Page 37 of My Sweetest Obsession
There are no words that won’t sound completely hollow at this point.
There is nothing that can be said that will ease any of her pain or my own.
So, I stand, staring at the waves, remembering the last time we were here together to say goodbye to Drew…
And what it led to.
My body heats at the memories of her mouth on mine, of my hands roaming over her body, of my cock sinking into her blissful heat. All the things that haunt my days and keep me awake at night before my guilt douses the fire with icy reality as cold as the weather today.
There are so many things I want to say, things that need to be said.
I never got the chance to apologize to her.
She stormed out of the studio before I had an opportunity to say what I wanted to, but she had every right not to want to hear it. Not when I was unraveling like that. Not when I revealed the god-awful truth to her while I was sitting next to a damn needle and bag of heroin.
But this isn’t the place or time, either.
Ivy doesn’t need my apology, nor does she want it.
What she needs is happiness, something to make her smile, to help her get through the minutes and hours and days and weeks.
Hopefully, that baby will be that thing that pulls her out of this, a reason to keep pushing on when things feel far too hard and far too complicated to do so.
I shove my hands into my pockets, trying to keep them from trembling. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the cool temperature; it’s more about the cool, icy look in her eyes that used to be so warm when they met mine.
The silence becomes too much, though.
And the longer I look at the water, the more vividly decades of memories race back, and despite how shitty I feel, my chest warms. “We spent most of our birthdays here with our grandmother, on the beach.”
“Even when it was this cold?”
A sad smile pulls at my lips, and I nod. “We wouldn’t go in the water, just walk on the sand, looking for seashells and cool rocks and any other beach junk we could collect.”
Ivy offers me a smile that matches the pain in my heart. “How old were you when she died?”
I tilt my head slightly, trying to remember exactly. “Ten. It was kind of like losing a second mother…”
She nods and returns her focus to the water. “That’s how my nonni was, too. It was always just the three of us.”
For all the intensely intimate details I know about this woman, there are so many other things I’m still so clueless about.
What the fuck does that say about me?
“What about your mom’s father?”
Her shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t know if Nonni even knew who he was, to be honest.” She releases a little sardonic laugh. “She was a true hippie. Went to Woodstock and everything. Believed in free love. Back then…they were less careful.”
I cringe at the implication. “And your father?”
She glances over at me. “Mom never wanted him involved. As far as she was concerned, he was a sperm donor and nothing more, but I never felt like I was missing out on anything.”
Images of my childhood flash through my head.
Of birthdays and Christmases.
Hugs and tears.
The man who somehow shaped us, despite not being in our lives for very long…
