I frown slightly. “I’mnotminimizing it. I’m just being realistic.”
His hand shifts at my waist. “You reached out to someonewho abandoned you,” he says quietly. “Not just anyone, either—your biological mother. The person who gave birth to you. The person you’re supposed to have the closest bond with in the world.” He pauses. “And then, when she finally told you the truth, she left you alone with it. To absorb all by yourself. And without giving you the dignity of being there to answer questions. To make you feel less alone.”
My breath catches slightly. “That’s not—she just needed space. It was probably hard for her?—”
I can’t explain why I jump to defending her. I’m sure I’ve thought about it, but it’s been pushed down so far for so many years that it almost feels like I’m talking about somebody else.
His grip tightens. Just slightly. Enough to interrupt me. “You’re protecting her.”
I feel it in my chest. A flicker of something I don’t like. “That’s not what I’m doing,” I say, my voice rising without intention.
His thumb moves slowly against my side. Grounding. “You learned how to survive it,” he continues. “That’s different from it being okay.”
My thoughts stall. Because that sounds right. And I don’t like that it does. “I handled it,” I say after a second, my chin jutting upward. “I’m fine.” I feel my body brace, then. Stubborn. Proud.
He leans in slightly. Closer.
My body reacts before I can stop it, so sensitive to the way his cedar wood scent infiltrates my space. Feeding on his proximity the way it always does when it comes to Soren.
“That’s what you had to tell yourself. To survive it. To get through it alone.” His voice is lower now. Closer. Like he’s speaking directly into something under the surface instead of to me. “You don’t have to do that anymore. Not with me.”
Something shifts, and it’s subtle but real. Like a fragment I’ve been holding in place loosens.
My breath comes out uneven. “I’m not broken.”
It’s not like he said I was, or implied it in any way. But it’s ahistory I’ve sat with for a long time, a word that’s been bandied around in my presence and out of earshot but later reported back. “I like the broken ones,” a disgusting piece of shit I once dated was heard to say. “I wish my son could just be with someone normal,” another boyfriend’s mother had said, knowing a fraction of what I’d been through.
I flinch. The memories are crushing, telling Soren this story having apparently brought back a flurry of unpleasant flashbacks all triggering the same core wound.
“I know.” His hand slides slightly higher along my waist. Pulling me closer. “You adapted. That’s not weakness.”
The word sits differently.
My chest tightens again. Because that reframes everything. Not weakness. Not failure. Something else.
Yet I’m tired of being this way. Always referred to as strong. Resilient. Now adaptable. I’m tired of being those things, because it’s a burden. Because it boosts me up for being stronger than I should have ever needed to be, and praises me for enduring more than anyone should ever have to.
“You were alone. You shouldn’t have been. You won’t be again.”
My throat feels dry. I don’t remember the last time someone said that like it mattered. Like it was something that shouldn’t have happened.
I always just accepted it as my lot in life. To face the hardest parts by myself. We all die alone, after all. Why not start now?
“That’s just how it was,” I say, hurried, but it doesn’t sound as solid or certain as it used to.
His hand comes up, his fingers brushing lightly against my jaw, turning my face toward him. “Look at me, Ivy.”
I do. I don’t even think about it.
“You don’t belong in that version of your life anymore.”
My breath catches. Because he says it like it’s already true. Like it’s already done, and there’s no going back to it.
“You don’t have to survive things like that on your own anymore.”
The words settle deep—too deep. Because part of me desperately wants that to be true. Even if I don’t fully believe it. Even if I don’t understand what it means.
My thoughts feel slower and less certain. Like something I’ve always taken for granted is being fundamentally rearranged by someone I haven’t even known for that long.