Chapter 12 - Friend
632 Words
"Good morning," she said. "I'm Helena."
"Ivy."
"I know."
There was no warmth in it and no coldness either. Just information. Competence. The tray held black coffee, cut fruit, scrambled eggs, dry toast, and a small vase with a single white ranunculus that looked too deliberate to be accidental.
"Dr. Renate will re-check your hand at eight," Helena said. "Mr. Vanderbilt asked that you eat first."
"Did he."
"He did."
"And if I don't?"
Her expression did not change.
"Then he will still know you didn't."
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Helena's gaze flicked once to the envelope on the bench behind me and then back to my face.
"He said to tell you the paper can wait until after coffee," she said. "He also said you would open it before coffee. He was correct about that too, I assume."
"Is he always intolerable this early?"
"He is intolerable at every hour," Helena said. "Breakfast will improve your odds."
She left before I could decide whether I liked her.
I ate because dizziness is not a moral victory. Two bites into the eggs, my phone lit up again.
Mira.
I answered so fast I almost dropped it.
"Ivy? Oh my God." Her voice came through in one hard rush, already halfway to tears and fury. "Your phone finally came back to life. I've been texting since midnight. Are you okay? Where are you? t****k is saying you had some kind of breakdown and security removed you, and Auston's publicist just sent over this disgusting line about you being emotionally unstable, and if I see that man in the street I will literally go to prison."
For one second, I closed my eyes.
Mira's voice had always done that to me. Not because it was gentle. It wasn't. Because it was one of the only voices in my life that arrived without calculation.
"I'm okay," I said, which was not true enough to qualify as a lie.
"That pause was not convincing."
"My hand is fractured."
Silence.
Then, very softly: "What?"
"It's splinted. I'm fine."
"You are not fine. Where are you?"
I looked through the glass wall at a line of pale hills falling into morning haze.
"Safe," I said.
"That is not a location."
"I know."
She exhaled hard. "Did he do this?"
I thought of Auston standing there last night, perfect hair, perfect jaw, perfect stillness, doing nothing while Victoria pressed her weight through bone.
"He let it happen."
Mira made a sound I had never heard from her before. Something low and ugly and absolute.
"Come to my place," she said immediately. "I mean it. The couch is terrible and my upstairs neighbor plays reggaeton like it's a hate crime, but you can have it as long as you want. I don't care what schedule I have. I will cancel things."
My throat tightened before I could stop it.
"I might take you up on that."
"There is no might. You're taking me up on it. Also, for the record, if he sends one more story to the press about you being clingy, I am going on camera and telling the world he can't locate his own socks without female labor."
That got a real laugh out of me, small and painful and still real.
"Don't do anything yet," I said.
"I wasn't planning to. I was planning to do six things yet."
"Mira."
"Fine. One thing. Text me an address when you can. And Ivy?"
"What?"
"Whatever story they're selling today, don't you dare start believing it because you're tired."
After we hung up, I sat very still with the phone in my lap.
That was the problem with being loved correctly, even by one person. It made every counterfeit version impossible to ignore.
I reached for the envelope.
- Writer
