Page 95 of Knot your Good Girl

“Look at your father and me. Look how happy we are.”

“I’m going to live my life my way. I don’t need an alpha.”

I have one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank. Aiden paid me halfway through our agreement, but I’m not expecting anything else from him.

But it’s enough.

Once I’ve seen Ivy.

Once I’ve fulfilledherdream.

I’ll get on with living mine.

Chapter 28

Holly

Thesunhangslowin the sky, casting long shadows across the cemetery as I walk along the winding path while picking flowers from the landscaped beds.

Toby brought me here, and he is the sweetest alpha in the world. Not that it changes the way I feel about him.

I know I could save a fortune and allow my body to go into heat again and get the baby I want from him, but I know Toby will want to be part of that package.

I don’t want that, but I can be civil and he never batted an eyelid when I asked him to drive me to the cemetery where Ivy has a plaque and most of her ashes.

“Are you coming back to New York?” he asks as we walk together. The smell of freshly cut grass and forget-me-not flowers and sweet blossom trees fill my senses.

My heart races when I see her grave up ahead.

I hate that my parents did this. Putting her in a box and burying her when they knew she wanted to be scattered. That’s why I stole some of her ashes, so I can give my sister her last wish.

“Areyou coming back to New York?“ he repeats.

My mind is on Ivy as we get closer.

I normally visit her each year on our birthday, but I haven’t been back here since I turned twenty-two years old, after spending our last birthday with Aiden and his family.

I turn to Toby and shake my head. “I doubt it.”

I pause at her graveside, my eyes welling up with tears, as I bite down on my lip to hold back my emotions.

“I’ll give you some time,” Toby says.

He could hug me, but he doesn’t. That’s why I know he isn’t my alpha. My alpha would never let me feel this alone.

He would hold me and never let me go.

Ivy’s headstone is simple, white marble with an engraved heart with her name and two dates etched into the cold stone—our birthday and her end, today’s date.

I normally never visit on the day of her death. It’s too hard. But I feel her today, like I’m supposed to talk to her.

To be with her.

I miss those days.

Like when we were little, and she’d join me in my bed. We would chat under the blanket so our parents couldn’t hear. We’d talk for hours. She told me her wildest dreams; I told her my fantasies.

We looked the same, but we were so very different.

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