He slides his hand down to hers, taking it into his own, and leads her to the bedroom. She doesn’t argue with that.
Wes pushes her onto the bed. She turns over on her back and smiles at him. An invitation he accepts.
Until she rolls away from him and off the bed.
Now he’s lying down, and she stands over him. A smirk on her face.
“You really think I’m that easy?” she says.
“You really want me to answer that?”
47
Ivy slams the phone down on her desk. Tired of checking it, tired of trying to decide what to do next. Tired of making the wrong decisions. Last night was a mistake; Ivy knew it before the sun came up.
She picks up her phone and texts Heath.
I saw Wes last night.
His reply: ???
She grips the phone tight for a second, then gives in to the urge to confess. I slept with him.
Minutes go by before he responds. Way to play it cool.
That had been his advice: Play it cool, act like you don’t care. Don’t get angry, don’t blow up at him. It was good advice—she knew that—and she had sex with Wes anyway.
I tried, she says.
She waits, expecting him to answer. Maybe he’ll bring up therapy again. Over the years, he has tried several times to get her to see someone. Once she did see a therapist he’d recommended, an older woman with deep bags under her eyes. Not even her glasses hid them, and her personality was even worse. She was like a mean girl who turned into a cruel therapist. Ivy lasted two sessions before quitting.
That hasn’t stopped Heath from trying. Ivy isn’t sure when he became such a convert to talk therapy, but he’s convinced it’s exactly what she needs.
Not today, though. He doesn’t answer her last text.
Ivy puts down the phone and goes back to the list of lawyers she found online. Google seems like a terrible way to find a defense attorney, so she researches each one and checks all the rating sites.
Last night didn’t go exactly how she’d expected. It all went sideways when he brought up the lawyers. Logically, she does know Wes is right. They’re not married, they’re not even officially together, so of course they have to do it. Separate lawyers, same story. A solid plan, and probably the correct one.
But he brought it up at the wrong time. Telling her like she didn’t already know, and doing it when she preferred to talk about something else. Like the fact that they need to stick together right now. A united front.
Which is why it was stupid for her to leave as soon as Wes fell asleep.
* * *
—
Wes started at the top, with the two largest law firms in the area. Expensive, but every lawyer is expensive. Only a matter of degree.
The first one he contacted never responded to his call. The second cited a “potential conflict” and said they would get back to him. It didn’t make sense until he did a little research. Law firms rarely represent two defendants for the same crime, largely because one usually blames the other.
Ivy was already doing the same thing he was. She was way ahead of him, no doubt giving the firm his name in case he also called. That’s something Ivy would do, and it made him a little nervous. Maybe a lot nervous.
Add in the fact that Karen had called Ivy about the Joey Fisher case but she hadn’t called him. Wes didn’t like that at all.
Worst of all, Ivy left in the middle of the night. Ten years into this relationship, and she has never done that.
Which makes him think of Heath.
He’s back in town, saying God knows what to Ivy. Telling her to ignore him, to stay away. To leave in the middle of the night. Heath tries to get into her head, and sometimes it works.
In the beginning, Wes got along with him. Heath seemed okay, like he just wanted the best for Ivy. That was when they were still in college and lived several hours away from each other, and neither Wes nor Ivy saw him very often. Things changed when Heath moved to Fair Valley.
The first thing Wes noticed is that they never did anything together. Not dinner or drinks or even a movie. Ivy saw Heath. Wes and Ivy did not.
It was weird, and it got weirder when Wes ran into him one night. At a bowling alley, of all places.
Wes and Ivy had broken up, again, and they had been apart for about a month. Wes wasn’t bowling with a date, though. He was with his colleagues, attending what Tanner had called a team-building event.
Heath had been on a date. A gorgeous woman with long dark hair and the body of a swimsuit model. The kind of woman Wes normally went out of his way to avoid. Heath brought her over and introduced her. The three of them talked for a minute about the usual things—where they worked, who they knew—before Heath’s date excused herself to go to the restroom.
Heath did not leave. He stayed right by Wes’s side.
“So,” Heath said, “Ivy told me you two broke up.”
“Yeah. We did.”
Heath nodded, pausing to watch someone bowl in front of them. Gutter ball. “She said it’s for good this time.”
Wes said nothing. Maybe Ivy did say that. But only out of anger, because it wasn’t true. At least, he didn’t believe it.
He also knew better than to argue with Ivy’s best friend. One-way ticket to trouble.
Instead, he tried to change the subject, motioning in the direction Heath’s date had gone. “And what about you? Are things getting serious with her?”
Heath ignored the question. “Leave Ivy alone.”
Now Wes had to say something. No choice, not even a question. “What happens between me and Ivy is our business,” he said. “Not anyone else’s. Including you.”
“I’m looking out for her,” Heath said. “You aren’t good for Ivy.”
“She can decide for herself who’s good for her.” In Wes’s mind, Heath was definitely not. “She makes her own decisions.”
Heath’s date returned, ending the conversation. Wes never told Ivy about it, because he wasn’t about to get in the middle of their lifelong friendship. But he also never forgot it.
* * *
—
When Karen gets the call, she pinches herself. Literally.
She started doing it long ago, in the early days of her relationship, when it was so good it felt like a dream. A couple of years later, she did it again, trying to wake herself up from the nightmare.
Now she pinches herself as a reminder of how far she has come. That, yes, this is her life, she is doing the right thing, and she is helping others.
Because Karen has been assigned to the Fisher case. Officially.
She can finally spend her days doing what she has spent so many nights doing: solving a case that’s crying for justice.
And getting Wes Harmon away from Ivy.
She starts by pulling up her lists, adding everything that needs to be done now that she’s authorized to access police resources. She makes a flurry of calls. One of them is someone Karen has been targeting for a while: Coral St. James.
She gets lucky when Coral picks up the phone. That’s the kind of day Karen is having. A lucky one.
“I’m investigating a case from several years ago. Perhaps you remember Joey Fisher?” she says. “The young man killed while sleeping in his—”
“I remember.” Coral’s voice is softer than Karen expected. She almost sounds sad.
“I’m looking into a possible connection to the Fine Line gentlemen’s club. Do you mind if I come by and ask you a few questions? Given your position at the club, I thought you might have a unique insight into some of the employees.” Karen is careful not to call them girls. Coral was the backstage manager, according to the bankruptcy filing. The Fine Line had owed her a good deal of money.