Page 24

“I’m taking you home.”

I stop breathing.

His voice is behind me, close enough that I feel it along the back of my spine. Not raised. Not sharp. Just resolute, cool with control, threaded with a command he doesn’t bother to soften.

I close my eyes, just for a second.

Then I turn, slowly, and meet his gaze. “That’s not necessary.”

His eyes don’t flinch. They don’t waver. They only darken. “I wasn’t asking.”

8

ETHAN

“Iwasn’t asking.”

Her lips part, ready with another refusal, but she doesn’t speak. She just stands there until she nods her head and follows me to my car. I open the passenger door and wait. After a pause, she slides in without a word. That tells me more than any excuse she could have offered. She’s scared. Not of me, but of something.

“Where are you staying?”

She doesn’t look at me immediately. Instead, she busies herself with pulling her hair into a messy bun, two strands falling down and framing her face. “The rental from before.”

Hmm. So she hasn’t moved or gone to stay at the Dawson house.

The engine purrs as I pull away from the curb, the streetlights slick on the windshield washing the city in gold and silver. Valleria is quiet tonight, too quiet, the kind of quiet that only ever means one thing—money has already had its say, and the rest of us are just living in its echo.

I glance at her. Ivy stares straight ahead, her body angled slightly toward the door like she might bolt if I say the wrong thing. She keeps her hands clenched in her lap. Her fingers twitch every few seconds. The rhythm is all wrong.

She’s lying.

I’ve spent a lifetime reading people—watching breath patterns in trauma patients, the way a vein jumps when someone’s about to crash, the way hands shake just before a confession. Ivy is giving herself away in a dozen ways. Her jaw clenches every time I shift lanes. She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek.

My gaze flickers to her thigh. She’s wearing black jeans that hug the curve of her legs like they were stitched in place. Her sweater is too big, sleeves pulled down over her knuckles, like she’s trying to disappear into it. But I remember the body underneath. The way she opened under my mouth. The way her hips locked around me like they belonged there.

I should be thinking about what she’s not telling me. The surgeon in me knows how to compartmentalize. But right now, all I want to do is pull the car over, drag her onto my lap, and kiss her until she breaks.

My knuckles strain against the wheel.

I want to unbutton that sweater one loop at a time, kiss down the line of her stomach, press my lips to the place just below her navel, and swear myself to the child she claims isn’t mine.

But if I push right now, I could risk losing her forever. And that’s not what I want. Perhaps a bit of deflection would ease the tightness between us and help her see that I’m not… whatever she thinks I am, whatever made her believe I had followed her to her rental two months ago.

“I still can’t believe you passed out in a grocery store,” I say, aiming for casual, letting the sharp edges of my voice round out.

Her head snaps toward me, and I’m caught off guard by the sound that slips from her lips. A snort.

“I didn’t pass out.” Her voice is dry. “I… fainted stylishly.”

I glance at her. She’s wearing that particular brand of defiance again. The kind that used to show up in childhood arguments and now slides into every room she walks into like a shield.

“Sure you did.” I lift one brow, indulging in the first real smile I’ve had all day. “I bet you did it right in front of the frozen pizzas just to make a dramatic exit.”

A beat, and then she laughs softly. I roll to a stop at a red light and look over at her again. The streetlamp outside catches in her hair, turns the strands to burnished bronze. Her eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, and then she looks away.

That flicker of honesty is all I get. But it’s enough to light a fuse.

She’s lying.