Chapter Eight
Secret In The Open
Zora
The second the name leaves Skye’s mouth, I feel the ground tilt under me.
“Ivy.”
I want to clap a hand over her lips, rewind time, drag her into the back and shake her until she remembers how to keep a goddamn secret.But it’s too late.The name is out there, ringing through the shop like a bell I can’t un-ring.
And Maverick had heard it.I know he did.I saw the way he froze, the way his knuckles went white on the edge of his chair.His storm-gray eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before he shoved back from his chair like the air had been ripped from his lungs.
Shit.
“Maverick...”I start, but he is already stalking toward the back, shoulders tight and jaw locked.
Luke’s laughter fills the silence.“Well, damn.I didn’t know Zora had a little mini-me running around.Explains why she’s always in a rush to get home.”
“Shut up, Luke,” Alistair snapped, voice like a blade.His gaze focuses on me, worried.Of course he knew, Skye wouldn’t and couldn’t keep anything from him.
Skye bites her lip, her face pale now that she realized what she’d done.“Zora, I’m sorry...”
I force a smile, brittle and thin.“It’s fine.”
It isn’t fine.It’s a goddamn disaster.
The crew’s eyes linger on me, some curious, others protective, all pressing in until I feel like I can’t breathe.I pack up my camera with hands that shake, muttering something about editing deadlines before slipping out the door as fast as I can without breaking into a run.
I don’t remember getting in my car or driving home.Everything was simply automatic until I put my camera down on the hallway table.Ivy is sprawled on the living room floor, crayons scattered like confetti, drawing another masterpiece.She looks up when I walk in, her face splitting into a grin that melted the ice in my chest.
“Mommy!”She holds up her paper proudly.“It’s me and Bun-Bun at the park.”
I drop to my knees and hug her tightly, burying my face in her curls.She smells like strawberry shampoo and crayons, warm and safe and mine.
“It’s beautiful, baby,” I whisper, kissing her head.
The nanny leaves and for an hour, I let myself get lost in her world, helping her build a block tower, listening to her chatter about a butterfly she saw at school, making grilled cheese for dinner while she tells Bun-Bun more elaborate stories.
But the whole time, my mind keeps circling back to Maverick.To the way he’d looked when he heard her name.Like the earth had cracked open under him.
After dinner, Ivy curls against me on the couch, her head heavy on my arm as we watch a cartoon.Her voice is soft and drowsy when she speaks.
“Mommy?”
“Yeah, baby?”
She yawns, blinking up at me with those gray eyes I’d avoided naming for six years.His eyes.
“When things are hard, you just gotta keep swinging.”
The words steal the air from my lungs.My heart stutters.Keep swinging.It was something Maverick used to say back when we were kids, when life kicked him in the teeth and he’d grin through the blood anyway.His mantra.His armor.Ivy has never heard it from me.I buried it along with every other piece of him.
My vision blurs.I smooth her hair back, forcing my voice to steady.“Where’d you hear that?”
She shrugs, already drifting toward sleep.“Dunno.Just thought of it.”
Tears burn hot in my eyes as I carry her to bed, tucking Bun-Bun into her arms before kissing her forehead.She sighs in her sleep, content and happy, not knowing a single thing about the storm brewing outside our happy little bubble.
