Page 42 of Samhain

“We were,” Miri said.

“And now?” Ivy’s voice cracked, and she blinked back a telltale redness that threatened to spill tears down her cheeks.

“And now”—Miri stole the cigarettes from Lex so she could light her own—“I’m the duchess of Aberdeen and Carter is the noble knight of Denwater.” She took a deep inhale. “And we speak every month or so.” Miri tapped ash in the crystal ashtray before looking at me. “It was because you broke our hearts over text message, which is so bloody rotten, I can’t even stand it.”

Lex lifted his gaze to Miri before shooting right over to Ivy, who furrowed her brows and gaped.

“No,” she said, looking at me. “Carter sent a group text. It said you two needed space and not to contact either of you again.”

“You called her Weeds,” Lex added. “You called me DC.”

Ivy held out her phone, showing a message I’d never sent from my old number.

“What the fuck? This wasn’t me,” I said, dread filling my stomach. “No way would I have ever done that. I tried for weeks to get in touch with you both.”

“It said the number had been disconnected,” Miri said. “You blocked both of us online.”

“You blocked us,” Ivy said.

Utter silence followed as the gravity of this massive misunderstanding settled between us. We’d spent two years pining for each other, all because someone somewhere had purposely driven us apart.

“No,” Ivy said, but it came out like a whisper, like she was just putting the pieces together. She looked to Lex. “You asked your father.”

“I did,” he said. “He didn’t know anything about it.”

Her features dropped. “We never asked my mother.”

“Asked her what?” I cut in.

“After we got the text, and you went radio silent, I suspected our parents might have done this to fuck with us. To keep us from contacting you and risking the marriage.” Lex shook his head, inhaling deeper on the cigarette. “I believed what he told me. There’s a lot more to the story, but I’m too tired to talk about it tonight.”

“If he didn’t, then there’s another obvious choice.” Ivy pursed her lips. “I told you we should have asked her, too.”

“Then why didn’t you just use your little telepathic mind trick?”

“Because yours is less obvious, Lucifer,” Ivy snapped.

“My father still thinks I drugged him.” Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, his agitation rising to the surface. “I’m not doing that shit to anyone else in our family. I told you that already.”

“Okay,” I cut in. “Calm down.” I didn’t even know what they were talking about. Telepathic mind trick? What did that mean? “Look, the point is, we’re back together again. We can spend the rest of our lives figuring out the rest.”

Ivy looked between me and Miri, but I knew what those sad eyes meant. Nothing had changed. She and Lex still needed to get married. I still had a tight filming schedule. Miri had the royal family. And yet…everything had changed, hadn’t it? We couldn’t be apart without this weird wanton compulsion eating away at us.

“How do we stop this from happening again?” I asked. “Because I sure as shit can’t go through that a fourth time.”

“You looked terrible when you got here.” Lex’s attention drifted to me.

“We need to get the band back together,” Miri said. “That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Ivy snorted and dug her fingers into Miri’s waist, making her twist away so she floated over toward me.

“What about you, Romeo?” Miri raised an eyebrow and leaned in to kiss me, soft and tender. “What do you want to happen next?”

“Getting back together sounds nice.” I would love to know I had these three people to myself for the rest of my life. Until the end and all that.

“It’s not that easy,” Ivy protested. “We can’t go public with this.”

“Ivy’s running for Congress in two years,” Lex explained.

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