No rushing, no looking at the time, no parking lots or locked office doors or borrowed minutes. Just her and me in a space that belonged to neither one of us, which somehow made it easier for both of us to be completely present in it.
She gave me everything she had and I gave it back and by the time we were done the room felt different from when we walked into it.
We laid there after. Not talking much. She was on her back and I was beside her, she had that look on her face that she got when her mind was moving. I watched the ceiling and let her have the silence because she needed it and I wasn’t in a rush.
After a while she started getting herself together. Slow, the way a woman moved when she didn’t fully want to leave but understood that she had to. I watched her find her shoes and fix her hair in the mirror across from the bed without saying anything.
At the door she stopped and turned around and looked at me.
She didn’t say anything right away. Just looked.
“Go home Ivy,” I said. It was damn near five in the morning now. I didn’t know what lie she was going to pull out of her ass, but her dude had to be a fool to believe it.
Something moved across her face. Not hurt exactly. More like reality. She nodded once and walked out.
I laid there for another few minutes after the door closed. Staring at the ceiling listening to the hotel settle around me.
I had been giving her time. Grace. Space to move at whatever pace she needed to move at because I understood that what I was asking her to do wasn’t small. Walk away from a life she built. From a man who had done nothing wrong. From a future she had planned down to the venue and the color scheme.
But grace had a limit and I was approaching it.
I needed to speed this up.
—
I left the hotel shortly after Ivy.
I wasn’t going home.
I doubled back and came around the long way, came down her street from the opposite end, and parked across from her house in a spot that gave me a clean line of sight to the front without putting me directly in view of anyone coming out. Cut the engine. Settled in.
The plan was simple. Wait until both of them left for work. Then move.
I had been sitting there maybe forty minutes when Ivy came out of the house. Earlier than I expected. She had her dog Goldie on the leash and her earbuds in, moving with the easy rhythm of somebody running a routine they’d done a hundred times.
Morning walk. She went down the block and turned the corner and I tracked her until she was out of view then sat back.
Twenty minutes later she came back up the street.
She got to the front porch and was reaching for the door and then stopped. Went inside without Goldie, rushing fast like she had forgotten something and needed to grab it quick. She hooked the leash to the porch railing and Goldie sat there, tail going, waiting on her person to come back.
I was out of the car before I fully processed that I had made the decision.
I pulled my hoodie up to cover my face and crossed the street at a pace that wasn’t running but wasn’t casual either. Purposeful. Like a man who knew where he was going and had somewhere to be. I came up the walkway, unhooked the leash from the railing in one motion, and kept walking.
Goldie looked up at me and her tail kept going because she was a dog and little dogs like that didn’t understand stranger danger when a stranger moved with enough confidence. I snatched her up quick. Then, I walked back across the street, opened my back door, and threw her in gently.
I got in the driver seat and pulled off slow.
Checked the mirror once.
The porch was empty. Ivy wasn’t back yet.
I drove two blocks before I let out a breath and looked in the rearview at this dog sitting in my backseat looking out the window like she was on a Sunday drive. Curly fur, big dumb happy eyes, tongue out.
I shook my head.
I had robbed stash houses. I had walked into warehouses full of armed men. I had put people in the ground without losing sleep.
