Page 121 of It Must Be Fate

After that, it’s going to be a while before life is ever normal again.

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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bellamy

It’s a beautiful May day in London. The sun is out and high in the sky, shining down on us and making all the colors around us seem brighter. After months of short, dreary days and gray or downright rainy skies, the city comes alive bathed under such spectacular weather.

I’m standing in the kitchen of our home, staring out of the bay of windows at our massive garden.

My phone rings.

I answer without bothering to look at the caller ID.

“You can’t keep calling.”

“Ugh, comeon. I need to know all the deets,” Thayer pleads. “What are they doing?”

I turn away from the window and the scene I was watching, walking further into the kitchen.

“I’m not going tospyon them, Thayer.”

“And why not?”

“It’s an invasion of their privacy!”

She makes an affronted noise. “See, this is why I knew we should have done this at my house.”

“We couldn’t do it at your house. Your husband is there.”

“Okay, fine. But next time we do this, I’m finding a way to kick him out. Clearly you can’t be trusted to be a good informant.”

I roll my eyes. “Please, they’re not even doing anythingthatinteresting. Rhodes just has her sitting on his handlebars while he cycles arou—”

“Hold up. I thought you said youweren’tspying.”

“Well, I–I’m not,” I sputter. “I can’t help it if they’re doing this stuffin front of my window.”

“Oh my god, you’re totally spying. Fantastic, this is exactly the version of you I needed to show up today. Tell me everything,” she asks excitedly. “Did you just say he was cycling around with Ivy on his handlebars? That’s so cuuuuute.”

I laugh into the phone, turning back towards the windows just in time to see the bike hit a rock. Rhodes brakes suddenly, hands squeezing the handlebars tightly, and Ivy goes flying off.

My heart momentarily stops in my chest as I watch her fall. Thankfully, she doesn’t go far. She lands a foot away from where the bike abruptly stopped.

I’m about to tell Thayer what happened when Rhodes throws himself off the bicycle and tosses it aside like it personally offended him.

In an instant he’s on his knees in front of Ivy, his face twisted with worry and his hands clutching her leg. She looks more startled than hurt, her gaze tracing over Rhodes as he caresses her knee.

“I mean, truly adorable behavior,” Thayer continues, unaware of what I’m watching develop in front of me. “He mustget it from you. Lord knows Rogue’s cute side is limited on a good day and entirely suppressed on every other day.”

The connection between Rhodes and Ivy has been evident to everyone in our friend group since they both learned how to walk. Who knows, it might actually have started before then had their inability to physically go to each other not been a barrier.

Rogue is a vocal supporter of this connection, finding quite a bit of humor in his son’s obsession with his best friend’s daughter. Rhys, on the other hand, has a decidedly frostier approach to the entire thing. Short of hissing at Rhodes when he gets within a ten-foot radius of his little girl, he’s done everything else to keep them apart when they’re not with the larger group.

A month ago, I asked Rhodes what he wanted for his upcoming twelfth birthday. I expected an extravagant request in line with what I’d heard other boys in his class had asked for. Instead, he’d looked up at me with those big green eyes, the same as his father’s, and he’d told me the only thing he wanted was to invite Ivy over so they could play, just the two of them.

I thought my heart might burst with affection and pride. When I told Thayer, she’d had a similar reaction. I think the echoes of her cooed “aww” might have reached as far up as Scotland. Together, we’d maneuvered to set this playdate up without telling her husband—who would have outright refused— or mine—who wouldn’t have been able to resist gloating in his best friend’s face.

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