Chapter 101 He Lied To Me

Chapter 101 He Lied To Me
Chapter 101: He Lied To Me 

Ivy

Three years later 

Finally, the state had decided to let us graduate after making us spend an extra year. 

\~~~~

My palms were sweaty as I waited for my band to be called. Nervously, I turned around and met the familiar faces of the people closest to me. The morning of graduation felt too bright. I stood in the line of black gowns and square caps, the tassel brushing my cheek every time the breeze moved. 

The campus lawn stretched out in front of the stage in neat rows of white chairs. Families held up phones. Someone’s little brother was already crying from the heat. 

I kept my eyes forward and tried to breathe the way the counselor had taught me in the months after I came back from that dreadful hospital stay—slow in through the nose, slower out through the mouth—until the shaking in my hands quieted.

“Miss Ivana Nicole Lennon.” 

When they called my name I walked across the stage on legs that felt borrowed. The dean’s handshake was firm and brief. The diploma cover was actually lighter than I expected. 

“Wow.” I breathed through my mouth, laughing at my own wrong assumptions. 

Applause rose and fell. I turned toward the section where my people were supposed to be sitting and found them immediately.

My Aunt, Lindsay was on her feet, clapping hard enough that her bracelets flashed. Beside her stood my unimpressed father in a suit he only wore for court and funerals, and my new surgically enhanced stepmother with one hand on his arm. 

A few seats over, Julia sat between Marcel and Poppy. Julia looked healthier than the last time I had seen her—color was back in her face, the bruises were long gone—but her eyes were the same careful, knowing eyes that had held me the night before I left Weeping Willow. 

Poppy waved both arms over her head like we were still teenagers. Marcel simply smiled and clapped proudly. To me, he was my dad. 

Before I could look away, I noticed something far away. Nearly across the street. It was a dark shape. A person dressed in all black.

Tall. Still. Separate from the bright cluster of my family. Separate from the passers-by. 

My heart slammed once, hard enough that I felt it in my throat. The figure stood half in the shade of one of the old oak trees that lined the area. Broad shoulders. The way he held his head. Something in the posture that my body recognized before my mind caught up.

Leo. It was him. I could recognize him anywhere. Even in the dark. 

I locked eyes with the shadow and the rest of the ceremony vanished. The handshake with the dean was already over. I was supposed to walk down the steps and return to my seat. 

Instead I stared, pulse racing, every old wound and every old hope rising at the same time. 

For one suspended second I was certain. The set of the shoulders. The stillness. The way the world narrowed to that single point under the tree.

I took the first step down from the stage and looked down to make sure my heels didn't get stuck in between the stairs. 

When I looked up again the space under the oak was empty. He was gone. 

No one stood there. Only sunlight and moving leaves and the ordinary crowd.

I searched the rows as I walked back to my seat. I searched the edges of the lawn, the path that led toward the parking lot, the gaps between families standing for photos. 

Nothing. No familiar stride. No dark head turning away. The figure—if it had ever been more than a trick of light and longing—was gone.

I sat through the rest of the names with my hands locked together in my lap and my eyes still moving, still looking.

Was that truly him?

\~~~~~

Afterward the lawn filled with the usual chaos of gowns and flowers and proud parents. 

Aunt Lindsay reached me first and pulled me into a hug that smelled like the same perfume she had worn since I was sixteen. 

For the first time ever, my father kissed the top of my head and said he was proud in the stiff, bored way he always did. 

My stepmother handed me a small wrapped, strange shaped box and told me I would need it soon. Weird.

Poppy crashed into me next, laughing and crying at the same time, and Marcel waited his turn with the patience of a man who had already seen too many endings to rush the beginnings.

Julia held me the longest. 

“You did it,” she murmured against my hair. “I’m so proud of you, darling.”

I smiled for them as much as I could. Truth was, I didn't want to smile. I wasn't happy. I haven't been since that hospital trip. 

Still, I let them take pictures. I answered the ordinary questions about the ceremony and the heat and whether I was hungry. 

Secretly, I prayed they would get the hint and leave me alone. I always wished to be alone. Always.

The whole time they talked and laughed, my gaze kept sliding past their shoulders, scanning the crowd, the trees, the far sidewalk. Looking for a man who was not there.

Then a different voice cut through the noise.

“Ivy.”

I turned. I knew that voice. 

Andy stood a few feet away holding a bouquet of white roses and greenery. 

A few months after I came back, Poppy said he'd enlisted and left home. Looking at him now, I could tell the army had changed him. 

His hair was shaved close to the scalp. His shoulders were broader, his face was leaner, his skin was tan, the boyish softness gone. 

He looked older. More mature. Like someone who had learned how to stand still under pressure. The sight of him still made something hot and ugly rise in my throat.

He offered a small smile. “Congratulations,” he said. “I’m on leave. I wanted to see you… I brought these.”

He held the flowers out.

I stared at them, then at him. The apology was already in his eyes, the same old repentant look he had worn the night I slammed the door in his face years ago. 

It did not matter. The anger that lived under my ribs remembered everything.

“Don’t,” I said.

He took a step closer. “Ivy, please. I’ve had a long time to think. I’m sorry for all of it. For what I did. For what I cost you. If you’ll just let me—”

I shoved the bouquet back against his chest hard enough that petals scattered. The flowers hit the grass between us.

“Leave.”

His face tightened. “I only wanted to say—”

“I said leave.” My voice stayed low but it carried. “You don’t get to show up on one of the only good days I’ve had and pretend the past is something you can fix with flowers and an apology. Go.”

For a moment he looked like he might argue. Then he nodded once, stiffly, bent to pick up the ruined bouquet, and walked away without another word. 

The space he left behind felt awkward. Poppy’s hand found mine. Aunt Lindsay cleared her throat. Marcel looked at the ground. The tension sat over the group like humidity.

Then Julia squeezed my shoulder, Poppy made a weak joke about the heat, and the ordinary conversation slowly restarted—plans for lunch, questions about my next steps, the usual family noise. 

They moved on the way people do when they decide not to let one person’s shadow ruin the light. 

I let them. I even smiled when it was required.

But as soon as I could, I touched Julia’s elbow and tilted my head toward the quieter edge of the lawn, away from the loudest clusters of graduates and parents.

She understood immediately. We walked until the voices faded to a soft background hum. The oak tree that had held the dark figure earlier stood a short distance away, empty now.

I turned to her. “How is he?”

Julia didn’t pretend not to know who I meant. Her expression gentled into something both fond and careful.

“Leo is in Andorra,” she said. “He loves it there. The quiet. The space. He says the peace and quiet helps him think.”

Andorra. I repeated it so much in my head, just so I wouldn't forget it. He was far away. There's no way he could have been here. 

I must be imagining things. 

“And what about Maddie?” I made myself ask. “What about her child?” 

Julia’s eyes held mine. “They’re both with him. He’s… present for the child. They’re all making a life there, as much as anyone can.”

The words landed exactly where I had known they would, and still they hollowed me out. My vision blurred. A sob rose so fast I couldn’t stop it. 

Julia stepped in immediately, arms around me, one hand cradling the back of my head the way she had the night before I left Weeping Willow.

“I know,” she murmured. “I know it hurts.”

I cried against her shoulder for a long minute, the diploma still clutched in one hand, the sound of distant chatter drifting across the green. When the worst of it eased, I pulled back just enough to speak.

“There’s something else,” I said. My voice was rough. “I need you to know.”

Julia waited, patient.

“I was pregnant.”

Her eyes widened. The hand that had been stroking my hair stilled. “What?”

“After I came back. About two weeks later I started bleeding. Badly. The cramps were awful, Julia. Then I passed out at home. My aunt took me to the hospital where the doctors said my hCG levels were high enough to show that a pregnancy had occurred… and then it was gone. They said it was likely a chemical pregnancy.” 

Julia stared at me. For a moment she seemed unable to find words. Then she pulled me back into her arms, tighter this time.

“Oh, Ivy.” She kissed my temple. “I'm so sorry.” 

“I called him.” I sobbed. “I called him a million times to let him know. But there was no answer.” 

She held me tighter. “Shhh… it's alright.” 

“He told me he'd never leave me. That he will take responsibility for anything that happens. He lied, Julia. He lied to me.” 

“I'm sorry, Ivy.” She apologized. “I'm sorry you had to go through that alone.” 

I closed my eyes and let her hold me. The oak leaves moved overhead. Somewhere behind us my family laughed at something Poppy had said. 

The world practically kept turning, bright and ordinary and completely indifferent to the fact that I had carried a piece of Leo for a few short weeks and then lost it without ever getting the chance to tell him.

Julia didn’t ask whose it had been. She didn’t need to. She trusted me.

When I finally stepped back, she kept her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with the same fierce, protective love she had shown me the night she told me to run.

“You survived that too,” she said quietly. “You’re still standing. That matters more than you know.”

I nodded, even though my throat was too tight for words.

We walked back to the others together. Lindsay was already organizing everyone for another round of photos. Marcel waved us over. Poppy held up her phone and demanded we all smile at once. 

I did. I stood in the middle of the people who loved me, diploma in hand, and smiled for the camera while the empty place inside my chest ached with the knowledge of Andorra, and Maddie, and a child who would never know my name, and the small life that had flickered out before I even knew it was there.

The shutter clicked.

And somewhere very far away, in a country I'd never heard of, the man I had once loved was building a life that no longer had room for me.

Maybe… it's time I moved on myself.