At a particularly steep section, Ivy’s ATV hits a slick patch and slides sideways into a muddy ditch. The machine tilts precariously, one wheel sinks in the mud, the other spins uselessly in the air. She tries to power out of it, but the wheel only digs deeper into the muck.
I kill my engine and dismount, I push up my helmet’s visor and shout, “Madison, stop!” Thankfully, she hears me and listens.
Slogging through ankle-deep mud, I reach Ivy. “Are you hurt?” I yell over the thundering rain.
She pushes up her visor. Rain cascades down her face. To my surprise, she’s grinning. “Only my pride.”
I laugh despite myself, the sound unexpected in the middle of this chaos. “Cut the engine,” I instruct. The ATV is wedged at an awkward angle, its frame sunk deep in the saturated ground.
Ivy climbs off, standing beside me in the pouring rain. We’re both already soaked to the bone, clothes plastered to our bodies. Her hair has escaped its braid entirely, caramel strands darkened by rain clinging to her neck and shoulders.
“We need to lift up and out,” I tell her, moving to the rear of the machine. “Get back on and give it some gas when I say so.”
“You can lift it?” she asks.
“One way to find out,” I wait for her to sit, then bend my knees and get a solid grip under the frame. One... two... three!”
I heave upward with everything I’ve got, muscles straining. The ATV shifts, lifting enough for the wheel to gain purchase.
“Now!”
Ivy guns the engine. The wheel catches, spraying an explosion of mud that hits me square in the chest and face. The force of it nearly knocks me backward.
The ATV lurches forward onto stable ground. I stand there, a mud-covered statue in the pouring rain. I can’t even see through the thick layer coating my face.
Ivy kills the engine. For a moment, there’s only the sound of rain pounding around us. Then I hear it. Her laughter, bright and unrestrained, cuts through the storm.
I wipe mud from my eyes to see her doubled over on the ATV, shoulders shaking with mirth. The sight is so incongruous—prim, professional Ivy West covered in mud, laughing like a child in a downpour—that I can’t help it. I start laughing too.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps between fits of laughter. “Your face. You should see your face!”
“You did that on purpose,” I joke, laughing.
“I didn’t!” she protests. “But I’m not sorry it happened either.”
I scoop up a handful of mud and take a threatening step toward her. Her eyes widen.
“Don’t you dare, Blackstone.”
“What are you going to do about it, Devil’s Ivy?”
She squeals and darts away, but slips in the mud. I reach to steady her, but her momentum carries us both down. We land in a spectacular splash, a tangle of limbs and laughter in the middle of a muddy puddle.
The rain pounds down on us as we lie there, laughing too hard to get up. Half on top of me, the front of her helmet bumps mine. Her face is inches from mine, mud-streaked and beautiful.
Our laughter fades, and I realize how close we are. She clocks it as well. Her breath whispers against my face, and I see the raindrops clinging to her eyelashes.
“Thorne,” she breathes, and the way she says my name sends heat through my veins despite the cold rain.
“You guys are weird together,” Madison announces.
Ivy jolts off me.
When the hell did Madison sneak up? She’s looking between us, that calculating expression I’m learning to recognize settling on her face. It means she’s scheming.
I stand and offer Ivy my hand. She takes it and asks her half-sister, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Madison says with false innocence. “Just an observation.”
