Jake (California Dreamy) - By Rian Kelley Page 0,2

her sister alive while the police fluttered around her peripheral, offering help, following Ivy’s instructions. Then the wail of the siren as the paramedics arrived.

Ivy had broken her wrist. Her sister had lost her leg, above the knee, and had broken several bones including a vertebrae and femur.

They rode to the hospital together inside an ambulance that rocked through sharp turns and gathered darkness as the sun set and her sister’s conditioned worsened.

When they were kids, Ivy had been all about Holly. She was her big sister by two years and Ivy wanted to do everything she did. Holly had tolerated it well. As teens, the tables turned and it was Holly who spent much of her time looking out for Ivy. Nothing like a dysfunctional family life to pull siblings together—and then eventually tear them apart. Ivy had allowed all those insecurities that were planted by the experience of never being good enough to command their mother’s attention or to deserve the presence of a father, whittle away any shred of self-confidence or value.

After high school, Holly had tried to take Ivy with her. Her sister had received a scholarship to UC Berkeley. California. A fresh start, leaving a dripping Oregon behind and the damp, shadowed mobile home where they had lived with their sometimes sober mother. Her sister was willing to work nights—every night—waitressing, and attend school full time as well, if it meant Ivy was with her and safe.

But Ivy had other ideas, and they all revolved around Trace Patrick. She was in love and so sure of it, at the age of sixteen she’d accepted his proposal, declared herself emancipated and finished high school—because Trace’s parents had insisted—with an engagement ring on her finger. Instead of donning cap and gown, she and Trace had climbed into his shiny blue Ford 150 and shot over back streets and down the thin ribbon of highway all the way to the coast and gotten married, with two strangers as their witnesses.

Ivy had worn a pair of blue jeans, split at the knee, and a red t-shirt with their school mascot holding a baseball bat and with the number four printed on the back—Trace was the state’s top homerun hitter and a killer first baseman with only two steals his entire four years.

They had left the next morning for Arizona, where Trace had been placed by the San Diego Padres. He’d made it to their farm team. A place where he would bulk up and perfect his swing. Only that never happened. And Trace, who had been so full of dreams he’d seemed to float—the very trait that Ivy had needed in her life—came crashing down.

He’d taken Ivy with her. And the only swing he’d improved upon was his left hook. He brawled at the bars and he brought it home afterwards. It took Ivy four years to find her way out.

Ivy had made mistakes. More than a few. Some more serious than others. But she’d fixed what she could and put to rest what she couldn’t. And there was no looking back.

Holly insisted she didn’t. Not even now. Nineteen months after the crash, her sister was still using a cane. The doctors had expected much less of her. They had said that she would never recover full mobility. That she may never do more than sit upright. But they didn’t know Holly, or Ivy, or the circumstance in which they were raised.

The Warner girls were not quitters.

They didn’t run away from their problems—not anymore—they ran toward them.

Holly would walk again, under her own steam. She would run again, with a new

hydraulic leg crafted specially for her. And Ivy would be there with her. For now, it had to be every other weekend. But she hoped that would change. That Holly would finally agree to move west.

Ivy pulled a pair of socks out of the bag, along with a pair of shorts and her runner’s bra. If she ran to the call box, it would cut off a good chunk of time. She stood inside the open car door for a little modesty, dropped her sneakers on the blacktop, and slipped off her sandals. She shimmied into the shorts and then rolled her skirt down to her ankles and off in a single, economical movement. Ivy was a doer. She didn’t like feeling swamped by a problem and knew life was in the solution. She was living proof of that.

She sat down on the edge of the seat and pushed