Solstice (Midsummer #3)

21. Ivy

21

Ivy

APRIL

I stared at myself in the mirror, twisting to the right, then to the left, admiring this catastrophe of a dress. My mother had picked the designer, the hemline, and the details. All I had to do was show up and let them put it on me. It weighed a ton and cost even more due to the overwhelming amount of diamonds embedded in the lacing. I’d admit it made me look like a princess, but it wasn’t me.

I’d get married in cut-off shorts and a tank top as long as I got to have my spouses afterward, as long as the person at the end of the aisle was someone I wanted to marry.

I used to hate Lex, and the ten-year-old year girl inside of me cringed at the thought of saying “I do” to someone who’d only ever made me want to say I definitely don’t. Putting on the dress made it real. In less than a month, it would be legal. I’d worked my whole life to get to Congress, to implement change, to prove to my legacy that I was a worthy addition. But all anyone cared about was this stupid dress and a promise to a man I’d hated for most of my life.

“Suck it in, Kit.” Abigail yanked on the zipper behind our sister, her ginger hair falling over her shoulder.

“I’m trying,” Kit said. “It’s too tight.”

“Mother is going to kill you.” Abigail grimaced. “We only have a few weeks until the wedding.”

“Mother will get over it,” I cut in. “If you need a bigger dress, we’ll get you a bigger dress.”

Abigail and I took after our father’s side of the family—tall and lean with a high metabolism. Kit took after our Aunt Victoria on our mother’s side. She had hips and an ass and big breasts that I had envied in my adolescence. She’d never been a “sample size,” much to the chagrin of our mother and most of the media. Kit loved her curves, and she’d never diet for anyone except herself. Definitely not our mother.

“Give it up, Abigail.” Kit reached back and unzipped it, peeling it off her body before hanging it back up.

“Maybe with another layer of Spanx?” Abigail anxiously picked at her fingers, a tick I was sure annoyed Evelyn Washington to no end.

“If I put any more Spanx on, I’ll be a stuffed sausage.”

The bridal shop attendant came into the dressing room, eyeing a nearly naked Kit. “Everything okay?”

Kit shook her head. “We’re going to need a size twelve.”

The attendant’s fake grin widened. “We don’t carry a size twelve. I’ll have to have it specially made.”

“Great. Get to it.” Kit turned toward me, reaching for her jeans. “I’m done here, right?”

“Wait, come on.” Abigail sulked closer. “We never hang out, the three of us. I miss my sisters.”

“We’ve never been the hanging out type.” Kit narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious of our younger sister’s motivations.

“Don’t you want to change that?” Abigail looked from Kit to me and back again. “Shouldn’t we like…look out for each other or something?”

“We do.” Kit pursed her lips. “It’s called living our own lives to make it more difficult for our mother to control us. If we scatter like rats, we’re harder to pick off.”

“C’mon, Kit,” I said with a laugh. “I could use the camaraderie.”

She sighed. “Okay, okay. Fine. But only because you’re getting married. What do you want from me?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t normal sisters do like…sleepovers and stuff?”

Abigail gasped, pushing up on her toes as she looked between us with big eyes. “A sleepover!”

“Jesus Christ, really?” Kit groaned and ran her hands over her face.

“Why? Do you have somewhere better to be?” I put my hands on my hips and gave my sister the c’mon look. Abigail activated the puppy dog eyes, layering on the guilt.

Kit shook her head and gave in. “No, I guess I don’t.”

That was how we found ourselves spread out in my living room, drinking wine and laughing our way through a game of Monopoly. It might have seemed like a boring domestic evening to anyone else, but I hadn’t spent much time with my sisters in, well, ever really. Maybe not since boarding school for Kit and longer for Abigail. I had missed them more than I thought.

Abigail grinned. “Are you excited to get married?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kit cut in. “You know they didn’t choose this, right?”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”

My phone rang, but I ignored it. I wanted to stay in the present. Whoever it was could wait.

Kit rolled her eyes and groaned. “Lucifer and X? It might look like true love now, but they’ve spent decades making each other miserable.”

“Better than dating no one at all.” Abigail pursed her lips at Kit.

“You’re the one to talk.” Kit rolled her dice and picked up her top hat to move it four spaces, landing on a railroad. “Buy it.” As banker, I gave her the property, and she handed me the money.

“You know why I’m not dating.” Abigail took another sip of wine. “But you could have any man you wanted.”

Kit chuckled and did her best Disney villain impression. “You poor naive girl.”

“No?”

“No.” Kit shook her head, taking another long drink of wine. “Mother has had her eye on Hugh Kennedy since I was in diapers. I’ll be married shortly after Jon.”

Abigail’s mouth hung open. “Really? You think she’d do that to you?”

“She did it to Ivy.” Kit pointed at me, and I grimaced. “You know Ivy dated Carter in college, right?”

“Kit—” I tried to cut in, but she held up a hand.

“Lex was in love with Miri. And after college, Carter broke things off out of the blue. Poof. Like it never happened.”

“So?” Abigail looked confused.

“Carter says he didn’t do it.” I took another drink of wine, swallowing back my bitterness. “He got a similar text from me.”

The pieces fell into place in Abigail’s mind. “Was it Mother?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shooting my other sister a death glare. “And neither does Kit.” My phone vibrated again, but I silenced it, sending it to voicemail.

“Of course it was Mother.” Kit rolled her eyes. “Who else has the connections to hire someone that good? I tried to find them, but they covered their tracks. No one is better than me, Ivy. No one.”

I squared my jaw, the fire in my belly surging at the mention of the breakup. We’d never found out how it happened or who prevented us from seeing each other. I thought about sifting through my mother’s memories, but what good would that do?

If I found out she did it, I’d hate her, but I wouldn’t even be that surprised. If it wasn’t her, then it doesn’t change the fact that it happened and I might never know who did it. All my skepticism had done was make me suspicious of my own family, and that had always been the case with Evelyn. I hated to hear that she’d done the same thing to my siblings. Someone had to take a stand. Someone had to stop this.

I balled my hands into fists on the table.

“What if it was the fairies?” Abigail raised her eyebrows and looked between us.

“We don’t know it wasn’t,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. The wedding is happening, no matter what.”

“I’m sorry, Ivy.” Abigail put her palm over my knuckles, genuine sympathy in her gray eyes. “If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t matter who she arranges for me to marry; it won’t make me happy.”

“None of us are happy, Abigail,” Kit said. “That’s the price we pay to live the life we do.” She almost said it with a straight face, and I laughed because I’d been drinking and needed something to do besides cry.

The front door burst open, startling me, and Lex rushed through, slamming it shut behind him. I only caught a glimpse of his face as he stormed up the stairs, but with his tense jaw and piercing eyes, he was pissed.

“Lex?” I called after him, gesturing for my sisters to stay there. My phone buzzed in my hand, flashing Giana’s name, and I realized she had called me six times already. I sent her to voicemail again in favor of chasing down my fiancé in his room. “Lex?”

“Shit.” He stormed around his space, digging through bookcases, toppling things to the ground while he rummaged through the shelves. My gut clenched. Something was wrong. “Fuck!”

“Lex.” I went closer to him, stopped his pacing, and put my hands on his face, forcing him to look at me. “What happened?”

He froze, his mouth open. Of the two of us, I was usually the one that flew into a blind panic. I usually assumed the worse until I knew the outcome, but his eyes were so wide, I could see whites around the pupils.

“You haven’t checked your phone, have you?”

“No, why?”

It buzzed again, this time flashing my mother’s name. I ignored it.

“Ivy…” He shook his head and sighed, pulling up something on his phone before handing it to me. “It’s bad.”

A headline on The Puck stopped me.

Breaking News: Congresswoman Ivy Washington and Princess Miriam Stuart spent Christmas together at a secret romantic hideaway. “The tryst goes back to boarding school,” our source says. “They were together when they were roommates at Mount Oberon.” Representatives for Miss Washington and the royal family could not be reached at this time.

Below that was a picture of the two of us, naked in bed together. It was censored, of course, but undeniably us.

I remembered the shot. Lex had taken it Christmas morning when it was just the two of us and I’d fucked her before anyone else woke up. The look in my eyes screamed love, and hers equaled mine in intensity. It was more than that. These were artistic shots that bordered on pornography. What we were doing couldn’t be confused. And there it was…right on the internet, for all the world to see.

Then the realization hit. The whole world had seen these pictures.

My mother. My father. My siblings. Her grandparents.

My heart pounded behind my ribs. My clothes felt too tight. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs quickly enough. My phone vibrated again. My mother.

“It’s all over the place.” Lex went back to the shelves, finally finding what he was looking for, a folder of pictures from our time at our cabin. “There’s only one way someone could have gotten ahold of them.”

“You printed them out?” I balked.

“Yes,” he said. “These are the only copies. I deleted the digitals because I thought we’d get hacked. Again.”

“Fuck!” I ran my hands over my face, ignoring the eighth call from Giana, the tenth from my mother. “Fuck, Lex. This is bad.”

“Yeah, no shit.” He scrambled through them once. Twice. A third time. “They’re not here.”

“What?”

“Those prints. They’re missing.”

“Someone was here?”

“Someone broke into our house, came to my room, found the pictures, and took only the ones that incriminated you and Miri.” There were far worse ones in there. Ones with Carter on Lex. Ones with me on Carter. Why had they only taken the ones of Miri and me? Why not expose all of us?

“Ivy?” Abigail stood at the doorway, a concerned look on her face. “Mother is calling. You should talk to her.”

I took a deep breath and steadied myself, opting instead to dial the one person who had as much to lose as I did.

* * *

“We’re checking the security footage,” I said to my wife over a video call. This was the first time she’d talked to me in weeks, and it was about horrible news. That hurt worse than anything else, more than this stupid headline. “I don’t know how this could have happened.”

Miri sighed and ran a finger over her forehead. “It’s okay, darling. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have seen this coming.” I cleared my throat and choked back a sob.

“How could you?” She wiped a tear away, giving me a small smile.

I inhaled my cigarette, stabbing it out before shaking my head. “Are you going to deny it?”

Silence rang on her end as she bit her lips between her teeth, which meant she wouldn’t be given a choice.

“I don’t want you to be my dirty secret. I love you more than that,” I said. “Let’s just be honest. Fuck them, Miri. Fuck all of them.”

“X,” Lex cut in, giving me a knowing stare.

“You can’t do that. Your wedding is in three weeks.” Miri sighed and looked away. “We couldn’t openly be ourselves even if you did.”

I pretended like my heart hadn’t shattered into a thousand pieces. I hated that she was so far away, all alone and vulnerable in a different country.

“I love you,” I told her, blinking back tears. Letting them fall meant the asshole who violated my privacy won. I wouldn’t give in to this bullying and harassment.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Tell our prince of darkness I love him and I’m sorry.”

My focus drifted across the room to Lex, who sat on the bed with his fingers digging into the mattress. “I love you,” he called.

“Darlings,” she said. “It would be best if we don’t talk for a while.”

“We won’t be able to do that,” I said. “You know why we can’t do that. It’s already been too long.”

“We’ll have to appear like everything is normal, like this is the media grasping.” Lex pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll say it’s a fake.”

“You need to come home,” I continued. “Things with the king are escalating.”

Miri steeled her jaw and swallowed. “ I won’t be able to see you for a while.”

The tone in her voice set off alarm bells in my heart and my gut. “What? Why?”

“They’re threatening to take everything away from me,” she whispered. “The titles, the money, the houses. My life. My entire life. This phone call is probably tapped.”

“Let them, Miri. You don’t need them.” My pulse raced and my knees wobbled, panic rising in my chest as reality closed in around me. I looked at Lex, who only shook his head and inhaled his cigarette. “We have to stick together.”

“I can’t.” Her voice cracked and tears streamed down her face. I hated this. Everything in me wanted to jump on a plane to England and rescue my princess. They couldn’t do this to her just because she loved me. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” I said. “Miri, you must. He’ll come for you if he hasn’t already. How can I protect you if you’re?—”

“Ivy, stop,” she cut in. “You’re making this harder.”

No.

The sharp ache of panic tightened my chest. I couldn’t get air down my throat. My stomach rolled. I didn’t care if the whole goddamned world found out. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t.

Why wasn’t Lex saying anything? Why wasn’t he fighting for this?

“You know what will happen if you stay away,” I said. “ Until the end. You promised.”

“I don’t have another choice,” she said. “Please don’t call me again. I plan to deny it. You should do the same.”

The line went dead.

Four years ago, I believed Miri had broken my heart over text message, and I spiraled into a sadness like I’d never known. When I sank into the mattress next to Lex this time, the overwhelming loss of her made me furious.

It was real. She’d meant it, and I was so damn angry at her, at the world, at myself, that I could burn it all down. I could go in front of the cameras tomorrow and admit the whole thing. I’d tell them I loved Miri from the first moment I saw her, and fuck anyone who dared judge me for it. I’d tell them Carter Scott was my other half and so was Lex, and they loved each other, too.

But—that would only satisfy me temporarily. Miri still had a public image to maintain and an entire royal legacy to uphold. If that meant more to her than our love, our marriage, then how could I stop her? Once I had that running around in my head, the real terror set in.

She isn’t coming back. This is real.

“She’ll get over this.” Lex grabbed my hand, intertwined his fingers between mine, and pulled them to his mouth so he could kiss my knuckles in an attempt to soothe the ache in my soul. “Trust me.”

In college, he and Miri were on-again, off-again for several years, but they always got back together.

“She’s not like this with me,” I said. “We don’t treat each other like this.”

The sincerity in Miri’s eyes would haunt me forever. With nowhere else to direct my fury, a sob barreled out of my chest. Lex wrapped an arm over my shoulders, pulling me in to kiss the top of my head and hold me while I fell apart. Everything in my body burned with a brilliant hot rage, and whenever I found the person who did this, I would direct every ounce of it in their direction.

Banging at the front door brought my head up, and Abigail’s voice echoed up the staircase followed by Giana’s and my mother’s.

“I don’t care if she’s not taking visitors,” my mother said.

“Is she upstairs?” Giana marched into Lex’s room, pausing at the threshold to find us in an intimate embrace. “I’ve been calling for two hours.”

I took a deep breath and stood. “I know.”

She looked pissed, but on my account, not at me. “I need to speak with both of you. Immediately.” Giana’s dark gaze drifted between the two of us before she turned to walk toward my office at the other end of the house.

I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t want to see Giana or my mother or anyone related to covering it up. Miri had just reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out, and even if she claimed she didn’t have another choice.

We did.

Of course, I didn’t actually know if I could do what I proposed. Bring her into my marriage? Tell the world that the three of us… four of us…had made a secret vow in a magical forest, that we were poly and fuck anyone with an opinion about it? If I were any other person in the world, I might have been able to get away with it.

But not me.

Not Ivy Washington.

So I got up and squeezed Lex’s hand. Together, we followed Giana into the office. My mother sat on the couch in front of my desk and Lex’s father stood over by the window, the room lined with secret service agents. I stopped when I entered, the president turning with his arms crossed and his eyebrows furrowed.

“Ivette, what have you done?” My mother’s voice made my skin crawl, and I looked at Lex, gripping his hand tighter.

“It’s a fake,” Lex said.

“Obviously,” I said. “I’ve been adamant about pushing through this green plan. We should look to my political enemies.”

“No,” Evelyn cut in, pushing to her feet. “No, you’ll do nothing. You’ll sit here and keep your mouth shut. Wait for me to clean up your mess.” She shook her head, rubbing at her forehead with her deep maroon nails. “How long has it been going on?”

“What?”

“The affair, Ivette. The scandal with your boarding school roommate. Were the papers correct?”

I balked at her question. Of all the scandals The Puck had ever reported about me, why had she taken this one so seriously? We were three weeks out from the wedding. Lex and I had never been more emotionally attached to each other. I’d put on her stupid dress and attended every social function, and now? Now she believes the papers?

But this time was different, wasn’t it? Because this time, it was true, and everyone knew it.

“I told you they were photoshopped.” I squared my jaw and held my chin higher. Lex tightened his fist around mine, giving me his strength. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter whether they were or not,” Giana cut in, holding her hands up between us. “The only thing that matters is what the public believes. We don’t have much time to respond.”

“Respond?” I raised my eyebrows. “No, there’ll be no response.”

“Reporters are going to ask questions,” Giana said.

Mother scoffed and shook her head, and my eyes caught on the way the light reflected off the silver in her dark hair. The presidency had aged her, as it had started to age Kellan. It reminded me that the crown lay heavy on the head that wore it, and I didn’t know if I wanted that responsibility. Did I want to be a cold, bitter woman at her age?

“Let them.” I took a deep breath. “There’s nothing to report.”

Giana tilted her head to the side, considering. “The best way to deal with a scandal is to pretend there isn’t one.”

“Exactly,” Lex said.

“Were you aware of this?” Kellan shoved his hands in his pockets, finally taking a step closer to us. “Did you know it was going on?”

Lex rolled his eyes. “So what if I did? At least Ivy would have had the guts to admit it instead of hiding it for decades. Right, Dad ?”

I saw the second Kellan’s hatred for Lex reached a boiling point. If they were alone, he might have hit him. Lex’s memories came back to me, the one where Kellan had admitted to resenting Lex for surviving and lamented that Marcus had been taken instead. I hated him almost as much as I hated my own mother.

“Watch your mouth, Alexei.” Kellan’s tone voiced a threat he likely wouldn’t act upon.

Lex snickered to himself, knowing he’d hit a chord.

“All due respect, Mister President, Madam President, I’d like to speak with the congresswoman alone.” Giana crossed her hands in front of her, staring my mother down as Evelyn’s jaw clenched and Kellan’s face turned beet red.

“Excuse me?” He put his hands on his hips.

“I work for Ivy. Not either of you. If I’m going to spin a story, I need to know the facts. Right now, you’re both a distraction.” Giana cleared her throat. “Again, respectfully.”

No one had talked to my mother like that in a long time. Not my father. Not my mother’s employees. Not even Kellan. Evelyn stared at Giana for a moment before glancing at Kellan, who let out a short laugh.

“What do you suggest we do?” Evelyn blinked. “Wait in the sitting room like guests?”

“Or the parlor,” Giana suggested, “if you need a drink to settle your nerves.”

I physically swallowed down my shock when my mother shook her head and pointed at Giana, narrowing her gaze as she headed toward the hallway. “I knew I liked you.”

Kellan didn’t say anything as he followed.

“Holy fucking shit.” Lex laughed and ran his hands back through his hair, his eyes wild.

“Listen to me,” Giana said. “We’ll say it’s a fake. We’ll deny it. But Ivy, there can’t be any other surprises.” She looked between the two of us. “Are there more skeletons I should know about?”

I pursed my lips and glanced at Lex. Giana had signed an ironclad NDA. If she besmirched my name or my brand in any way, exposed any of my secrets, I’d own everything she had. But this secret didn’t just affect me. Carter would need to consent to it, and I hadn’t been able to reach him for hours.

“Giana.” Lex shook his head and sighed. “If we told you all the skeletons in our closet, you’d have to marry a Washington so Evelyn could be sure you’d keep your mouth shut.”

I pursed my lips and ignored Giana’s confused expression. “Someone broke into our house for these shots. They knew they existed. They knew where to look. I have no idea what else they knew how to find.”

Giana nodded. “We’ll try to prepare for everything.”

Every day I thanked God for bringing me such a competent chief of staff, but this was the day I knew that if I helped her, she really would take over the world.