6. Ivy
IVY
T wo Months Later
I never planned on seeing Ethan Cross again.
Two months ago, I looked him in the eye and told him to leave me alone, and he walked away before I could take it back.
I told myself it was for the best. He was never meant to be part of this mess.
Besides, I’d made a vow. No more men with brooding silences and hard eyes that see too much.
No more walking into the fire because it looked like warmth.
Of course, fate doesn’t care about vows. Or intentions. Or how hard I worked to forget the taste of his mouth.
It started this morning, quietly, almost politely.
A whisper of a headache curling around my temples, a dull twist of my stomach that I blamed on bad dreams or maybe the cheap sushi I had last night.
I ignored it, wrapped myself in a cardigan too soft for how annoyed I already felt, and shuffled into the kitchen to make one of my infamous stomach-healing teas—equal parts ginger, lemon, and a touch of turmeric that tastes like hot regret.
Then Drew called.
"Lunch with the parents today. You in?" His voice was way too chipper for a man who would also be sitting through that lovely performance.
"Do I have a choice?" I muttered, already regretting waking up.
"Not unless you want Mom to send a car."
Charming.
The only thing worse than divorce-fueled brunches at the Dawson family estate is pretending everything is fine while the wine glasses shake with repressed fury. I agreed anyway. Drew had that tone that said, please don’t make me go alone , and I couldn’t say no to that, even when I should have.
Then I called Cassie, because she’s a sanity checkpoint and possibly a witch, and I needed both. “I hate everything” was my response to her “hello”.
"You sound like someone who’s been possessed by bad energy and possibly expired dairy," she said.
"I’m fine," I lied, then corrected it with, "Just a little off. Nausea, headache. Probably stress. Or dehydration. Or this city slowly killing me."
"Well, drink water, wear something that says ‘emotionally unavailable’, and call me if you puke somewhere memorable."
I should have taken it more seriously, but I didn’t.
I drank my tea, did a little stretching, and convinced myself that a walk to the store would clear my head.
Grocery shopping had always been my go-to therapy when things felt untethered.
Something about the order of it—fruits, then vegetables, then bread—made the world feel conquerable.
But in the shop, I hadn’t felt good. I decided it was because I had woken up thinking about Daniel and all the ways he had quietly dismantled my life.
In Valleria, he wasn’t just another rich man.
He was the one the others answered to. The Holt name was written into the foundation of the city.
His family had made their fortune off wartime reconstruction and postwar acquisition.
They bought entire neighborhoods before they were worth anything, then sold them back to the city with just enough polish to be called benefactors.
It was the kind of wealth that didn’t need to announce itself because it had already been carved into the skyline.
The kind that entered boardrooms already owed a favor.
Every luxury development, every corner office with river views, every politician who had mysteriously voted in Holt’s favor three times in a row—he had been behind it.
His reach wasn’t obvious, but it was absolute.
Daniel had learned young how power worked best when spoken in whispers.
A quiet word with a landlord, a recommendation withheld, a reputation dissolved by omission.
His enemies didn’t stumble. They vanished.
A boutique owner who refused to lease her space had a health inspection filed against her the following week.
A city official who pushed too hard to audit one of his properties found himself quietly reassigned.
A journalist who asked the wrong questions received a consulting offer in Prague before her article could see the light of day.
I had seen it. I had lived inside it.
He had never needed to raise his voice or his hand.
That would have been too clumsy. Too obvious.
He would lower his voice and tilt his head, the picture of concern.
Are you sure you want to say that, Ivy? Do you think they’ll take you seriously if you keep acting like this?
Maybe take a breath. Maybe try again. Maybe don’t make such a scene.
Eventually, I stopped trusting my instincts.
I started rewriting my memories as they happened.
He had a way of making his version sound more reasonable than mine, even when I had the bruises to prove otherwise.
He wore smiles in public, but behind closed doors he offered quiet corrections and careful control.
Every time I tried to leave, he reminded me of what I owed.
That my future, my image, my family’s reputation—everything I was—had already been tied to his.
I hadn’t run because I was brave. I ran because I was drowning and too exhausted to pretend I wasn’t.
I hadn’t told Ethan because he was the kind of man who would never back down.
He would have stood between us without hesitation.
And Daniel would have used that. Not with threats or violence.
Not at first. Just a gentle call to the hospital board.
A charitable donation quietly withdrawn.
A string of professional reviews suddenly reexamined.
Ethan would have lost everything before he even realized he was under attack.
I tried to shake the thought from my mind and focused instead on placing a bundle of herbs on the conveyor belt. The cashier offered me a sunny smile, already reaching for the scanner.
“Having a good day?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the words caught in my throat. A wave of nausea rolled through me, no longer subtle or easy to ignore. The overhead lights shifted, blurring at the edges like halos in water. The world lost its shape.
Something felt wrong. My knees turned unreliable, soft in a way that defied gravity. My stomach twisted, this time with a brutal force. I reached for the counter. My hand slipped slightly on the polished edge. The cashier leaned forward, her brow furrowing.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
I wanted to answer. I really did. But my vision swam. The room tilted. Somewhere nearby, someone dropped a bottle. It shattered across the floor, sharp and distant.
And then everything went sideways.
When I come to, the light is too bright.
It seeps through the skin of my eyelids, the way sun cuts through sheer curtains you forgot to close.
I shift, instinctively turning away, but the pillow crinkles beneath my cheek, the sterile scent of antiseptic already crawling up my nose.
I know that smell. I know the hum of fluorescent lights above me.
I know the precise, clinical quiet that coats the air like varnish.
I’m in a hospital.
A cool cloth rests against my forehead, and for a moment, I stay still, pretending that if I don’t move, none of this will be real. But my throat is dry, cottony and raw, and the faint beeping beside me starts to sync with the panic building in my chest.
I crack one eye open, and the edge of the curtain comes into view, half-drawn, a pale divider between me and whatever comes next. I shift my legs beneath the blanket, trying to sit up, but my limbs feel waterlogged, my body too heavy, too slow. Every movement costs something.
A nurse appears, kind-eyed and calm, and she murmurs something about rest, about hydration, about needing to stay still a little longer.
I try to ask what happened, why I’m here, but my voice catches somewhere in the back of my mouth.
She adjusts the IV in my arm and pats my hand with the care of someone who’s done this a hundred times. I don’t even know her name.
“I’ll get your attending,” she says gently. “We’ve notified your emergency contact. You had a bit of a scare, but your vitals are coming up. Just breathe.”
I nod faintly, more out of politeness than understanding because I haven’t caught up to the moment yet. She begins flipping through my chart, humming quietly to herself, and then she says it, so offhandedly that it takes a moment to register.
“We’ll be keeping you for observation, given the pregnancy, but everything looks normal so far.”
One word sticks out, and I stare at her, mouth open in a helpless O.
Pregnancy?
I blink. I must have misheard. Maybe she meant something else.
Maybe I’m still half-dreaming, half-floating in whatever fevered haze brought me here.
I had been on the pill for years, religiously.
I never skipped. Never forgot. I took it every morning with the same glass of water, as much a habit as brushing my teeth.
But I remembered what the doctor once told me, almost like an afterthought at the end of the appointment.
No method was perfect. Antibiotics, stress, illness, even something as simple as a stomach virus could interfere.
And lately, everything in my life had been unraveling.
Missed meals, missed sleep, anxiety so sharp it made my head throb.
Maybe my body hadn’t absorbed it properly. Maybe I’d taken it late one too many times. Maybe it had just failed. It happened, even if no one ever believed it would happen to them.
But before I can ask, before I can make sense of the last sentence or even confirm I’m not imagining it, a shadow shifts on the other side of the curtain. Footsteps. A presence. Someone large, steady, and heartbreakingly familiar.
And then the curtain yanks open.
Of course it’s Ethan. He’s still in his coat, half-buttoned like he hasn’t been here long, like he just walked in from the cold. His hair is damp near the temples, his collar askew, and his eyes are locked on mine.
I can tell by his expression that he wasn’t looking for me. He must have been heading to another room, another case, maybe even just passing through—but now he’s frozen at the foot of my bed, as still as the quiet before a storm.
I can’t breathe.
He sees me. And he doesn’t look away.
His gaze sweeps down my body in that familiar, infuriatingly clinical way of his, like he’s already scanning for signs of trauma. I see the moment his hand twitches, the instinct to reach out, to check my wrist or feel my forehead. But he doesn’t touch me. He stops just short of that line.
“What the hell happened?”
His voice is muted, and he doesn’t sound angry yet. Just tight, caught somewhere between concern and something darker. Something I don’t know how to name.
I try to speak. I try to smile, to lie, to pretend this is a fluke.
I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just a little dizzy spell.
But nothing about this moment lets me reach for a lie that will stick.
The nurse is still there, still holding the chart, and for a second I think maybe she won’t say anything else, maybe I still have a chance to?—
“Dr. Cross,” she says briskly, barely glancing at him as she continues flipping pages, “the patient’s vitals are stabilizing, but given her pregnancy, we should keep her for observation.”
Silence folds around us.
Ethan doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His face is unreadable. But I see it. I see the exact second the words reach him. The moment he understands what he just heard.
His gaze drops to my stomach, and then back to my face.
“You’re pregnant?”
He isn’t asking. There’s nothing uncertain in his tone, no trace of doubt lingering behind the question.
This is him assembling the facts, lining them up in that sharp, surgical mind of his and finding the one truth that fits.
I can almost see it happening, the slow, calculated burn of realization behind his eyes.
His expression doesn’t crack, but quiet fury settles over him, tightening every line in his face, drawing shadows along the curve of his cheekbone and locking his mouth.
His eyes stay on me, a deeper green now, the color sharpened by restraint.
I remember that voice. How it always dropped when he was angry.
Low, smooth, dangerously quiet—never for show, never raised.
Ethan’s anger bears none of the loudness of Daniel.
His doesn’t need volume to cut through bone.
He’s furious now, and somehow, that makes him look impossibly more composed. More beautiful, like a storm has settled just beneath the surface of him, held there by sheer will, waiting to break.
I part my lips to answer, but nothing comes out.
He steps closer, just once, like the room isn’t wide enough to hold the space between us anymore. His jaw tightens, and his eyes darken into something I’m not prepared for.
And then the nurse speaks again, too quickly, too obliviously.
“Yes, about eight weeks along?—”
“That’s enough out of you,” he snaps, his voice sharp enough to make her flinch and hurry off without another word.
My stomach drops. I don’t have to look at him to know he’s doing the math. I’m doing it too. It lands in both of us at the same time.
Ethan doesn’t move. Not visibly. But something shifts behind his eyes. The way steel bends just before it breaks.
He speaks again, his tone as quiet as it is precise. “Tell me the truth, Ivy. Is it mine?”