“Where are you going?” Erica asked.
“To get a round of pumpkin-spiced lattes.”
* * *
By noon she’d worked on a recovering Achilles injury, dealt with a stubborn client who had not been doing any of the exercises she’d prescribed for his hand injury but who still insisted on resuming his fight training, and lectured an older athlete who was training like she was in her thirties and blew her knee because of it.
Somewhere between the blown knee and a quad injury, Ivy was sitting at her desk wolfing down a yogurt when there was a tap at her door.
“Hey stranger. You got a minute to say hi to an old friend?”
Ivy popped her head up and gasped in surprise when she saw Joel Morgan standing in the doorway of her clinic.
“Joel!” she cried happily as she sprang to her feet and rushed over to him.
When she threw her arms around his neck, he’d laughed, picked her up, and gave her a little spin before setting her back on her feet.
“You look good.” He ruffled her hair.
Ivy made a face. Despite him seeing her stripped of all her innocence at the lowest point in her life, he still treated her like his kid sister. Worse than his kid sister sometimes. He never teased his real sister, Hope, as much as he teased Ivy. And Ivy often wondered if all that extra teasing was to lighten the darkness he knew lived inside her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Joel lived in San Francisco, running the family company, but now that Hope had settled in Portland he visited from time to time, and for that Ivy was exceedingly grateful.
He was one of the most socially intelligent people Ivy had ever met. Acutely aware of those he loved, he handled situations, resolved conflicts, saved the day, and was fiercely loyal while doing it. Everyone could count on Joel Morgan. He never let anyone down. Least of all her.
They’d been virtual strangers when she’d called him one fateful day. Three minutes on the phone and he’d dropped everything to come help her and Hope. And she never forgot it.
“I’m in Portland for a few days sniffing around a property we might be interested in procuring.” He walked into her clinic with a casual gait that belied his sharp mind and even sharper eye.
Ivy knew he was checking out every inch of her clinic, making sure it was good enough for her. He wouldn’t accept anything less for someone he cared about.
“You mean you’re spying on your sister, your brother-in-law, and your niece?” Ivy retorted, and he laughed.
“Can’t say I don’t miss them,” he admitted, and she believed him.
The Morgans had worked hard to get where they were as a family.
Now that they’d found their way back to each other, having the geographical distance between them hadn’t been easy. But between regular visits and frequent video calls, they made it work.
Ivy hadn’t seen her own parents in over a year and was sure that the idea of calls—online or otherwise—didn’t even occur to them. They were currently in Ghana, posting their adventures on their YouTube channel. Or maybe it was the Ivory Coast. She’d lost track. It was her nana that she thought of first when she thought of family, and while she tried to check in at least once a week, she knew she could do better in that department.
“But now that you mention it,” Joel said, interrupting her mental note to call her nana at the first opportunity. “Hope’s been quiet lately. She hasn’t texted me in over a week, and Mom said there hasn’t been a FaceTime call in a couple of days. You know what’s going on with my sister?”
A pang of guilt pierced her heart. She’d seen Hope plenty, but most of the time, they talked about Ivy’s friend’s with benefits mission. Which was mostly because Hope was trying not to dwell or think or talk about the fact that she still hadn’t gotten pregnant. Ivy knew it was weighing heavily on her friend’s heart and mind.
Not that Hope would appreciate Ivy telling her brother that. So instead, she shrugged. “She has Ruby, the bar, her art, a husband. Basically, she has a life—unlike us.”
Joel nodded, not quite looking like he was buying it, but also not pushing the issue. He picked up a photo from her desk. The one of Ivy and her nana that had been taken right before Ivy left for college. Before everything changed.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his steel-gray eyes watching her carefully, and she knew what he was getting at.
A few days after her assault, Ethan and Adam had been accused of cheating on their business finals. Because Hope had been in some of their classes, they accused her of helping them cheat by getting them copies of the exam. It had been a lie, of course, but they knew they could use Ivy’s fear to manipulate Hope into taking the fall for them.
Ivy could have blown the whistle then. Reported the assault and filed charges. But she hadn’t. Instead of fighting for Hope, the way Hope had fought for her, she’d taken the coward’s way out and called Joel. He’d come, bailing out his sister and saving Ivy from having to disclose the thing she hadn’t even been ready to acknowledge.
In the process, Joel had found out what happened. Telling him had been almost unavoidable and given what he’d done for them, the truth was the least he deserved. Which made him one of a handful of people who knew what those college business students had done to her at that frat party one night.
