Chapter 88: Call My Dad

Chapter 88: Call My Dad

Leo

“These bags are heavy,” I jokingly said to Madison as I helped her load everything we’d bought for the baby into the trunk of my car.

She laughed. “Whose fault is that? You’re the one who wouldn’t stop adding things to the cart. It’s your fault they’re heavy.”

I laughed with her. “True. Guess I got a little too excited.”

That was the truth. Helping Madison look at apartments and then walking through a kids’ store picking out the softest blankets and the smallest clothes had been exactly what I needed today.

Something practical. Something that didn’t require me to think about the girl I had left crying in my bedroom this morning.

Contrary to the picture I had built of her in my head from watching her strained, almost nonexistent relationship with Ivy, Madison was easy to be around.

She was straightforward and funny in a dry way that didn’t demand anything from me. She didn’t look at me like I was a problem that needed solving.

She just… existed beside me, talking about leases and due dates and the ridiculous price of baby monitors.

It kept my mind off Ivy. Mostly.

I finished packing the last bag into the trunk, closed it, and slid into the driver’s seat. Madison was already buckling her seatbelt, launching into another story about some fight that had broken out in her expectant-mothers group chat.

I listened with half an ear, smiling when she expected me to, while the other half of my attention drifted.

How was Ivy feeling right now? Was she still upset? Had she calmed down, or was she still sitting somewhere in the house replaying the way I had turned my face away from her kiss?

Out of a mix of residual worry and the simple, stubborn need to know she was okay, I pulled my phone from the cupholder and opened the home security app.

What I saw was not what I expected.

She wasn’t in my bedroom. She wasn’t in the guest room with Poppy. She was standing in the foyer, kissing Anderson.

Again.

My hands started shaking so hard the phone slipped and landed on my thigh.

Madison stopped mid-sentence. The smile she had been wearing since the moment she fell in love with the apartment we had viewed earlier vanished the second she saw my face.

She picked up the phone before I could stop her.

Whatever joy had been in her expression drained away so fast I felt guilty for being the reason it disappeared.

I took the phone back from her, intending to close the app, but my thumb froze over the screen.

On the feed, Anderson was already guiding Ivy toward the stairs that led to his bedroom he was occupying.

She followed him. Reluctantly. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand the entire way.

Even through the grainy, far-from-4K quality of the camera, I could see the evidence. Flushed, pale skin. Reddened nose. The way her shoulders kept hitching.

She had been crying. She was still crying.

And that bastard was leading her straight to his bed while the tears were still wet on her face.

He knew she was sad. He knew she was vulnerable. That was exactly why he was moving so fast.

I watched him open the bedroom door, usher her inside, and lock it behind them.

My heart started slamming against my ribs hard enough that I sat up straighter in the seat. Fingers tightened around the phone until the edges bit into my skin.

Somewhere inside me a desperate, stupid hope still lived—that after the kiss she would realize how wrong it was, that she would push him away, that she would leave the room and come back to whatever broken thing we still had left.

I was wrong.

There was only one space in Ivy’s heart, and Anderson had owned it for years. Nothing I had done, nothing I had given, nothing I had tried to become for her had ever stood a real chance.

The feed kept running.

He sat her down on the edge of his bed and wrapped an arm around her in a gesture that was supposed to look like comfort.

To me it looked like an opportunist waiting for the exact right moment of weakness. He didn’t care that she was hurting. He only cared that the hurt made her soft enough to take what he wanted.

Fucking bastard.

I should have put him down the first time he crossed a line. I should have ended it years ago after Estella, before my mother, before this.

Anderson had a talent for taking every woman I had ever loved. Estella. My mother. Now Ivy.

He whispered something to her. She paused for a moment, looking him in the eyes. Then she nodded.

I felt a burning sensation in my chest. Ivy, what did you agree to?

On the screen he leaned in and kissed her again. Even through the poor quality I could read her body language. She was still crying. Still not fully in the moment.

He didn’t care. He deepened the kiss anyway, one hand already sliding under the hem of her top.

Madison sat completely silent in the passenger seat. When I glanced over I saw tears running down her own face. She reached for the tissue box in the glove compartment and wiped them away without a word.

I felt torn in two.

Part of me wanted to abandon my own collapsing chest and focus on her instead. Crying while pregnant wasn’t good. She shouldn’t have to see any of this.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “You shouldn’t see this.”

She gave a broken little chuckle through the tears. “Why? We both got cheated on, Leo. Why are you still such a gentleman?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but the feed pulled my eyes back.

Anderson had laid Ivy down on the bed.

He was on top of her now, still kissing her while his hands worked. Her top came off first. I could practically feel the hungry satisfaction rolling off him as he pulled the fabric over her head and tossed it aside.

His own shirt followed seconds later.

The worst part—the part that carved something permanent out of my chest—was that Ivy was still crying underneath him.

She was shedding silent tears. She wasn’t matching his urgency. She wasn’t even present but he was already sliding her leggings down her legs like her tears were irrelevant.

No. She wouldn’t. Ivy wouldn’t dare do this.

A sharp, vicious pain exploded behind my ribs, so sudden and intense I hissed through my teeth. I looked at the screen again.

She was down to her underwear and he was pushing his own pants down. I felt my heart break in a way that was almost audible.

The phone slipped from my fingers and hit the floorboard. I clutched the left side of my chest with both hands, bending forward as the pain radiated outward in hot, crushing waves.

“Leo!” Madison’s voice cracked with panic.

She scrambled for the phone, snatched it off the floor, and immediately killed the feed without looking at it again.

Good. I didn’t need to see the rest. I already knew how it ended. I reclined the seat as far as it would go and stabbed the button to lower the window.

Air. I needed air.

My chest felt like someone had wrapped steel bands around it and was tightening them with every second. The more I tried to drag oxygen in, the sharper the pain became.

“Leo!” Madison leaned over me, both of her hands covering the one I still had pressed to my chest. “What’s happening? What can I do? Talk to me!”

The pain was worse than any punch I had ever taken in the ring. The kind that didn’t care about technique or recovery time.

Ivy did it. She actually let him in.

Madison must have decided I wasn’t going to answer, because she climbed fully into my lap, straddling me in the cramped space of the driver’s seat. “Leo, hang on!”

Her hands came down on my chest in a frantic, rhythmic pattern—two firm hits, then she pinched my nose shut and sealed her mouth over mine, forcing air into my lungs.

She kept repeating it, nearly sobbing between attempts, her entire body shaking.

I doubted she even knew what she was doing. The technique was messy, harmful and desperate. But somehow it was working. The bands around my ribs loosened just enough for a real breath to slip through.

She leaned in to blow another breath into my mouth. I caught her wrists and stopped her.

“Hospital,” I managed. The word came out rough. “Get me to a hospital. Call my mom.”

I somehow dragged myself into the passenger seat while she scrambled out of the car and into the driver’s position.

The space was too small for someone my size so I had to fold myself almost in half just to fit.

Madison’s hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped the phone as she scrolled through her contacts.

She found my mother’s number, put it on speaker, and started the car at the same time, already pulling into traffic toward the nearest hospital.

No answer.

“I’ll call again,” she said, voice tight, and redialed.

Still nothing.

Of course. Why would she answer? She had a new family now. A new son who didn’t come with the kind of complications I brought.

The pain in my chest spiked again, white-hot and nauseating. “Fuck!”

“I’ll try again—”

“No.” I cut her off, eyes closed against the ceiling of the car. “Call my dad.”