhythm that put a jingle in my head. The urge to shove my clothes in the bag and hide them under the bed tugged at me. Instead, I took a deep breath, left them as they were, and answered the door.

“Mr. Grady?” I said, raising my brows. “Did I forget something? Don’t tell me he came back and harassed you?” If I knew anything about Randall, and that wasn’t much, he liked to get his way.

“Please. Call me Coen.” He stood with his hands half-tucked into the front pockets of his trousers and a charming, toothy smile. “And no, nothing like that,” he said, then held out eleven cents in his palm.

I frowned as I stared at the change. “What’s this?”

“I may have forgotten to give you your change. So I brought it to you, hoping you’d have lunch with me.”

Taking the coins from his outstretched, chilly hand, I grimaced. “Thank you, Mr. Grady—I mean Coen. You didn’t have to do that.” I kept my smile on my face and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt. There wasn’t an issue in my book with dating older men. Hell, I’m sure Randall was quite a few years older than I was. But Mr. Grady? I’m guessing there was a twenty-five plus year age difference, and I didn’t exactly feel like dating my dad.

“Look Coen…”

He held up his hand to stop me. “I get it, you’ve had an eventful day. I’ll take a rain check, and we can try another time.”

“I—”

He spun on his heel. “Have a good rest of your day, Ivy.”

I shook my head as I watched him walk down the steps.

What the hell just happened?

Since when did I attract old men? I cursed my bad luck, then shut the door before his foot hit the cement below.

That was… disturbing.

I pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and took a large gulp when knuckles hit my door again.

“Coen…” I said as I opened the door. But it wasn’t Mr. Grady. It was the one person I didn’t feel like seeing right now.

“What did Coen want?” he asked as he stalked towards me.

Randall’s deep baritone voice had me weak in the knees. I backed up, and he shut the door behind him.

My hands ached to touch and explore his ripped torso I saw this morning as he loomed over me with the fire in his eyes.

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