14. Ethan
ETHAN
J ust after noon, when the sky is a washed-out silver and the city outside my window resonates with the usual midweek churn, I get a call from Ivy. I answer without hesitation, barely letting it ring once. “Ivy.”
There’s a pause on the other end. Not the kind that means she’s distracted or busy or weighing how to respond. This is the kind of silence that says everything’s wrong and she doesn’t know where to start. I sit forward, elbow braced on my knee, eyes on the skyline but not really seeing it.
Her voice finally comes through. “Are you busy?”
It’s the tone that gets me. Flat, like she’s rehearsing it. A layer of control that doesn’t belong there. Ivy’s never been good at hiding what she feels. “I can talk,” I say carefully, trying not to give away the shift in my pulse. “What’s going on?”
She hesitates again. I hear the soft hitch in her breath, like she’s fighting not to say something real.
“Can we talk later? In person?”
My knuckles tighten around the edge of the desk. I don’t like the way she sounds. I don’t like that I can hear the effort it’s taking her just to stay composed.
“Where are you?”
“At the apartment.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
She makes a small sound—acknowledgment, maybe—but she doesn’t argue. That alone tells me what I need to know.
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 again even 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.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I give her a look that makes her falter. “You’re coming with me.”
Her mouth opens again in protest, but I cut her off.
“I’m not asking you. You’re not safe here. And whether you like it or not, I’m not leaving you alone.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I don’t move. I don’t blink. Eventually, something in her crumbles just enough for me to see the answer she doesn’t want to say aloud.
I turn for the hallway.
“Ten minutes,” I tell her, already moving to check the locks on the back window. “Bring whatever you need. We’ll figure out the rest later.”
She doesn’t follow right away, but I hear her footsteps a few seconds later.
By the time I reach the curb, the city’s already cooling around me.
Dusk settles in, slow and wide, the kind that drapes the streets in shadow, painting everything in washed-out blue and quiet gold.
I unlock the car and lean against the driver’s side door, the metal still warm from the sun.
I don’t look back. I don’t need to. Her footsteps are soft but certain, the familiar rhythm of her boots against the concrete stairwell giving her away.
I don’t speak as she approaches and make myself content by just opening the passenger door and waiting.
Ivy doesn’t say anything, either. She slides into the seat, smooth and silent, the edge of her coat brushing against my arm as she pulls it closed.
Her scent follows her in, vanilla and the faintest trace of tea tree oil from the soap she uses.
She’s not trying to fill the silence, and for once, neither am I.
The engine rumbles to life beneath my hands. We pull away from the curb and leave the city behind.
The drive stretches out before us like a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.
Miles of open road, the horizon bleeding into the hills, the last light sinking beneath a line of trees that thicken with every passing turn.
Ivy’s posture eases inch by inch, her shoulder settling back against the seat, her eyes following the movement of the trees instead of darting to the phone in her lap.
We don’t speak for the first twenty minutes.
There’s no music. No hum of conversation.
Just the low sound of tires gliding over asphalt and the wind brushing over the hood as the city disappears in the rearview mirror.
Eventually, she glances over at me. Her voice is quiet but clearer than I’ve heard it in days.
“You still come out here sometimes?”
“Not for a while,” I answer, eyes still fixed ahead. “My family stopped using the place a few years back. Too far. Too isolated. Not enough Wi-Fi for my mother.”
That earns a small curve of her lips, the first real sign of life I’ve seen in her since yesterday.
“Why keep it?”
“It’s mine now,” I say simply. “I like knowing it’s there.”
We drive the rest of the way with that thought between us.
The road narrows. The sky darkens. Pines arch over the road, tall and ancient, their needles catching what little light remains.
When we finally pull up to the cabin, the headlights sweep across the porch, casting the old wooden slats in a soft golden glow.
The structure is solid and dark against the trees, half-swallowed by ivy and moss, the windows small and warm behind aged shutters.
I kill the engine and step out. The air is cooler here, clean and damp, full of woodsmoke and pine and something faintly earthy.
I circle to the passenger side and open the door before she can reach for it.
Ivy steps out, slow and cautious, her gaze moving across the clearing like she’s waiting for something to jump out and tell her this was a mistake.
She doesn't find it.
The front door creaks open under my hand.
Inside, the cabin smells like cedar and old books, with a lingering trace of dried lavender from the sachets my mother used to hang in the closets.
There’s no modern lighting—just brass sconces and a row of mismatched candles I light one by one.
The flickering glow fills the space with warmth, chasing back whatever chill had followed us in.
She trails me into the kitchen without asking.
We move around each other without instruction, without needing to assign roles.
She finds the plates while I dig through the fridge and pantry, pulling ingredients into a rhythm I haven’t allowed myself in months.
There’s something therapeutic about it, the soft clink of ceramic and wood, the knife slicing clean through red bell peppers, the low sizzle of olive oil hitting the cast iron skillet.
Ivy leans against the counter beside me, peeling garlic with her fingers, her brows furrowed in quiet concentration.
She sings softly, a tune I don’t recognize, but it fills the cabin in a way music never could. I don’t tell her to stop. I don’t even want to move.
Dinner is pasta tossed in crushed tomatoes, red peppers, roasted garlic, caramelized shallots, and thin shavings of parmesan I find buried in the back of the fridge.
I pour her a glass of something red and dry from the small wine rack beneath the stairs.
She drinks it without question. We eat by candlelight, seated across the worn oak table, our knees almost touching beneath the old wool blanket I draped over the chairs earlier to keep the draft from slipping through.
The food disappears slowly, each bite punctuated by the occasional murmur of appreciation or soft scrape of cutlery. Eventually, conversation stirs again. It starts with the cabin. Then memories.
She tells me about the time she and Drew snuck into the kitchen here when they were kids and tried to bake a cake.
It had collapsed in the oven, but her mother had declared it the best thing she’d ever eaten.
I counter with a story about falling through the dock as a teenager, soaked to the bone and too proud to admit I couldn’t swim back to shore until her brother jumped in after me.
She laughs then, openly, eyes crinkling at the corners, and something inside me loosens without permission.
Her fork slows over the last bite, and she sets it down carefully before looking at me again. Her fingers trace the stem of her glass.
“Thank you for this,” she says, voice quiet. “It means a lot.”
I nod, watching her.
She doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask. The air between us turns heavier, but not unpleasant. The kind of weight that comes from things unsaid, not because they are hidden, but because naming them might change everything.
Later, we clean the dishes side by side. The fire I lit earlier crackles low in the hearth, the orange glow casting shadows across the wood-paneled walls. She dries while I wash, passing me towels and silence and something that feels suspiciously like trust.
When we finish, she moves to the armchair near the fire and pulls her knees beneath her. The light plays across her face, turning her hair to burnished mahogany and her eyes to pools of green dipped in amber.
I don’t sit. I just watch her.
And in that stillness, I feel it again. The shift, the heat, the pull I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist.
I have tried to be careful with her, patient with all her walls and silences. But standing here now, watching the firelight dance across her skin, I know I am one wrong look away from giving in completely.
And the truth is, I have never been good at resisting her.