Page 116 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Ivy follows me in and closes the door behind her.

The click of the latch sounds obscenely loud in the silence.

She sits cross-legged on my bed.

Like this is normal. Like she belongs here, in this room that isn't mine, in this house that isn't mine, and she is definitely not fucking mine. Not by any stretch of the definition, however much I desperately wish there were some universe out there where she is, even if it isn't this one.

I'm suddenly too hot. I tear off my jersey and fling it aside, pacing again.

Back and forth. Back and forth. The same stretch of carpet, the same furniture I've barely touched since I arrived, the same half-unpacked bag in the corner that I never bothered to finish because I never planned to stay. Never planned for any of this to be more than another team, another distraction from my demons.

Her scent fills the small space.

Honeysuckle and summer rain, threading through the stale air, wrapping around me like something I can't escape. It's making it harder to think. Harder to breathe. Harder to remember all the reasons why this is a catastrophically terrible fucking idea.

I focus on the window. The door. The bag in the corner. Anywhere but her.

"Why did you do it?" I ask finally, the words coming out like a snarl. I don't intend them to. But they do.

Ivy doesn't flinch. "To protect you. And it felt true."

I whirl around. "Not both, Ivy. Which? Were you lying?"

She shrugs. "I don't know."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

I stop pacing to stare her down from across the room. Even looming over her like this, she seems perfectly comfortable where she sits on my bed, her hands wrapped around her feet. She tilts her head curiously, watching me.

"You shouldn't have done it," I grit out. "I knew the consequences when I broke Wade. I was prepared to pay them."

"I know," she says quietly. "That's why I did it. Because you did it for me. Not because you're violent—even though you obviously are—but because Wraith was about to kill someone on live television. And you knew what that would cost me."

She pauses.

"And you were going to let them drag you away like you deserved it."

That makes me scoff a laugh.

"Didn't I?" I whisper hoarsely.

Ivy stands.

She crosses the space between us in three steps, close enough that her scent hits me and lights up my ribs like a live wire, close enough that I can see the darker flecks at the edges of her eyes.

"No," she says simply.

I don't have a response to that.

Don't have a response to any of this. Certainly not the way she's looking at me like she can see past every wall I've ever built and isn't afraid of what's behind them.

"Was it a lie?" I ask her again.

Please. Tell me. I have to fucking know.

Ivy hesitates.