CHAPTER 48
IVY
The next day, I feel much better. There’s still residual pain, but I’m so used to this being my regular state by this stage that I’d go so far as to say I feel… good.
And the way that Soren helped me through something I’m so used to struggling with alone is stuck front and center in my mind. As is the general way he treats me.
He sees everything.
Not just the easy parts—the ones people usually stop at.
He keeps going.
And the strange thing is, I let him.
We have things in common I wouldn’t normally clock. Small, strange overlaps that shouldn’t mean anything—but with him, they do.
Everything does.
Everything feels heavier. Charged. Like there’s meaning sitting just under the surface, waiting for me to catch up to it.
If I’m being honest, it feels like obsession. And that should scare me.
It does, a little.
Soren isn’t normal, by any stretch of the imagination. There’s no point pretending otherwise.
There are moments where I look at him and thinkthis is not a man I should trust. I should most definitely run.
And yet, I feel safe with him.
Which makes no sense.
He could hurt me—I’ve felt that, too.
Seen flashes of it in the way he looks at me sometimes—in the way his control slips, just enough to remind me it’s there. It takes me back to that dive bar, and the way he dealt with the guys that were creeping on me. The memory makes me shiver.
But he never does—not in the way I’ve been hurt before. If anything, he gives me the opposite of that. Space. Permission to be me.
He’s unhinged.
More than a little insane.
Possessive in ways that should make me walk away.
And maybe I still will—but I haven’t yet.
Because the truth is, he’smyunhinged psycho. And right now, this is exactly where I want to be.
His hand always finds me without effort—my waist, my wrist, the back of my neck—not pushing, not steering, just there. A constant point of contact. A quiet claim. And I follow—without noticing when the decision stopped being mine.
It could bother me, but it’s also the kind of attention that makes it feel like I don’t have to hold myself together so tightly all the time. I feel wanted, chosen—and it’s not just occasionally, or something that might change if something better came along.
Always.
It’s like there’s no version of me he hasn’t already accounted for. No mood, no reaction, no hesitation that surprises him.
I’ve never had that before—there have always been strings attached, whether it was with romantic partners, friends, even my parents.