Chapter 34 #2
I haven’t even told him the whole story. And yet somehow he knows.
This is too much.
But I don’t pull away. Instead, I lean into him fully.
His arm comes around me immediately. His hand slides to the back of my neck, his fingers settling there, holding me in place without pressure. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
And I believe him. Not just because it sounds good and I want to pretend he means what he says. Completely.
I never want to go back inside, resume normal life. Because leaving would mean interrupting this. Breaking it. And I don’t want that.
The words keep coming after that. I don’t filter them. I don’t measure them. They move from somewhere deeper, surfacing without resistance.
And he listens. Every time.
No interruption. No redirection. No need to fix or reshape anything.
Holds me.
“You know, I feel like I know you pretty well, Ivy—and you don’t seem very difficult to me,” he says, tracing a thumb around the curve between my thumb and index finger. “You actually seem… the opposite.”
Maybe he’s right. Growing up, I did my best to make my parents proud, even though that was near-impossible with my mother’s constant irrational demands.
Getting the best grades, participating in all the activities, smiling through my tears when she would tip the contents of my drawers upside down in my room and yell at me to put everything in order.
As a teenager into my early twenties, I took pride in being the laidback one when it came to guys—the go-with-the-flow one—even when what they wanted me to do wasn’t good for me.
And now, as an adult—in corporate roles, doing what my bosses asked even when they went against what I stood for. In my own business, now, placating my clients even when their demands are outrageous.
Rarely being outspoken, putting my foot down. Saying no—I want this. I’m going to do what’s right for me.
On the few occasions I did try, being stomped down so viciously I would never forget what they deemed to be my place.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve tried to fit in… to be unobtrusive and compliant and easy… but my brain doesn’t work the same way other people’s do.”
“How so?” His hand stills, squeezing mine gently, encouraging me to go on.
“I’ve just always seen the world a bit differently than most people—at least, that’s how it feels.
I’ve always felt like I’m an outsider, on the outskirts looking in.
My brain doesn’t filter information the same way.
So despite trying to, I’ve never been able to meet anyone’s expectations.
” I pause. “I misread things, and so even though I’m trying to do what people want, I end up getting it wrong.
” I bite my lip. It was never about effort or intent, it was miscalculation.
Not understanding what everyone else seems to.
He pauses—neither rushing in to fix nor recoiling in shock—just absorbing this truth I’ve carried alone. Then he murmurs, “That shouldn’t have happened to you. And you’re most definitely not a disappointment.”
The words settle in my chest like warm stones. I blink, eyes still on the bright grid beneath us though I’m not really seeing it anymore.
He shifts his grip just a little, sliding his hand higher under my ribs, fingers splaying to anchor me more surely. “You weren’t too much,” he continues, voice steady as a metronome. “You were with people who didn’t know how to hold you.”
Something in me cracks open, a sliver of relief seeping through.
“That’s not who you are with me.”
I lean back until my spine curves against the firm press of his chest. “I don’t know,” I whisper, voice thinner now, my hand running along the cool railing. “It feels like a pattern.”
“Or a failure of pattern recognition,” he replies softly.
I let out a small, confused laugh. “What?”
“You kept ending up in the same kind of environment,” he says, thumb tracing gentle circles. “That doesn’t make you the problem—it just means no one interrupted it.”
The word lands heavier than any blame ever could. I taste it on my tongue, let it settle somewhere beneath my sternum.
“You were alone longer than you should’ve been,” he adds, and there’s neither judgment nor pity in his tone—only that calm certainty.
No one’s ever put it that way before—not what’s wrong, why I’m so “difficult,” but simply that I’d been abandoned.
I don’t notice how far I’ve reclined into him until his arm tightens around my waist, drawing my body flush against his. “I’m fine now,” I say quickly.
He brushes a strand of hair from my temple. “I know.” No argument. No caveat. Just quiet confidence. “Come here,” he whispers.
I turn in his arms, just enough to angle my face toward his.
Then his palm slides up the small of my back, then rises vertebra by vertebra until his fingertips warm the nape of my neck. His thumb drifts along my hairline. “You’re okay,” he says. He pauses, then adds, softer still, “You’re more than okay, little poison.”
My shoulders drop. My chest loosens. That strange nickname again—part fierce, part cherished—lands like a key.
I close my eyes for a long second.
He murmurs into my hair, “I’ve got you, Ivy.”
And for the first time, I believe it. There’s no caveat, no hidden edge—only the warmth of his body behind me, the measured pulse of his thumb, and the night stretched wide and softened before us.
For the first time, the burden of being me and growing up the way I did doesn’t feel like something I have to carry alone. I don’t feel the need to shrink it or make it easier for someone else to take in. I don’t have to adjust myself around it.
I just exist with it.
And with Soren, that feels like enough.
When I finally close my eyes, resting fully against him, his hand still steady at the back of my neck, the rhythm of his thumb slow and consistent, something settles quietly into place.
A realization I don’t question. Don’t analyze. Don’t try to pull apart.
I don’t feel alone when I’m with him. I don’t want to remember what that felt like anymore.
I don’t just want to stay.
I don’t want to exist anywhere else.