feels hollow. I run my fingers through my hair, squeezing my eyes shut. “You don’t want to see me?”
Ivy’s breath is shaking, and the thudding of my blood is starting to grow louder. The edges of my vision are going fuzzy.
This can’t be happening. Ivy is everything to me, but she’s pushing me away. What am I supposed to do without her?
“Goodbye, Luca,” she whispers. The dead air that follows sounds louder than any noise I’ve ever heard. I stare at the screen, not understanding.
The thudding of boots on the floor makes me turn my head. Three palace guards are rushing toward me. I hold up my hand to stop them.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s Prince Beckett, sir,” the leader says. “He’s disappeared.”
37
Ivy
“You should have told him,” Georgina says when I stare at the phone.
“I can’t, Georgie. If he comes back here, his reputation will be tainted. I’ve seen the articles talking about his return to Argyle—that’s where he belongs. Being with me will only bring him down.”
“Being with you is where he wants to be, Ivy.” Her eyebrows draw together.
My heart squeezes so hard I feel like I can’t breathe. Tears sting my eyes, but I blink them away. I shake my head. “He thinks he wants that. I’ll just be a footnote in his autobiography.”
“You are the stupidest smart person I know. Did you know that?” Georgie huffs.
I try to laugh, but it just comes out as a bark. I lean back against the hospital pillows and stare at the ceiling tiles. There’s a water stain on the one right above the bed, its jagged edges looking as broken as my heart.
“I need to do one good thing, Georgie. You know? If he comes back here, he’ll be dragged into this whole E. coli mess, into the mess with Margot, into my pregnancy. It’ll be a scandal of epic proportions. He doesn’t deserve that.”
“Don’t you think he should decide that? Why are you pushing him away?”
I can’t answer that question out loud, so I just turn my head away. I’m pushing him away because I love him more than anything else in the world, and I don’t want to drag him down into my mess. I’ve seen the pictures of him in Argyle, smiling at his cheering subjects. I’ve seen the way his face looks when he’s surrounded by his family in his home country.
He looks happy.
Who am I to drag him away from that?
Georgie lets out a sigh. “You didn’t even tell him you were in the hospital, Ivy. Don’t you think he has a right to know?”
“He said that people might be trying to get back at him, and that’s why the bacterial outbreak at my bakery happened.” I stare at Georgie, my eyebrows drawing together. “I could lose Spoonful of Sugar.”
“You could lose him.”
My heart thumps.
I don’t know what to think. I’ve closed the bakery for the rest of the week. I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.
A soft knock on the door is followed by Irving’s bearded face poking through. “Hey, Ivy,” the twins’ eldest brother says with a sad smile. “How are you feeling?”
He comes in, followed by the other six siblings. All seven of them surround my bed, looking at me with sad looks on their face.
Irving lifts a big, meaty hand to reveal a bouquet of flowers. I smile, nodding to the side table in my room. He places the flowers down and squeezes Georgie’s shoulder. Glancing at his sister, they exchange a loaded look.
“What?” I ask, looking between Georgie and Irving.
Irving takes a deep breath. “The boys and I cleared out the bakery today. We got rid of all the pastries—both baked and prepped, and threw out any food that might be contaminated. Everything besides salt, basically.”
I nod.
Irving clears his throat, staring at his hands. “We noticed the lock on the back door had been tampered with. There were scratches all over it, and the key doesn’t fit in it straight.”
My heart takes off running, and a machine next to me starts to beep.
“So, Luca was right?” I whisper, glancing at Georgina. “This was malicious?”
Her eyes are wide. She stares from me to her brother, who bites his lip. The five brothers shift their weight, and Georgie and Giselle take one of my hands each.
“I don’t know, Ivy. I don’t have any evidence of that. But…”
The word hangs between us.
My stomach twists uncomfortably. I move my arm, and the IV tube sticking out of it jabs me uncomfortably. Huffing,