CHAPTERONE
In order to maintain her sanity, Ivy Harrington always started her run forty minutes before sunrise. A practice she’d started almost three years ago, during her final semester of college.
What had begun as an experiment to overcome her fear of the dark quickly became habit, with the side benefit of clearing the fog from her mind after her typically restless nights so she could face the day. Since she’d never been one for long conversations or counseling sessions, her pre-dawn run also became her preferred form of therapy.
Lifting her face to the sky, she concentrated on the moment. The hushed rhythm of her feet on the pavement. The rush of air moving in and out of her lungs. The fresh smell of early autumn trees heightened by the water. The caress of the cool air on her sweat-slicked skin.
As per her ritual, she completed her routine as the sun broke across the Willamette River, illuminating Portland’s West Coast magnificence in a fiery burst of color.
The sight filled her with a rare sense of hope, and though it passed as quickly as the daybreak—vibrant and alive for an instant—that brief time was always worth it. Because when those first tendrils of orange, red, and yellow crawled into the sky, Ivy allowed herself to believe that maybe there was a light at the end of her tunnel. And not an oncoming train.
She never understood why people slept through these precious few minutes of the day.
All in all, this was the best part of her day, and by the time she arrived back at her building, she’d slowed to a walk, feeling like she’d shed a layer of dead skin. As light infiltrated the city, she clung to the last of the silence, knowing that when she next came outside, her world would be raucous with the hustle of Portlanders tackling their Monday morning.
Stopping outside her building, she did a quick shoulder check to see who was around her before she faced the wall. Using it as resistance, she pressed her foot against the stone, feeling the gratifying stretch run up her calf. Ivy loved this building; it stood on the corner of a popular intersection in the Pearl District and had been renovated a decade or so ago. The beautiful brick facade set it apart from the surrounding buildings. Its uniqueness drew notice constantly, but that wasn’t the only thing that had people flocking. The bar on the street level, Bowie’s, was very popular with the locals, and it always brought in a good crowd, especially on weekends.
She’d been lucky to rent one of the two apartments above the bar and had no plan to move anytime soon. Oddly, the bar’s noise and crowds didn’t bother her. In fact, like the dark, she enjoyed it. Living in the city’s heartbeat allowed her to fade in and out of her surroundings without anyone paying much attention. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being around people. Like most, she had a social bucket that needed topping up, but overall, she preferred being alone. She’d grown up a lone wolf and had gotten used to it.
Unlocking the building’s front door, she took a final glance over her shoulder before she jogged up the stairs to her apartment. Out of habit, she peeked at the door across from hers and it stared back, the silence mocking her. The opposite of last midnight when female laughter had echoed in this same hallway, waking Ivy from an unusually deep sleep.
At the time, she’d tiptoed to her own door and stared through the peephole, taking in the scene of a drop-dead gorgeous woman wrapping herself around an equally stunning man, drawing out an obviously reluctant goodbye. Reluctant on the woman’s behalf. Ivy happened to know that the man was probably trying to get her out of his place as quickly as possible. He had a kickboxing class to teach at six the next morning, and he wasn’t one to arrive sleep deprived or anything less than on top of his game.
Ivy knew this because she knew him well. Sean Thompson. Friend, business partner, neighbor, and hottest man she knew in the flesh. Ivy had watched through her peephole, as Sean carefully disentangled the curvy brunette’s arms from his broad shoulders and escorted her toward the stairs down to the front exit. Her flirtatious giggles ringing in their wake.
It shouldn’t have bothered her. But last night’s rendezvous had caught her off guard because, regardless of the many women who flirted with Sean, she’d seen no evidence of them since he’d moved in across the hall—five months ago after his best friend, Gabe Walsh, left the apartment to live in a house with her best friend, Hope Morgan.
At the gym, and at Bowie’s it was a free-for-all, with women eyeing Sean as brazenly as Ivy eyed barbecue chips in the grocery store’s snack aisle. But here at their apartments, she’d never seen or heard a woman come or go from his place. Not until last night. And now that it had happened, she realized she didn’t like it. She couldn’t place the feeling that had settled in the pit of her stomach since she’d seen the woman with her flawless hair and musical laugh, wrapped around Sean like a pretzel; but whatever it was, it sucked.
As she took a quick post-run shower, she reminded herself that she had absolutely no reason to be anything but friends with Sean. But she couldn’t fight the wave of inexplicable irritability that rose within her. So much for her centering pre-dawn run.
When she’d first arrived in Portland, fresh out of college, Sean had given her a chance and rented her the space in his gym for her physiotherapy clinic. Despite his lean, mean, fight-ready physique, he’d been friendly, sweet, and completely non-aggressive from the moment they’d met. Combined with his dominant persona and protective nature, being around him had soothed her like aloe on a burn.
During their time working closely together in the gym, often discussing the needs of clients, they’d developed an unexpected friendship. Unexpected because Ivy wasn’t good at building relationships of any kind.
And when he’d begun training her in kickboxing, their friendship had turned into a bond, and despite herself, she’d started to trust him. Which was an even bigger deal than making a friend because she could count on one hand the number of people she trusted. Eventually, they’d started hanging out outside of work, and their relationship fell into a natural flow. Somewhere along the line, it had started to feel like Sean was hers.
He was hotter than sin and a genuinely nice guy. Basically, the rarest of all species, so of course the ladies flocked to him. But he didn’t flaunt them, and for the most part Ivy could pretend they weren’t there.
They’d blissfully meandered along in their comfortable but platonic friendship, because she couldn’t offer him more than that. Not that he’d ever so much as hinted he wanted more.
And she was okay with that. More than okay.
Then last night had happened, and now it looked like the tide was finally turning, and her happy, safe, platonic thing was ending. Which made her grumpy. By the time she pulled up to the gym in her hatchback, the zen buzz from her run had completely worn off, and the two cups of coffee she’d downed hadn’t taken the edge off. She pushed through Thompson Kickboxing’s main entrance and strode past the reception desk without making eye contact with the woman behind it.
“Hey girl!” Erica’s voice floated jovially through the air, landing in Ivy’s vicinity.
She grunted in acknowledgement and kept walking. She turned left and headed to her physio clinic, scanning the gym on autopilot for Sean, even though she knew he was in the back studio teaching a class.
Walking through the clinic, she entered the small room off to the side that served as her office, she dumped her duffle bag and folders onto her cluttered desk, then plopped down behind her desk and switched on the computer.
She’d skimmed half the morning’s emails when she registered a movement at the door in front of her. Lifting her head at the same time as the smell of coffee hit her nostrils, she let out a breath, allowing the stiffness to release from her shoulders.
“You’re crankier than usual this morning.” It was Erica again. She was one of the trainers at the gym who sometimes moonlighted as the receptionist. She was sweet and pleasant at the front desk, but a major ass-kicker in class.
Ivy took Erica’s kickboxing classes when Sean’s were full. Or when she was in the mood for a drill sergeant. Essentially, they saw each other every day, and Erica had come to know Ivy’s nuances well. She handed Ivy a steaming mug of coffee.
“Am not,” Ivy grumbled before taking a long sip of coffee, then rolling her eyes in ecstasy. “God, what is it about this stuff that’s so satisfying? It heals all that ails.”
