A Twisted Love Story(2)

“May I ask what kind of detective you are?” Wes says.

“I’m with the Sex Crimes Unit.”

Didn’t see that coming.

Something pings in the back of his mind. No, not a ping. An alarm. “I’m not sure I understand,” he says.

“Yesterday, a young woman came into the station looking for help, because someone has been stalking her.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Horrible enough to make her terrified. And angry.”

She lets that description hang in the air. Wes isn’t about to grab it.

“What makes this situation particularly difficult is that her stalker technically hasn’t broken the law,” Karen Colglazier says. “So there isn’t much the police can do.”

Wes feels his heart ramp up again, thumping so hard against his chest that it must be visible. “May I ask what this has to do with me?”

For him, a rhetorical question. He knows the answer. Maybe he knew it as soon as Karen walked into his office, but he had shoved it aside, thinking it couldn’t be true. Still, he manages to look surprised when she says it.

“The woman’s name is Ivy Banks.”

The Plato quote pops into his mind. An hour ago, it was irrelevant. Not now.

His plans for the night dissolve, vanishing like they never existed. It doesn’t matter when Wes leaves the office, whether it’s at five thirty or ten o’clock at night. He will not be going out with Annabeth.

Because Ivy is back.





2




UC Davis, 2012, a Theta Rho frat party.

That’s where he met Ivy, though he didn’t belong to the fraternity. A friend of his roommate’s brother did. Not that it mattered—it’s not like they were checking credentials at the door. Theta Rho parties were known across campus, always huge bashes of the highest magnitude. The house was packed tight and hot as hell, exactly what the students wanted.

Wes was no exception. He was more than buzzed, less than drunk, and very, very horny.

Girls were everywhere. All kinds of girls, each one better looking than the last. Or they seemed that way. Might’ve been the beer. He maneuvered around them, smiling at one, then another, and then a third. Their eyes scanned him up and down, the same way his did to them. Everybody was looking for something, and on that hot spring night, it felt like they would all find what they wanted. Including Wes.

He was a junior, so he was used to these parties. At first, not so much. Going from tiny Holman, Michigan, to Davis, California, went beyond culture shock. Wes felt like he had stepped out of a barren, snowy field right into an MTV show.

It took a minute.

Over the course of two years, he morphed from a skinny, pale Midwestern boy to a Californian with a bit of muscle and a tan. His new normal. By his junior year, he had fully immersed himself in this big, wild world, where the rules changed stunningly fast.

Wes made his way outside, behind the big house, to get some air. The yard was almost as packed as the house, and that’s where he found his roommate. They stood around talking, mostly about the girls, when someone stepped on Wes’s foot.

Ivy had been walking by, and she stopped, turning back and throwing out a quick “Sorry.”

She wasn’t bad, but kind of plain. All covered up in a UCD sweatshirt and khaki shorts, hair in a ponytail, and no makeup. Not what he was looking for that night.

She kept walking, and he continued with his conversation. That was the end of it until he ran into her again inside the house, when he passed by her in a hallway. She was in line for the bathroom.

Now that he was closer to her, he noticed that she wasn’t so plain after all. It was her lips: They were pink and full with a hint of shine. Like she had just licked them.

He stepped on her foot.

“I owe you that,” he said.

She looked at him, a little shocked. A little angry.

“Because you stepped on my foot,” he said. “Outside, in the back—”

“Oh, right. Okay, fair.”

“I’m Wes,” he said.

“Ivy.”

He forced himself to look away from her, glancing down the hall at the line to the bathroom. “You’re going to be waiting awhile.”

“Looks that way.”

“You want another option?”

She gave him a half smile, like she was skeptical. He was back to looking at her lips. “What is it?” she said.

Wes nodded toward the stairs. “There’s a bathroom in the basement. Maybe the line is shorter.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

She walked away from him like they were done. They were not.



* * *



—

Eight o’clock at night, Wes is at home by himself. The date with Annabeth had been canceled hours ago, easily broken with a call about work he couldn’t get away from. She’s a memory now. Vague, too, like she was someone he’d known years ago.

Wes replays the conversation with the detective a few times. A few hundred times.

“When was the last time you saw Ivy Banks?” Karen had asked.

He pretended like he had to think about this for a minute. “Probably four months ago.”

“Where was that?”

“An engagement party for one of our college friends.”