Page 42

By the time I reach her place, the sky has darkened with clouds that threaten rain but never follow through. I park directly outside, ignoring the red zone sign, and take the stairs two at a time. My hand is already balled into a fist when I knock, hard enough that the sound echoes through the narrow hallway.

She opens the door a few seconds later. She’s not surprised to see me. If anything, she looks like she was standing right behind it, waiting. Her hoodie is zipped to her throat, her arms crossed, and there’s something tight in her expression that doesn’t ease when she meets my eyes.

“I’m fine,” she says before I can get a word out.

I step inside without waiting for an invitation. The apartment is too quiet. No music, no tea kettle, no candles lit in the corner like usual. The lights are on, but the place feels abandoned, like she hasn’t really been living here. Just existing.

“Ivy,” I say, turning toward her. “Tell me what happened.”

Her jaw clenches, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. Instead, she moves past me, tugs at the curtain, then checks the lock againeven though I watched her close it behind me. “I have a feeling someone is following me.”

She pauses and gulps. “I didn’t call you to make a big deal out of nothing,” she says, almost to herself.

“Someone following you is not nothing.”

She flinches. Just a slight movement in her shoulder, but I see it. I close the space between us slowly, not touching her, not crowding her, but standing close enough to make her stop.

“I believe you,” I say. “When you say someone is watching you, I believe that. You can’t make stuff like this up, Ivy.”

“I don’t have proof.”

“You don’t need proof.”

She looks up at me then. Her face is pale, mouth tight, but her eyes are glassy with exhaustion and something heavier than fear. The kind of weight you only carry when you’ve been looking over your shoulder for so long you forget how it feels to look forward.

“I thought maybe he’d stop,” she murmurs. “I thought if I didn’t respond, if I stayed quiet…”

She’s not naming any names, but I have a fair idea of whom she’s speaking, given that before Ivy quit town, she was with only one man for several years. There were rumors then, but she was too distant from me for me to do anything about it. I hated being around her because it reminded me of what I couldn’t have. But it’s different now.

“You really think that’s how men like him work?”

She says nothing.

“Ivy, listen to me.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re still thinking you can manage this alone.”

She doesn’t deny it. She just shifts her weight, like the floor’s suddenly uneven.

“I don’t want to make things worse,” she says quietly.

“For whom?”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. She doesn’t say my name, but I hear it anyway. It’s there in the way she glances at my hands, at the way I’m standing. Like she’s already bracing for the fallout.

I step back and rub a hand over my jaw.

“You need a break from this place.”

Her brow creases. “What?”

“Pack a bag.”

“No.”

“Ivy.”