Chasing Ivy (Oak Hill 1)

I looked away because I honestly couldn’t stand seeing that much pain in her eyes.

“When did you do it?” she asked, voice low.

I swallowed down my need to look away and glanced back at her fac

e. She was staring at me intently, eyes full of need.

“The summer after my senior year.”

I paused, thinking back to when I’d begged my father to buy the lot and build her house again. He’d surprised me when he agreed. He said it was a nice house, and that the neighborhood just didn’t seem right without it.

Thinking back, he must have known that I needed some type of closure for that part of my life. As if somehow, building her house would help me heal.

It didn’t necessarily help me heal, but it did bring new clarity to the situation. I was hurt when she left, and so confused. The little boy inside of me wanted to rebuild that house so that maybe… things would go back to normal. But after we finished, a man emerged, and I realized that she was gone.

I also realized that nothing would ever be the same.

Her house had been rebuilt, but she never came back, and her parents…they would forever be gone. The family that once lived there was no longer.

It had been a turning point for me – and it was about that time I started to climb out of my cave, and I started to be the Dawson that everyone knew again.

Not fully, because I’d never truly felt like the Dawson I was when I’d had Ivy by my side, but I was better. Semi-healed.

I thought I’d closed all the gaps in my heart through Breanna but the truth was, I hadn’t. They were sealed, barely, but now that I was standing here looking at Ivy, the girl I’d been chasing for most of my life, those gaps were laid wide open.

And I knew, deep down, the only person to close them all the way, as in pour-cement-over-them closed, was the girl standing only a few feet away from me with tears glistening in her eyes.

Her bottom lip trembled. “But why?”

My heart pounded in my chest because I’d never admitted the truth aloud. Never.

My voice was hoarse and strained. “Because I thought it would bring you back to me.”

Ivy’s mouth parted, just barely, but it did. I swore I heard her take a sharp inhale of breath, too.

I kept my stare on her as her eyes roamed around the porch floor. She was deep in thought, as if trying to come up with some response to what I’d said, but she came up empty-handed.

“Ivy?” I asked, walking the short distance over to her tiny body being held up by the pillar.

She slowly brought her face up to mine, her lip tucked between her teeth.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her brow crinkled. “What? For what? You’re saying sorry for building my exact house because you thought it would bring me back to you? How could you say sorry about something like that? It sounds like it’s from some amazing, romantic movie – like, The Notebook, or something.”

I chuckled but quickly replaced my half-smile with a realness that I felt all the way inside my chest.

“I’m so sorry about your parents.” Her brow twitched and her mouth formed a straight line. “I never got to tell you that, and I’m sorry.”

She swallowed, searching my face. “It’s fine…”

I placed my hands on her shoulders, feeling the dampness of her shirt along my palms. “Nothing about that situation was fine. Not what happened to your parents, not the fact that you had to up and move within a day – without being able to say goodbye to your friends—and not the fact that when you came to see me when you needed me most, you saw me with another girl…and it wasn’t fine for me to think that you just up and left, without even trying to come back. I’m just sorry for it all.”

A lone tear fell down her face, slowing sliding over her high cheekbone and all the way to the bottom of her delicate jaw. I took my hand off her shoulder and swiped it away with my finger.

She brought those green, tear-filled eyes up to look at me, and the only thing I wanted to do was take away the last six years of her pain, the last six years of her hurt. She was so strong, I knew that, but no one was that strong.

My heart stretched in my chest as the words poured out of my mouth. “I know you felt like you were alone in it all, but you weren’t, Ivy.” My eyes bounced back and forth between hers, hoping she could understand what I was trying to tell her—what my heart was trying to tell her. “I was right there with you, every step of the way. I never stopped hoping that you were okay, I never stopped missing you, and I never, ever, replaced you.”