Chapter 50
SOREN
Fuck.
I shouldn’t have crushed her phone.
It was a moment of carelessness, where I let my mask slip.
I try to hide those parts from her. And I do, for the most part.
But today I lost my cool.
She’s too deep in now to let something like that scare her away. Thankfully.
But I’m going to have to do something big. Some grand gesture to make it up to her.
Otherwise, these little slips will add up into something more. Small mistakes compound.
It’ll only take a session with a half-decent therapist to analyze any one of them on their own and encourage her to pack a go-bag. To tell her that something isn’t right with me. To plant a seed of doubt about me in her beautiful yet fragile mind.
And that’s the last thing I need.
Especially now.
IVY
Exhausted, I take a nap. I’m not normally a nap person—at least I wasn’t until I moved to Ravelle—but now they come more easily.
I don’t wake with the same groggy feeling I used to associate with them. Maybe it’s something I’m growing into. Acquiring naps as a skill later in life. Ha.
When I wake, I lie in place for a while, the sun streaming in through the partially open blinds. The brightness lifts me out of nap mode, and I take a long, luxurious stretch.
I hear the front door close—I didn’t hear Soren leave—he must have popped out while I was asleep. And then his footsteps approach the room.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he says, peering in from one side of the doorframe. He looks a little sheepish, maybe even a little concerned. “Can we talk for a minute?”
I nod. “Sure,” as I let out another yawn.
He hands me a box, distinctive and white. An iPhone. The latest kind, and the top-of-the-line version with the best camera and all the storage.
I quirk a brow, not quite sure what to say.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says quietly. “I know it was wrong.”
“Crushed my phone with your bare hands in a display of caveman-like vandalism of my property?” I can’t help but scoff.
It’s not the first time a man has damaged my property—it was one of my exes favorite pastimes, a way of exerting control and just, well… pissing me off—but there was something about Soren’s sheer show of force that felt like a silent threat.
“Look, I really am sorry. I don’t want to make excuses.
But I just felt so annoyed that you can’t get a break from the outside world, Ivy.
You—you deserve peace. You deserve to be able to go about your life without demanding people wanting to take from you all the time.
” He pauses. “But that didn’t give me the right to destroy your things.
I shouldn’t have done it, and I am really sorry.
I hope you can forgive me.” His gaze is locked on mine, a hint of something that looks like expectation pulling at me.
It’s disarming that he’s acknowledging it all. Sure, there’s a hint of an excuse—a justification—buried within his disclaimer about not having an excuse. But the apology still rings true.
I pull the phone out of the box and press the button on the side.
It immediately lights up, and it’s fully charged.
The phone is beautiful, sleek, and matte black—my color of choice.
And I quickly realize it’s already set up, with everything transferred over from the cloud.
Seamless. Soren, once again making it easy again.
Easy for me to go about my life.
Easy for me to forgive what he did.
The rest of the day is productive. I get a ton of work done, and the phone makes it a hell of a lot easier than before. It feels better to use it—brand new. Faster. Cleaner.
The settings look slightly different than I’d expect—I can’t put my finger on it.
A couple of extra icons I don’t recognize.
But new phones always come with new settings, new features, new preinstalled apps.
I make a mental note to look into what’s changed later so I can make the most out of it.
In the meantime, it’s already a significant improvement on what I had before today.
The Middle of the Night
Something isn’t right.
I feel it before I understand it. An awareness that something isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
My eyes open slowly, the room still dim, soft with early light. For a second, everything feels normal—looks normal. Quiet. Still.
Then I realize I’m not alone in my body.
My breath catches.
He’s already there.
Not beside me. Not just touching—closer than that.
Inside me.
My stomach tightens, a sharp flicker of confusion cutting through the haze of sleep. “Soren…?” My voice is rough. Unsteady.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t even hesitate. “Stay.” His voice is low. Calm. Too calm. Like this is normal. Like there’s nothing to explain as I feel him thrusting inside me.
My body reacts before my mind catches up. That’s the part that makes everything worse. I should be pulling away. I should be asking what he’s doing, why he didn’t wake me—why this feels wrong.
Instead, my breath stutters. My body shifts under him, responding in a way I didn’t choose, didn’t prepare for, didn’t— “Wait,” I manage, but it comes out softer than I want it to. Thinner. Less certain.
He doesn’t stop. His hand finds mine, guiding it, holding it—not tightly, not forcefully—just enough to keep me there. “Don’t think. Just go with it.”
That flicker—that small, sharp hesitation—tries to surface. “Wait—” it comes out breathless this time. Barely formed. Not even resistance.
And once again, he doesn’t stop—not even slightly. Instead, his hand tightens at the back of my neck, holding me there as his mouth returns to mine, deeper this time, harder. “You don’t say wait to me,” he murmurs against my lips. The words are quiet, but they land heavy.
Something in my chest tightens, then drops.
Because the way he says it doesn’t feel like a warning—it feels like a fact.
And my body betrays me. I lean into him instead.
Closer. My hands pulling him in, my breath uneven, my thoughts slipping out of reach as everything narrows down to him, to the way he touches me—the way he holds me like there’s no version of this where I get to pull away.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, softer now, his thumb brushing once along my jaw. “Don’t think.”
And I don’t. I don’t want to. Because this feels better. Easier. My thoughts blur at the edges, too hard to hold onto. And my body responds to his pace—faster now, stronger. Betraying every instinct that’s trying to catch up and make sense of this.
My chest rises too quickly—this isn’t how this is supposed to happen. There’s supposed to be a moment. A choice. Something clear. But there isn’t—there’s just him.
And then it’s over, the sensation of him coming inside me as my body continues to wake up. He pulls out and sprawls back on the bed, one arm lazily wrapped around me as if it’s just another night.
I don’t know how long it went on for before I gained consciousness. But is that bad? I trust him. I give him my body all the time. I enjoy our sex life. Very much, in fact.
So what’s wrong about this? Maybe when I told him I wanted to be taken without knowing it was him, he took it as permission. As a sign that he could do what he wanted with me—use my body—regardless of whether I was awake.
I stare at the ceiling, trying to find the moment where this crossed a line.
If it’s there, I can’t seem to hold onto it.
Because underneath that, there’s something else, something worse—it felt good.
My stomach twists. Intuitively, I’m aware that shouldn’t be the takeaway—that shouldn’t be what sticks. And yet it is.
I shift slightly, my gaze drifting toward the far wall.
Something catches my attention. Not obvious.
A detail. The angle of something—a reflection that shouldn’t quite line up the way it does.
My eyes narrow slightly. There’s a device on the shelf.
It’s angled toward the bed. Maybe it’s always been there.
Maybe I just never noticed it. Maybe I’m noticing too much now.
A slow unease prickles under my skin. Like something watching. I swallow, turning my head slightly, trying to shake the feeling off. Trying to convince myself it’s nothing. That I’m overthinking. That this—all of this—is still something I understand.
Behind me, he shifts. Close again. Always close. His hand finds my waist like it belongs there. Like it always does. “You’re okay.”
The words settle over me. Calm. Certain.
Like a conclusion. And the worst part—the part I can’t quite reconcile—is that I feel it.
That same settling. That same quieting of everything that was starting to rise.
My body relaxes again. Against him. Into him.
Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
I close my eyes. Just for a second. And try not to think about why that feels normal.
I’m just not used to whatever this was—wasn’t prepared for it.
But it’s okay. He didn’t do anything to hurt me.
And my body doesn’t care. It’s a little sore, but in that good way that being fucked by a more than decent cock brings.
I might not remember it all, but I’ll be feeling it for days.
I’m slick with wetness, a clear indication my body didn’t mind what he was doing by any means.
It’s fine, Ivy. Your guy fucked you. Calm the fuck down.
And everything softens after that.
My breathing slows, my body sinking back into the mattress, the tension draining out of me like it was never mine to begin with.
I wake up screaming. “Zane!” The words fly from my lips.
But it’s that kind of screaming that isn’t the shriek you think it is in the middle of your nightmare.
My body reacts before I wake. It thrashes around, but it’s like I’m in a straitjacket, most of the movement coming from my shoulders rather than my arms and legs.
My legs are tangled in the sheets, and my body is covered in a cool sweat that makes me shiver—hot and sticky cold at the same time.
Then I realize someone is tugging at me, pulling on my upper arm.
I immediately think it’s him—Zane—the man who almost destroyed me, and I brace myself and flinch away, my mind racing as it anticipates whatever torment he has planned for me next. Always something, each time more darker, more dangerous than before.
My heart pounds in my chest, and I force myself to still. The room is oddly silent.
But I’m tense, rigid. “Zane, stop…” I plead, half-groggy, half-panicked. This can’t be real.
I look over.
But there’s no trace of Zane.
I’m simultaneously relieved and—weirdly—disappointed.
I might pretend to myself that I’ve gotten closure—that no-contact is exactly the right way to approach such a monster—but if I’m honest with myself, that’s far from the case.
While I have no urge to be with him anymore in any capacity, I still have so many questions I need answered, to understand not just why me, but why in this way?
I know he probably doesn’t have the answers, but it doesn’t stop me from craving them—from feeling like not having them has left me with a gaping hole in my heart that might never be repaired.
It’s an impossible nightmare, being in a relationship with someone like that.
Someone who pretends to love you so hard at the beginning, who gets to know your deepest darkness and pretends to love you for it.
But secretly, deep down, they’re working out how to shrink you until you’re a husk, an empty soulless void—just like them.
And the worst part is, it’s such a specific kind of grief—grieving something that looked like love, but wasn’t.
Grieving the person I thought he was, knowing that person never actually existed.
I’ve never been able to grieve him properly, because there’s no real him to grieve.
Instead, I’ve been grieving a fiction—a character he played to get what he wanted from me.
Until there was almost nothing left of me at all.
And that’s a specific kind of devastation. No wonder it haunts my dreams, leaving me screaming.
Because the beautiful, carefree times at the beginning—they felt real, because they were for me. My joy was real. My love was real. My hope was real.
His wasn’t.
I loved him with my whole fucking heart, and he wasn’t even there to receive it. He was performing. Calculating. Waiting. The entire time.
I sigh, because it’s better than crying. Better than allowing the avalanche of emotion that threatens to overwhelm me, and then try to explain it all to a jealous, possessive man. The one who is actually right beside me.
Soren frowns at me. “Were you thinking about him? Dreaming about him?!” His voice is rising.
“No–Soren, I—” My words trail off, because I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the energy to figure it out.
“Don’t lie to me, Ivy—I heard you calling out his name!”
“It was a nightmare, Soren! I can’t control that!” My own voice raises. He’s exasperating. And if I try to talk him through it honestly, he’s going to become fixated on making sure I’m ‘cured’. He’s always trying to fix everything.
“You still want him, don’t you?” He sneers. “You’re still in love with him. Aren’t you?” He grabs me by both shoulders and shakes me. “Just admit it, Ivy—it’s the least you could do!”
I cower away from him. “No, Soren,” I say quietly. “Sometimes my trauma processes while I’m asleep. And yes, I have nightmares about him. It’s complicated. But I promise it’s not because I want to be with him. Far from it.”
As if sensing my fear, he pulls me to him, my head tight to his chest. “I’m so sorry, baby. That must be really hard,” he says, his voice gentle, his tone back to normal. “I’ll make sure you never have to think about him again.”
He pauses, grabbing my chin with his thumb and forefinger, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“Your dreams—and your nightmares—will only be about me from now on. I’ll make sure of it.”
Suddenly, everything feels hollow. And all I want to do is drift off into a deep, deep sleep.