He drops what’s left of it onto the coffee table like it doesn’t matter. Like it never did. “You don’t need that,” he says. His voice is calm again. Too calm. “You don’t need them.”
My chest tightens.
There’s something in the way he says it—final. Decided.
He steps back toward me, slower this time, his gaze still locked onto mine. “You have me.” The words settle into the space between us. Heavy. Unavoidable.
His hand comes back to my waist, pulling me in again, firmer now, leaving no space this time. No room to shift. No room to step back. “You don’t need anyone else,” he murmurs.
And the worst part—the part that makes something deep inside me go quiet—is that it doesn’t feel wrong.
It feels true.
My breath softens.
My body leans into his.
And whatever hesitation was there disappears once again. I don’t reach for it, because I don’t want to.
Instead I stay.
Right where he put me.
CHAPTER 50
SOREN
Fuck.
I shouldn’t have crushed her phone.
It was a moment of carelessness, where I let my mask slip.
I try to hide those parts from her. And I do, for the most part.
But today I lost my cool.
She’s too deep in now to let something like that scare her away. Thankfully.
But I’m going to have to do something big. Some grand gesture to make it up to her.
Otherwise, these little slips will add up into something more. Small mistakes compound.
It’ll only take a session with a half-decent therapist to analyze any one of them on their own and encourage her to pack a go-bag. To tell her that something isn’t right with me. To plant a seed of doubt about me in her beautiful yet fragile mind.
And that’s the last thing I need.
Especially now.
IVY
Exhausted, I take a nap. I’m not normally a nap person—at least I wasn’t until I moved to Ravelle—but now they come more easily.
I don’t wake with the same groggy feeling I used to associate with them. Maybe it’s something I’m growing into. Acquiring naps as a skill later in life. Ha.
When I wake, I lie in place for a while, the sun streaming in through the partially open blinds. The brightness lifts me out of nap mode, and I take a long, luxurious stretch.
I hear the front door close—I didn’t hear Soren leave—he must have popped out while I was asleep. And then his footsteps approach the room.