You always did that for me.
Whether you knew it or not.
CHAPTER 34
IVY
The air hangs heavy and still, as though the night itself has pressed pause. It isn’t empty—there’s the low drone of distant traffic, a faint scrape of brakes half a mile away—but everything feels rounded at the corners, as if the city’s usual sharp angles have been sanded down.
We’re out on the small balcony again, toes curled against the cool ceramic tiles, leaning against the matte iron railing. Below us, the metropolis glitters in clusters—the neon green of a late-night pharmacy sign, the burnt-orange glow of street lamps pooling on wet asphalt, a lone taxi’s headlights snaking through the grid. It all seems a world away—one I once longed to inhabit, but now only glimpse through a fogged window, like a modern Rapunzel gazing down from a Bjarke Ingels tower.
Soren stands behind me, the solid cotton of his vintage charcoal T-shirt warm against my bare back. His arm loops around my waist, elbow tucked under my ribs so his hand can rest flat against my side. His palm is broad and steady, a soft weight that feels as reassuring as gravity.
He simply closes the circumference of space between us so there’s nowhere to slip away—only here.
We don’t speak. The silence is full, like a secret we share rather than a void demanding words. A moth flutters at the railing. Somewhere a siren wails and retreats. The city exhales.
His thumb begins to drift, the pad of it tracing a precise line just beneath my ribcage. There’s nothing random about the motion—slow, metronomic, back and forth—and before long my body learns its rhythm, leaning into the ticklish slide of skin against calloused flesh. It grounds me. Beneath it, something quieter—an awareness linking me to him.
His touch reminds me of the previous day’s encounter in the fitness room, and my nipple twinges at the memory of the reformer’s vicious coil. My pussy aches, recalling the way he controlled my body, the way he took me from behind while I had no choice but to watch. A warm sensation flows through my body.
I realize I’m curled into him without thought, my shoulders slack, my breath light. In the stillness, words surface I never meant to say out loud. “I used to think I was just… difficult.”
They come so softly I almost swallow them whole. His thumb stills for a heartbeat—neither pulling away nor pressing harder—just pausing in mid-stroke. “What do you mean?” His voice is low and close, vibrating against the back of my head more than carrying through my ears.
I shrug against him, feeling the slight slide of his fabric under my palm. “Hard to deal with,” I murmur, eyes fixed on the thousand pinpricks of light below. “Too much. Too emotional. Too sensitive…. different.” I let out a breath that trembles against his chest. “Everywhere I’ve been, it’s been the same story.”
I brace for advice, for a gentle correction, for someone to suggest I temper myself.
Instead, he asks quietly, “Who told you that?”
The words land differently than I expect. I press my cheek into his T-shirt, smelling the faint trace of cedar and somethingmuskier, like worn leather. “No one said it straight out,” I admit. “But I felt it.”
His thumb starts up again and there’s a focus to it now, as though he’s studying me through touch. “But they made you feel it,” he says, statement more than question.
My throat tightens. “Yeah.”
“Why do you think they did?”
“I think it all started because I was adopted. I didn’t justseemdifferent—I literallywasdifferent. Dad and I shared the same complexion, by chance, but I couldn’t have looked more different from my mother. And she made sure I knew it.” I don’t look at him. “I don’t really talk about it.” That part feels sharper. More exposing. More real.
There’s a pause, but it doesn’t feel like hesitation. “Why not?” he asks. The question is quiet. It doesn’t feel like pushing or probing, just a supportive ask—a follow-up to what I just shared.
“Because it’s complicated,” I say. “It makes people feel uncomfortable, because they don’t understand it. And sometimes I think it makes them confront things about themselves that they’d prefer not to.”
My throat tightens around the words, but they don’t stop. “I know the basic facts about where I came from. But at the same time, not really anything beyond that. I have fragments—but nothing that feels solid. Nothing I can actually hold onto.”
The words come more easily now. “I don’t know who I look like. I don’t know where certain traits or beliefs come from, or why I am the way I am. I grew up looking so different from everyone around me, but it went deeper than that. They all seemed to be cut from the same cloth, and it’s like I was born with this innate way of thinking about the world that was unique to me.”
“That’s not a bad thing, though,” he says, his voice gentle. “Ivy, that makes you special. It’s a gift to see things differently than most people do.”
I sigh. “A gift, maybe… but also a burden. Like I had to second-guess myself all the time. Because some of my world views really upset my mother in particular. I had to check every word that came out of my mouth, especially when she was in one of her funny moods.” My breath hitches. “I don’t want to be rude. I appreciate my adoptive family and all they did for me…” I swallow, the heat pressing heavier against my chest now. “They weren’tbad—not exactly. They just?—”
I stop.
“They just didn’t see me.”
The air feels dense.