Page 14 of The Sexy Ex's Brother
After a long pause, he tosses a folder onto my desk. It lands with a hard slap, loud in the quiet. He doesn’t explain. He turns, walks out, and slams the door behind him. The frame rattles.
I stare at the folder. I don’t open it. Not yet. But I already know it’s not about Ivy. That would be too easy. Too impulsive for Derek. He doesn’t lash out, he waits, calculates, strikes when it hurts most. This isn’t about her. It’s about me, and I know exactly what might be inside.
Photos from nights I shouldn’t have risked. Faces I thought were buried. Context stripped away to look damning. I’ve made mistakes, some careless, some calculated. None of them Ivy. But that won’t matter if she sees this. Not when she still doesn’t know the truth about the envelope. About me. She thinks it showed up anonymously. She doesn’t know I’m the one who left it.
***
I’m back from the office, city noise still in my ears, but the hallway outside our apartments is calm. I move toward the cabinet in the corner and pull out the bottle of wine I keep for endings, or beginnings. Tonight feels like both.
Just a few steps separate my door from hers, but they feel weighted, charged with the guilt I haven’t admitted out loud. Part of me always knew it wouldn’t stay hidden—that someone would notice the way I look at her, the way I listen when she speaks.
Music drifts from inside, stripped down and slow, something between background noise and confession. The kind of song that doesn’t try to be heard, but still is.
I lift my hand and knock gently. “Ivy?”
She answers almost instantly. She’s barefoot, wearing a loose tank that bares her shoulders and clings in places I’m trying hard not to notice. Her hair is swept into a messy knot. There’s something about seeing her like this, unarmored, a little disheveled, that hits harder than it should.
Her eyebrows lift. “Jack.”
I hold up the bottle. “Thought you might want something stronger than tea.”
Her gaze shifts from the wine to me, lingering just a beat too long. Then she steps back, nodding. “Come in.”
Graham’s place is minimalist, clean lines, neutral tones. But there are signs of Ivy now. A coat on a chair. A half-finished book on the end table. A silk scarf draped over a doorknob like an afterthought. It looks like she’s trying to settle in but hasn’t quite allowed herself to belong.
She pours two glasses and joins me on the couch. We sit at opposite ends, the wine bottle between us like a quiet boundary neither of us names.
We talk about everything but what’s hovering in the air. The company. Our intern’s fear of the espresso machine. A designer who went rogue. She laughs at one of my stories, tips her head back, and something in me flickers. The conversation stretches longer than I intended. I watch the way her fingers move when she talks, how she emphasizes a point or tucks a strand of hair. She makes ordinary moments feel cinematic. Real. Close.
At one point, she pauses, wine glass in hand, gaze lowered. “I thought today was going to fall apart,” she admits. “That pitch meeting nearly wrecked me.”
“You carried it,” I say. “No one else could’ve saved it.”
She glances at me, and her expression softens. The guarded edge she wears at the office slips, revealing something raw underneath. “I don’t know if I’m fixing things or just delaying the inevitable.”
“You’re not delaying. You’re shifting the course.”
She smiles, but it’s small. Tired. “You always know what to say.”
I don’t. Not really. But I mean it when I say it to her.
She reaches for the wine bottle. Her hand touches mine. The contact is brief. But it lingers. Neither of us pulls away.
“Ivy,” I say, softly. Her name lands heavy, like a secret I’ve been carrying.
She turns toward me, eyes wide with something unspoken.
I shift closer. Slowly. Deliberately. My hand lifts to her jaw. She doesn’t move. Just breathes. I lean in and I kiss her. It’s not a question. It’s not an apology. It’s the truth.
My hand slides behind her neck. My mouth finds hers. She tastes like wine and something sweeter I can’t place. Her lips part beneath mine. And for a suspended moment, the world narrows to this, her breath, her hand on my chest, the soft sound she makes when she lets herself want it.
Lets me want her. And I do. More than I’ve let myself admit.
But then…
A knock cuts through the quiet. Blunt. Impossible to ignore. Not just a knock, but a disruption. The kind that ends whatever came before.
We barely pull apart before the door swings open.
