Page 84 of Of Heather and Thistle
And she thought of Flynn. How he treated Glenoran like it mattered, like the land had a pulse. How he looked at her like she belonged there, even when she wasn’t sure she did. She let out a slow breath and took another sip of tea. Maybe she wasn’t just passing through.
Maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t belong.
Maybe she just hadn’t found home—yet.
Heather lingered at the cafe for a while, nursing the last of her tea, watching the world pass by outside. The city had been a welcome distraction, a much-needed reprieve from the weight of Glenoran, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was drifting toward something she wasn’t ready to name. Heather wanted to shut herself off. To stop feeling. Stop thinking.
But that’s the thing about spiraling—once it starts, you don’t get to decide when it stops. With a sigh, shepushed back from the table, grabbed her bag, and returned to where she parked outside Dr. Morrow’s office. The drive back to the Thistle Haven Inn was quiet—green hills rolling past as the sky shifted into the dusky hues of early evening. When she pulled into the small gravel lot of the inn, the air had turned crisp, the scent of damp earth and distant wood smoke curling around her as she stepped out of the car.
The inn’s warmth wrapped around her the moment she stepped inside. The soft clink of dishes from the dining room, the low hum of conversation—comforting in contrast to the cold unraveling of her afternoon. She went straight to her room, shrugged off her coat, and collapsed onto the bed with a heavy sigh.
For the first time all day, she let herself feel it—the exhaustion creeping into her limbs, pressing into her bones. She closed her eyes and let the weight settle. And then, her phone buzzed. Heather frowned, pulling it from her pocket and glancing at the screen.
Hey. Can we talk? Call me if you’re free. —Ivy.
Her stomach clenched. She should ignore it. She should set the phone down, roll over, and let it ring out. But old habits don’t die. They just settle deeper, like a weight you learn to carry. And Ivy’s voice had always been the only thing that made the weight bearable. Maybe it was the way the afternoon left her feeling adrift, or perhaps the realization she’d had by the river—that no matter how much she tried to distance herself from the past, it always found a way back.
Moments later, her phone lit up with Ivy’s name. Steadying herself, Heather answered.
“Hey,” Heather saidsoftly.
“Hey…” Ivy countered.
Heather took a deep breath and listened to Ivy’s voice on the other end of the line. Her heart ached with the weight of everything unspoken between them. She had wanted this conversation, but now that it was here, she didn’t know how to process the emotions it stirred up.
“I know I messed up, Heather.” Her voice was quiet. Soft. But not her usual kind of soft—the kind that drew people in, made them feel chosen. This was different. A calculated softness. Heather knew the difference. And still, she listened.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I realize how much I’ve been trying to fix things for you, to take control and make decisions for you. I should’ve just let you figure things out on your own.”
There was a long pause, and Heather could practically feel Ivy gathering the courage to keep going. “I slept with Sam.” Heather’s throat closed. Ivy exhaled shakily. “I don’t know why I do it.”
Heather stilled. She hadn’t expected that level of honesty. Ivy never said things like this—not without an angle.
The words trembled, laced with something fragile. “Why I always think my body is the only thing I have to trade. Why I think it’s the only way people will give me what I need.”
Heather’s fingers curled around the blanket. Her throat burned. Her heart hated how familiar this all was—the pivot. The moment Ivy turned her mistake into a wound.
“I thought if I just promised him what he wanted, he’d take you out—get you to open up, move on. I thought I could control the situation. But I see now how wrong that was. I thought I could make things better by controlling what others did, by using what I had to get what I wanted.”
Heather felt a sharp pang in her chest, the memory of thatnight coming back in waves. She had felt cheap, like a pawn, like her best friend had treated her like a project rather than a person. Ivy’s actions had made her feel as though she wasn’t enough—like she needed to be fixed and that the solution was always someone else’s choice.
“I’ve always done that, Heather,” Ivy continued, her voice cracking. “Used my body, used my appearance, to get things, to manipulate people into giving me what I want. I’ve never known how to get people to care about me any other way. But I see now that I’ve been doing the same thing to you. I thought if I could control the people around you, I could make you better, make you happy. But it wasn’t about you; it was about me feeling like I was doing something for you, even if it meant crossing boundaries.”
She stared at the window, breath misting against the glass. Sheshouldbe furious. But Ivy’s voice still wrapped around her like a lullaby—gentle, dangerous, and far too easy to believe. She wanted to reach through the phone and tell Ivy she wasn’t broken, that she wasn’t alone, that she was more than just her looks. But hadn’t she done that before? A thousand times? And hadn’t Ivy always taken it, always nodded and thanked her, and then done it all over again?
She had wanted this and wished Ivy to understand what she’d done. But hearing it aloud—hearing the regret—made her chest twist. It made it real. She was angry. But she was also tired. And tired hearts forgive too easily.
“I don’t know if I can trust you yet,” Heather said, voice smaller than she meant it to be. “You’ve made a lot of decisionsforme.” Heather swallowed hard, her heart heavy. She knew something wasn’t right with how Ivy orchestrated everything with Sam, but hearing Ivy say it so openly andhonestly made it real.
Ivy was admitting, in a way she never had before, that her attempts to “fix” Heather had been selfishly motivated.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Ivy whispered, ashamed of her confession. “I thought fixing you would fix me. That if I controlled the people around you, it would make me feel needed. But it wasn’t about you—it was about me.”
There was a long, heavy silence between them as if both were absorbing the weight of Ivy’s words. “I don’t know how to fix this, babe,” Ivy added quietly. “But I want to try. I want to respect you and your choices from now on, and I won’t try to control things anymore. I see now that I’ve hurt you in ways I never meant to, and I’m so sorry.”
Heather’s throat tightened, her mind still grappling with Ivy’s vulnerability. It was difficult to reconcile the Ivy she had known—the one who always seemed so self-assured and dominant—with the one she was hearing now, the one who was finally confronting her insecurities and weaknesses.
“I just don’t know if I can trust you right now,” Heather admitted, her voice quiet. “And I don’t know how to move past it.”
