Page 100 of Yours To Hold

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“Better you than me.”

We part ways and I head back over to my siblings. Peter is now there.

“Nash doing okay?” he asks.

“He’s doing fine. You both are.”

Peter is beaming as the band switches to a slow song. The lights in the crowd get low. It makes the ache in my chest even stronger.

Maybe one day. Maybe one day I’ll get something like what they’re writing this song about.

It just won’t be with Ivy Connors.

ChapterTwenty-Eight

IVY

“Alittle to the left.”

“You didn’t like it there.”

“It doesn’t look right there either.” I focus onSummer Nights in Bloom. It’s going to be the main focal piece of the new gallery Sasha is opening.

One that she wants to have open by next Friday.

“Are you going to just stand there and look at this, or let us hang it?” the mover asks.

“Set it down.”

“Can you still not decide where to hang it?” Gemma shoulders her way into the gallery, two coffees in hand.

“It doesn’t feel right.” I grab the coffee from her hand, sucking back half of it in one gulp.

“I thought it was good where it was.”

I link my arm through Gemma’s and pull her close. “It can’t be good. Everything has to be perfect. I don’t want to fail.”

“You’re Ivy Connors. You don’t know how to fail.”

I rest my head on her shoulder. “But what if I do?”

“Sasha wouldn’t have picked you if she didn’t think you could do this. There is no one better for this job than you.”

Tears well in my eyes. I’ve never been a big crier, but now it seems my emotions are on a hair trigger. “It feels weird being back here and not seeing them.”

Gemma shifts, looking me directly in the eyes. She’s got a fight in them that I don’t usually see. She can be scary when she wants to be.

“Why haven’t you?”

My gaze shifts to the floor. I stare at my feet. “Because I’m embarrassed.”

“Why?”

“Because I left town without telling them. I tucked tail and ran and didn’t look back.”

Gemma laughs, looking around the small studio. “Who would’ve thought you’d end back up in Dixon?”

I join her, laughing what feels like the first real laugh since I got back. “Not me.”

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