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She’s terrified.

And she’s doing everything she can to protect me.

What the hell has she gotten herself into?

The light turns green. I drive.

But the fantasies keep crawling through me like wildfire. The kind that won’t stop unless I burn.

I want to lay her back in this car seat, pull her thighs apart, kiss her until she forgets how to lie to me. I want to take her homeand erase every trace of pain from her body. I want to fill her so completely that there’s no room for fear, no room for memory. Just me.

I steal another look at her as we ease down the quiet street lined with old sycamores and cracked sidewalks. She stares ahead, spine straight, shoulders drawn in tight, like she’s bracing for impact. But her fingers betray her—pressed flat against her thigh, twitching ever so slightly with each breath she takes.

What gets to me isn’t the silence. It’s that she still thinks I’ll walk away. Like I’m the kind of man who picks and chooses when to show up. She knows me better than that. And yet here she is, sitting beside me like she’s already decided how this ends.

I park at the curb in front of the address she gave me. Another rental. Clean façade, cozy lights glowing through the front windows, forgettable in a way that’s probably intentional. She’s still not at the Dawson house, still circling the city that built her like it might reach out and pull her back under.

Still running, even when her feet are planted.

My hands stay fixed on the wheel, my eyes locked on the soft profile of the woman beside me. Ivy doesn’t turn to look. She just sits there, clutching her bag like it might anchor her to something, as if the car might float off the ground otherwise.

“You said the father isn’t in the picture.”

I speak quietly, but the words carry. In the small cabin of the car, they land between us with all the weight of a scalpel pressed to the skin.

I see it—the way she stiffens. A beat of movement beneath her ribs. She exhales, slowly and unevenly, but not slow enough to convince me.

My voice is steady. Measured. “Are you in danger?”

Her head lifts a fraction, her lashes brushing her cheek. The answer is already forming before I finish the question.

“No,” she says, too fast, as if she’s forcing herself to believe it. I study her, watching the slight tremor in her hand as it retreats to her lap. She tries to make it look casual, but it’s not. Ivy doesn’t fidget unless she’s cornered. I know that. I’ve watched her long enough to memorize all the tells she thinks she’s hidden.

She’s still lying to me. And she’s counting on me to let it slide.

I suppress a sigh of frustration. I want to reach across the console and touch her face, brush the hair away from her eyes, force her to look at me when she lies. But I stay still, hands wrapped tightly around the wheel, knuckles rigid against the leather.

She opens the door before I can say another word, slides out of the car like she’s escaping something.

Maybe she is.

She doesn’t look back as she walks toward the rental. I track her with my eyes, each step clicking into the hollow silence between us. The porch light spills over her shoulders, her hair catching the glow. She’s wearing one of those oversized sweaters she loves, the kind that swallows her frame and hides the woman I can still taste on my tongue.

I want to follow her inside. I want to drag her into my lap and kiss the truth out of her. I want to pin her against the wall andmake her say my name while I bury myself inside her. I want to claim her again, every inch of her, until she forgets every reason she has to push me away.

But I don’t move.

I grip the wheel like it’s the only thing holding me together.

Because she lied, and I let her because what choice did I have in this moment?

She disappears behind the door, and I’m left staring at an empty porch.

Whatever she’s hiding—whatever made her flinch when I said the worddanger—it’s there. I felt it in the hospital, in the second before the nurse said the wordpregnant. I saw it again when I asked if it was mine and her answer cracked under the pressure of my silence.

She’s terrified, and if I don’t figure out why, it won’t just be her paying the price. It’ll be that child, too. Mine or not, I can’t walk away from this.

I run a hand through my hair, fingers tightening at the back of my neck. The engine hums beneath me, but I don’t put the car in gear. I stare at the house a moment longer, the shadows shifting behind the curtains. One light clicks on upstairs. Ivy’s silhouette pauses briefly at the window before vanishing.