“You know what, I can’t trust you enough to tell you. Not with Hannah’s life on the line. I never should have trusted you in the first place if this is how you’ve felt the entire time.”
“I love you!”
“No, you fucking don’t!” I yelled, taking a step back from her. “Love doesn’t write shit like this. Love protects, it doesn’t expose its partner to the elements and then watch them break. Love doesn’t twist the heart of a little girl for career gain.”
“Connor,” she pled, stepping forward, but I put a hand out.
“Every single one of those pictures is me protecting Hannah. That’s love. That’s the love I would have given you—the love I did give you. But damn, Ivy. You’re worse than the paparazzi. At least they stand outside, taking pictures of the very edges of my life and never get in. You...You worked your way into my heart—into Hannah’s heart—and captured us from the inside until you ripped your way out.”
I didn’t wait for her reply. There was nothing else she could say.
Two hours later, with Hannah dropped off at preschool, I paced in my kitchen. I needed to keep everything as normal for her as possible. Even if her normal wasn’t going to exist by pick-up time.
“You’re going to wear a path through the floor,” Lukas warned me.
“Don’t give a fuck,” I responded.
Mr. Barnes walked by on his own pacing path, on yet another phone call.
The doorbell rang, and Langley pointed her finger at me. “You stay there.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” I snapped back. Barnes had put security at the curb, which meant I was not winning any points with my neighbors, but the paps weren’t getting up to the door. Fuck it, I’d send the neighbors fruit baskets to make up for it or something.
Hell, I might as well have let them in, considering I’d been sleeping with one.
Langley opened the door to see Porter standing on the other side, two drink carriers full of coffee in his hands. “It seemed like it might be too early for whiskey.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the carriers and passing them to Lukas as Porter— “Shit! That’s Shea!”
Heads turned as Hannah’s social worker pushed through the crowd of paparazzi, the guards not helping her as much as they could have.
“Shit. Porter?” I asked.
“She’s a social worker?” he asked, blinking.
“Yeah, can you—”
Shit, she was getting jostled at the edge of the crowd.
“On it.” He strode toward the paparazzi just as the guards stepped aside to let Shea through. It looked like her bag got tangled with one of the pap’s, and as she tugged it free, she fell backward—straight into Porter.
Thank God.
He picked her up, dwarfing her tiny frame, and brought her back to the house, only putting her down once he was inside the foyer. She barely came up to mid-chest on him.
“I could have walked,” she snapped, pushing her glasses up her nose. “But...thank you.” She peered up at him for a second look, quickly glancing away.
“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly.
“Mr. Bridgerton, let’s,” she looked around, “the dining room will work since it seems you have a full staff today.” She headed over before I even responded.
“Holy curves on that one,” Lukas remarked, watching Shea’s backside.
“Shut the fuck up,” Porter snapped.
We both turned to look at him, but it was Langley, still on the phone, who snapped. “No. You’d eat her alive. No,” she waggled her finger at Porter and went to join Shea.
One of Porter’s eyebrows rose like he didn’t mind the thought, his eyes still glued to Shea.
I shook my head and walked over to the dining room. I was surrounded by assholes who thought with their dicks, which wasn’t a surprise since that’s what got me here.
“It’s already been taken down from the digital site,” Langley was telling Shea. “You know they wouldn’t do that unless they knew it was false reporting.”
“There’s zero context in those pictures, and every word of that article is slander,” Barnes added, turning back to his phone, “No, I’m still holding for Judge Strom.”
“Connor?” Shea prompted. I couldn’t get a read on her, didn’t know if she believed me or not.
Please don’t take my kid.
“The picture of Hannah is when she was deciding if she was going to ride the Ferris wheel. She’s scared of heights. The one in the cafe is me giving my mother cash because it keeps her and her drugs away from Hannah. The one with the woman is my sister, Jessica, who had fallen on the sidewalk, and I yes—used a little force—to get her to the car so she’d listen to me and go to rehab. I gave her Hannah’s Mother’s Day present, and she agreed to go. The bag of drug stuff fell out of her purse, and I happened to pick it up, you just can’t see me yelling at her. I have never, in my life, ever hurt a woman, and I’ve never done anything to harm Hannah beside let Ivy Harris into her life.”
Shea simply assessed me, watching for tells I couldn’t have because I wasn’t lying.
Then she ripped off her glasses and rubbed her forehead. “This is a fucking mess, Connor.”
“I know.”
“Do you? DSS has been taking calls since seven a.m. from people demanding we take Hannah, and people asking to foster her.”
The bottom dropped out from under my feet, and I clutched the dining room table to keep from falling.
“Don’t do this to her,” I begged. I wasn’t ever the guy to hit my knees, but for Hannah, I’d plead, beg, whatever it took. “None of this is true. None of it.”
“I believe you,” she admitted.
Some of the blood returned to my head.
“But I have to be sure. I answer to people, too.” She removed a paper bag from her purse. “Have you taken any form of drugs, whether prescribed or not?”
“Not one.”
“Not a painkiller for all that hockey stuff? It’s pretty violent, right?”
“Not even for that.”
“You don’t watch hockey?” Porter interrupted.
“I get enough of grown men beating things in my day job,” she answered Porter before handing me a cup. “Pee. Now.”
“I’ll…” Barnes sighed. “Watch him. Because that’s really what I wanted to do with my morning. No, not you,” he said into the phone, walking me to the bathroom. “I’m still holding for Judge Strom and so help me God, I will hold until he appears at the other end of this line or you can give me an update.”
Three minutes later, we stood at the dining room table, staring at a stick with my pee on it.
I wondered if this
was how women felt, waiting to see if they were pregnant.
“Strom!” Barnes exclaimed and left the room, finally getting his call.
“Nervous?” Lukas asked.
“Nope. I’ve never done an illegal drug in my life.” I looked straight at Shea when I said it.
She flat-out sighed in relief when she read the test. “Negative. No need for further testing. Thank you, God.” She looked up at me. “The last thing I wanted to do was take Hannah. I know she’s loved. I know you’re doing well with her and that she’s stable. But don’t ever doubt that had this come back a different way, I would have yanked her.”
I nodded, unable to say anything.
“So she stays?” Porter clarified.
“She stays,” Shea confirmed, looking at me, and not him. “Everything else is circumstantial, or will be as soon as I talk to your sister.”
“You can do that right now. I’ll take you myself,” Barnes said. “Best you not come,” he told me. “So it doesn’t look like coercion.”
“Is she sober?” I asked.
Barnes nodded. “Sober, and capable of making sound decisions. I just talked to Judge Strom. She signed over her parental rights about fifteen minutes ago and chose to back to rehab.”
She chose to go back.
Holy shit, I had a chance at keeping Hannah and getting Jessica into her life if she stayed clean.
“Let’s go,” Shea said to Barnes. “I want this airtight so I can start getting adoption approval. And you might want to make some kind of statement to get those vultures off the lawn. They’ll scare Hannah.”
The two were still talking as they walked out of the house together.
“You won,” Lukas said, clapping me on the back.
“Yeah,” I answered. I’d won Hannah. I’d kept her safe.
I’d just lost my heart...lost Ivy...in the process.
If I’d ever really had her in the first place.
Chapter 19
Ivy
“How did your editor manage to get into your iPad?” Pepper asked from where she perched on the armrest of the chair Eric occupied.
I’d been terrified Eric would think the worst of me—Connor certainly did, without even giving me the chance to explain—but luckily, Eric had ushered me into their home with a sympathetic smile. Pepper had been furious on my behalf the second I’d walked in the door—our first real chance to talk after I’d practically ambushed when they’d come to take Hannah.