Chapter 3 #2
“You deserve to feel whole,” Ivy said as she switched out her ink cartridge, dabbing gently with a cloth. “This isn’t vanity. You’re reclaiming what’s yours.”
Giulietta swallowed.
Last night’s Ivy had been all fire and teeth, a predator who smiled like danger.
But this Ivy, the one Giulietta was seeing now, was healing someone and offering dignity without expectations. And it disoriented Giulietta so completely she had to reach for the wall with one hand just to anchor herself.
Because her body remembered.
Her wrists remembered the pressure of Ivy’s grip.
Her thighs remembered the slide of Ivy’s mouth.
Her chest remembered the heat.
And now, watching Ivy like this, so careful with someone else’s pain, so gentle in her artistry, it did something brutal and inexplicable to Giulietta.
It made her ache.
She took a breath, shallow and unsteady.
She watched Ivy lean closer again, brush a strand of hair from the patient’s cheek with the back of her knuckles, and whisper something that made the woman smile, a real, wet-eyed, grateful smile.
Giulietta’s jaw tensed and her pulse thrummed in places she thought she had successfully numbed this morning.
Because this was not the kind of woman you walked away from after a night like that.
This was someone who made you remember things.
Things you weren’t supposed to feel.
Not here. Not ever.
She turned away before Ivy could look up and see her, before those dark eyes could strip her bare all over again, this time in broad daylight.
But as Giulietta walked away to follow the nurse to Treatment 3, her chest tight, steps sharp and precise, one thought pulsed like a low drumbeat beneath her skin:
Giulietta wanted more.
The apartment was too quiet, again.
Giulietta moved through it like a stranger, her own presence unfamiliar, as though she hadn’t lived inside this space for days, hadn’t brewed espresso here each morning or folded her clothing with such clinical precision.
Tonight, the walls pressed closer, the air too still, too sharp around the edges.
She’d showered again the moment she returned from the hospital, stripping away her scrubs with the same mechanical detachment she’d applied to her patients all day. Her hands had been steady, her voice clear, her notes immaculate—and yet, her skin still burned where memory touched it.
She stood now by the window in a loose black tank top and underwear, a glass of water warming untouched in her hand.
The city outside was a blur, streetlights bleeding through misted glass, car engines low and distant.
She should have been able to shut it all off.
She’d done it for years. Control was ritual, not instinct.
But tonight, the ritual was failing her.
Her eyes drifted to the far wall where her notebook lay, half open, the pages crisp and accusing. She didn’t move toward it.
She already knew she wasn’t fine.
With a sigh, she crossed the room and sank into the bed, the mattress cool beneath her thighs.
She leaned back slowly, letting her head fall into the pillow, her dark hair fanning out across the linen.
One hand rested on her abdomen, the other slid instinctively downward, beneath the waistband of her underwear, fingertips pressing lightly against herself, just to feel something.
But the sensation was muted, her body slow to respond, her breath shallow and uneven.
There was no urgency, no sharp need building inside her.
Just the faint echo of heat and the maddening absence of anything close to release.
She tried to think of Ivy’s mouth, hot, relentless. The way her tongue had moved without mercy.
She tried to conjure the grip of Ivy’s fingers around her wrists.
She tried to feel that sweet moment just before she broke.
But nothing rose inside her, not like before when Ivy was there. Touching herself now felt like a poor imitation of a memory that had already started to haunt her.
Giulietta curled her fingers slightly, then stilled.
This wasn’t about sex, not really.
It was about how Ivy had touched her, and Giulietta had felt it. All of it. That was the problem.
With a frustrated exhale, she pulled her hand away, sitting upright as if burned, her pulse ragged in her throat. She reached for her phone on the bedside table without thinking, fingers trembling slightly as she opened a new message thread.
Ivy.
The letters stared back at her like a challenge.
She typed: Can we talk?
She stared at it, then deleted it.
She tried again.
Last night shouldn’t have happened.
Deleted.
Then: I want to see you.
And she deleted that too.
Her thumb hovered above the screen. Her other hand ran through her hair, tugging lightly at the strands as if pain might anchor her back into the reality she understood.
Instead, she typed a single word.
Busy?
It was simple, detached, non-committal.
She sent it before she could stop herself.
Seconds passed. Ten. Twenty. Forty-five.
Then: Always. Come anyway.
Giulietta stared at the screen, her breath held in her lungs like she might drown if she let it go.
She didn’t reply, but instead lay back down slowly, bringing the phone with her and setting it on her chest like a weight she didn’t want to carry but couldn’t bear to part with. The words sat there—bright, still, waiting.
She didn’t rise or reach for her clothes.
She just lay there, her body tight with longing and her jaw clenched with restraint.
The apartment was still quiet.
But inside her?
Everything screamed.