Page 80 of Solstice

How could someone have gotten in and out without being seen? Had they tampered with the cameras? Had they hacked the system? Kit didn’t find evidence of that, but that didn’t mean shit. Whoever had fucked with us four years ago hadn’t left any breadcrumbs, either.

“How’s she doing?” Carter took a sip of something, likely whiskey.

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. The separation had not been good for Ivy the first time around. This was way fucking worse. “She’s existing.”

To say the least. She went to work and put on the good show, her fake politician’s mask barely having a crack despite the damage to our brand. I saw through it. Maybe it was because I’d spent so much time in her head, but I understood those forlorn looks and that grim set to her mouth.

She missed our wife, and so did I. For eight years, Miri and I had fought and fucked and made up. She always came around.Always.But it had been over two weeks with no word, on top of the sporadic contact the weeks before that. Not a call. Not a text.Nothing.She’d never made me wait this long before.

“I’ll see her in a few days,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you.” We ended the call, but the hole in my heart did not heal the way it normally did after a conversation with him. I stood and walked to the end of the hall, poking into Ivy’s room. She wasn’t there, so I went downstairs to the basement gym, where I found her on the elliptical, sweating and talking on the phone through her earbuds.

“Senator Waters, you know very well why we can’t give in to this brazen attempt to distract us from impacting real change.” Ivy pushed herself harder, wiping at her brow with the back of her arm. “We need this bill to get through the Senate. It’s the right thing for the country.”

I raised an eyebrow and circled around to the front of the machine, putting my arms over the display, leaning my head to the side while she talked. I focused on the X across her neck, now brilliant against her pale throat. A bead of sweat trickled down the column of her windpipe, over her sternum, disappearing in between her breasts.

I tracked it, licking my lips, wondering if she’d let me get close enough to taste her. Call me a sick son of a bitch, but I loved a good fuck after a workout. She pushed herself harder, going faster, taking deep, slow breaths so she could keep up with the conversation.

Since Miri had broken things off, Ivy had pushed herself to the breaking point. She’d lost at least fifteen pounds, saying she needed to fit into the wedding dress, but Ivy didn’t have the weight to lose to begin with. She’d always been long and lean, and in the past few years, toned from working out every day.

Now she looked tired and wrung out. She barely slept, and when she did, it was for an hour or two at a time. If we were normal humans, I’d say she was depressed. But we weren’t normal, and such a finite word didn’t begin to describe what was going on with her.

Ivy always hated the anticipation of things to come, but I’d been planning and scheming, biding my time for the prick to show himself. I worked with Poppy to get her ready for the showdown. She needed to be strong. We all did.

“Think about it.” Ivy shook her head and grabbed her water bottle, taking a deep sip. “Call me once you’ve reconsidered.” She hung up the phone and pressed stop on the machine, sinking down to the ground. “What?”

I pursed my lips. “You’ve been down here for over an hour.”

“I’m busy.” She hopped off the elliptical and bent over to stretch, my eyes catching on the curves of her ass, sloping down into her thighs.Such a great ass.

“Carter sends his love.”

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “I’ll give him a call tonight.”

I furrowed my brows. Usually, the mention of her beloved Mister Scott sent Ivy’s heart all a pitter patter. No reaction raised my hackles higher. She went to the treadmill and pressed start, pushing the incline up to 5 percent before cranking the speed into a jog. With thethwack thwack thwackof her feet hitting the machine and theswoosh swoosh swooshof the belt, she’d barely be able to hear me.

Which had been the fucking point. Ivy didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to be around me. Couldn’t she see I was heartbroken, too? Couldn’t she tell that our love was the only thing keeping me together? She’d once said what we had was real, and I believed her. But at the first sign of trouble, she pulled away.

No.

I didn’t like that shit one fucking bit. I’d let her have her space for now, but we had a week until the wedding. Her heart might be breaking, but if the king was planning what I thought he might be, she needed to get her head in the game. I couldn’t do this alone.

I turned and walked out of the gym, dialing Miri like some pathetic stalker that couldn’t take a restraining order for an answer. I got her voicemail.

Well, at least I hadn’t been blocked yet.

“Miri, I know you’re scared. I know you think you can’t survive this.” I looked over my shoulder at my disintegrating fiancée. “But staying away will be worse. Don’t make me get on a fucking plane and hunt you down.” A long pause where I sucked back on my cigarette, hating the desperation in my voice. “I love you.”

I hung up knowing, like I did the thousand times before, she wouldn’t return my call.

* * *

Whoever said“Any press is good press” never survived a sex scandal. The paparazzi hounded us, more than they ever had before. They waited outside my work, shouting questions as my bodyguards tried to get me to and from the door. I ignored them.

Sixteen-year-old Lex would have given them the finger and shown them exactly where to fuck off. A decade later, I had an image to keep. We told the world there was nothing to see, and lately, there hadn’t been. Ivy sublimated, I searched for the truth, and somewhere in the middle, we got ready for the wedding event of the season.

“We’ve always been friends, but not best man sort of friends.” Jon narrowed his gaze as he adjusted his tie in the mirror.

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