Moving toward the bedroom door, Dax had a singular focus. ‘Where the fuck are you going?’ Brad called. ‘You can’t just walk out on this.’
Dax stopped in the open doorway. ‘I’m through, with all of you. Leave me the fuck alone and I’ll leave you all be. Hear me? We’re through. I don’t give a fuck about any of you, any of this. We’re done.’
Setting himself back on his path, he began to search his pockets for his keys, then he remembered that his bike was still at the bar and to find Ivy he’d need the car. He had to find her, but he wasn’t sure where to start.
He got out of the mansion and the cool air sucker punched him. Swaying on his feet, he squeezed his eyes shut, he needed to go home and sleep, but when he woke up she was the only mission he cared about. He had to find her and just hope that she would have him back, that she would trust him not to let her down again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once she had raided Dax’s storage unit, Ivy had enough cash to get her clear across the country. The ten grand that Dax had given her was still stashed in the lining of the ottoman in their walk-in closet upstairs at the beach house, but she wasn’t going back for that, not a chance. She didn’t know if Bruno was there, or any of Starks’ other men. Walking back into the lion’s den was just a plain stupid idea, even for that amount of cash.
Everything she needed should be here in the storage unit anyway. She had found a couple of grand, which should keep her going for a while. The car key she found in a boot in the corner of a closet, where she also found a sports bag with clothes in it. There were a few items of women’s clothing there, which she would rather not wonder too hard about. She changed her clothes, got water and other supplies from the unit then cranked the engine and set off across the country.
She tried not to focus too hard on what had gone on between her and Dax. They were still technically married, and that was something that she would have to address if they really were broken up for good. But it wasn’t like she was in any hurry to get hitched, she’d made that impulsive decision with Dax, and it wasn’t one she wanted to repeat anytime soon.
With no clear objective in mind she just drove, stopping whenever the mood took her. She spent a week here and a few days there. It was possible that the Starks were looking for her, though she doubted they would expend too much energy on resolving this humiliating episode, they would probably rather just forget about it. But that was the great thing about being a drifter. It was tough for people to find you when even you didn’t know where you were going.
Six weeks went by and then she hit ocean, she had driven from the Pacific to the Atlantic, not directly, she’d gone north, south, east and west, but this was where she’d ended up. Standing looking out over the crashing grey waves, with Dax’s car parked a hundred yards away; she sank onto the hard grassy ground beneath her and took a deep breath.
That was when the tears came. She sat on that cliff for hours wailing and staring, consoling herself about the love she’d lost and chastising herself for being pathetic enough to lose her heart in such a careless way. She cried for the humiliation of her kidnap, cried for every time Bruno touched her, cried for every time she wanted to give in and let them take the last of her, for every time she’d wanted to break.
Ivy was human, she had weakness just like everybody else, but one thing she did not do was show that weakness without good reason. The tears came and went, she lay on the grass and let her emotions ebb and flow with the motion of the vast brine spread out beside her. It didn’t make her feel insignificant as Dax had once asked her, it made her revere the opportunities. Such a huge area that was teeming with life living in harmony, experiencing the circle of life, depending on each other to survive.
Yes, they were insignificant, but they were supposed to be. The meaning of life was to get up and carry on, no matter what.
No one would be there to dry her tears, so she dried them on her own and took another deep breath. It was time to start again and she would, this time with a broken heart.
Dax would never give up his search for her, but he was beginning to wonder if it would ever be successful. His first step had been to find out where she went after she left his apartment, and that didn’t take long. He picked up his bike from the bar and took it to the storage unit thinking that it would make more sense to use the car to find her. He might end up needing a place to sleep and the car could carry more supplies.
But when he pulled up to the storage unit and pulled out his wallet there was no key. She was a clever girl and a smile crossed his lips when he realised Ivy was the only one who could’ve accessed it. After busting off the lock and seeing that the car was gone, and some of the cash he had stashed too, he knew that she was alright, at least for now.
Luckily, he had more than one stash of money in this locker and she had only found and taken one bundle. So he knew that she was in his car and how much money she had. Dax hadn’t gassed up the car after switching it out for the bike, so the first thing he did was trace which gas station she had used and which direction she’d gone in.
From there the search was just as incremental and every time he thought he’d found her it turned out he’d just missed her. He hit a few dead ends and had to retrace his steps, and even took a few massive detours in his misguided pursuit of her.
He’d gone clear across the country and still didn’t know where she was. Contemplating where her journey would have gone next, whether she would have turned back to go west or taken another route, Dax pulled into a motel and asked for a room.
The woman on reception was older, maybe in her late-fifties, with curly grey hair and pointed glasses that sat on the end of her nose. She gave him a check-in slip, which he filled out and returned to her, then he started digging in his wallet for a credit card.
‘Oh, two in one week, that’s funny,’ the receptionist said as she transferred the information from his slip into the computer.
He stopped, his thumb still in the pouch of his wallet pressed against his forgotten credit card. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your surname, I’m saying that we had another person with that last name this week. Do you have family in the area?’
‘What was her first name? Was it a woman?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ the receptionist laughed and carried on typing, obviously not realising that the information she had could affect the course of the rest of his life. Dax considered turning on the charm, but then realised that he had none. He considered threatening her, but being arrested wouldn’t help him find Ivy. So he adopted an uncharacteristic plan, he told the honest truth.
‘I’m looking for my wife,’ he said, hoping beyond all else that Ivy was using her married name and this wasn’t some huge coincidence. The receptionist stopped typing and peered over her glasses. ‘I made a mistake, in California, and she left me six weeks ago, seven now actually. I’ve been looking for her ever since.’
‘You followed her here? All the way from California?’ the receptionist asked. ‘How did you know she would be in North Carolina now?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I’ve been looking for her and it seems I’m always half a step behind her. I need her back. I love her.’
‘You cheated on her?’ the receptionist asked with an edge of displeasure.
‘No,’ he said, desperate to ensure that she didn’t cast her own life prejudices onto him thus tainting any goodwill she may feel toward him.
‘Then what did you do?’ she asked him, removing her hands from the keys and swinging her chair around so that she could meet his eye. It might have been nosiness, but he was asking her for information so telling her the truth felt like quid pro quo.