Chapter 63
IVY
“We need to talk,” I say later, after my heart stops beating out of my chest. After I’ve had a chance to think. “Because what’s been happening? It’s not okay.”
“You said it yourself,” his gaze doesn’t leave mine. “I’ve improved things for you.”
“I’m not going to argue that.” I sigh. “But the way you’ve gone about it doesn’t exactly foster trust.”
He shrugs. “If it gets to the same outcome, I don’t see why that’s an issue.”
“Because my soul can’t breathe, Soren. I can’t relax wondering if you’re pulling the wool over my eyes. It doesn’t matter why you’re doing it. Dishonesty is dishonesty. Manipulation is manipulation. None of it is okay.”
He looks down now, like it’s finally starting to click. “So what exactly do you need from me, then?”
I frown, trying to find the words that will get through to him. It’s not that he doesn’t listen to me—because he listens more carefully than anyone else ever has. But he seems to bend my words to his will. To make them mean something that fits his narrative.
I take a deep breath, letting out an exhale that’s a little longer than my inhale.
My voice is intentionally soft. “Please, stop messing with my mind, Soren. If you don’t like something I’m doing, don’t get me canceled.
Don’t manipulate me. Just have an adult conversation.
Let me make my own decisions. Please. I can’t go on like this. ”
“So you forgive me?” he asks, hope in his voice.
“What a takeaway from what I just said!” I say, flabbergasted at his ability to once again hear what he wants to. “Abso-fucking-lutely not,” I say. “You owe me big time. And you’re going to pay up.”
This isn’t over. But I haven’t written him—all of this—off quite yet.
Our conversations come back to me all at once—what he did, what I said, the way I insisted he wasn’t forgiven. Even as everything quietly slid back into place like nothing really changed.
I hate that.
Hate how easily I fell back into it, how normal it started to feel again.
For a moment, I’m watching myself from the outside, detached from my own body, following a script I didn’t consciously agree to. And something in me recoils from that realization.
I can’t keep doing this.
Enough.
This time, I don’t hesitate. There’s no pause. No second-guessing.
I move.
Straight toward the door.
Each step is deliberate, grounded in a certainty that feels sharper than anything I’ve had until now. I know what this is. I know what he is. I know exactly what this becomes if I stay.
My hand closes around the handle.
Cold. Solid. Real.
For the first time in a while, my mind isn’t racing. It isn’t fractured or circling back on itself. It’s steady, focused. Painfully clear.
I know what this looks like.
Possessive. Obsessive. Controlling. Consuming.
I’ve lived versions of this before. The same slow suffocation dressed up as something meaningful.
I draw in a slow breath, grounding myself in the present as I realize something important.
That wasn’t this.
That was performance. Masks layered over insecurity, people trying to take something from me they didn’t understand well enough to name. They built me up just enough to break me down, over and over again, until I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
My grip tightens on the handle as the memory settles.
This is different.
There’s no performance in him. No moment where something slips and reveals a softer truth underneath. No inconsistency I can point to and use as an exit.
He is exactly what he shows me.
Every time.
He’s a perpetual love bomb, in stasis, destined to shower me with love and affection. Because that’s exactly who he is. A giver—on his terms for sure—but someone who legitimately cares about every cell in my body, every thought in my mind.
He doesn’t need me diminished or uncertain to hold on to me.
He just needs me.
The thought catches in my chest, sharper than it should be, because that should make this easier. It should make the decision obvious.
It doesn’t.
Because this type of attention is also suffocating.
It takes over, narrowing my perspective until I meld with him somehow.
We’re so in sync that I forget where he stops and I begin.
This level of affection isn’t intended to be sustained.
But he’s like a bulb that never burns out, and I know that in some weird endless loop, I am the fuel that keeps him going.
That also means that he accepts every part of me.
Every blemish. Every flaw. He’s made that abundantly clear, over and over, no matter how many times I’ve tried to show him exactly how imperfect I can be.
He’s had many opportunities to do so, but he’s never used my behavior against me.
Instead, he’s embraced my imperfections, worshipped them at his altar made in my image.
I worried it was a false image, perfection on a pedestal, but he’s taken my flaws and elevated them into something beautiful.
I press down on the handle and the door opens slightly, just enough for light to spill across the hallway floor in a thin, defined line.
Freedom is right there.
Clear. Immediate. Available.
And still, something feels off.
Because behind me, he hasn’t moved. He hasn’t tried to stop me or call me back. He’s just there, a steady presence I can feel without turning around.
I step forward, crossing the threshold with one foot.
“Stop.” The word lands behind me, flat and final. Not a question. Not a suggestion. A command.
I don’t turn immediately. I don’t react the way I know I should.
There’s a brief stretch of silence, and then I feel him shift—closer now, the distance closing without warning.
My breath steadies instead of faltering, which unsettles me more than anything else.
When I turn, I do it slowly, deliberately, refusing to give him the reaction he might expect. I don’t step back or flinch. I face him fully.
He hasn’t moved out of the way. He doesn’t look like he ever intended to.
Like he knew I would come back to him.
His hand closes around my wrist, firm and unyielding, stopping me as effectively as if I’d never moved at all.
The contact sends a sharp awareness through me, my pulse jumping at the certainty in it. There’s no urgency in his grip, no roughness—just something absolute that leaves no room for misinterpretation.
“You know you’re not going to.” His voice is calm, steady in a way that makes the words land harder.
My chest rises and falls, uneven now, because he isn’t asking. He isn’t testing me. He’s stating something he already understands. Something he’s already decided.
I meet his gaze—really look at him this time—without the distortion I’ve been clinging to. There’s nothing hidden there. No illusion left to soften what I’m seeing.
And I do want to leave.
The urge is sharp, immediate. I feel it in the tension in my body, in the way my weight shifts slightly toward the open door. In the instinct to pull my wrist free and keep going.
But something catches. It isn’t physical. It isn’t him holding me in place. It’s deeper than that. A hesitation I didn’t expect. Didn’t plan for. Didn’t want.
My fingers loosen slightly on the handle, just enough for me to notice it. My breath falters, and the realization follows immediately.
This isn’t about whether I can leave.
It’s about why I’m not.
I stand there with the door open, his hand still around my wrist, the exit just inches away, and I feel it—that pull, steady and persistent, anchoring me in place.
I don’t move forward or back—I’m suspended between the two.
Wanting to leave, and not doing it.
He pulls me to him, his hand wrapped around the back of my neck. He tilts my chin, forcing my gaze to his.
And then he speaks.
“You are my poison, Ivy. Don’t you get that? My misfit. My stray. I’m undeniably addicted to you. You run through my veins, and you’re potent as fuck.
I can’t concentrate on anything else.
And you’re not good for me all the time, either. You’re a distraction. I used to be focused. I used to be—solitary.
You’ve changed my fucking DNA. Don’t you see that?
When I don’t have you near me, I crave you. My body shuts down. It doesn’t work right.
I need you, the way your being courses through me just by being in your vicinity.
You bring me to my knees.
But I don’t care, because without you there’s no fucking point anymore.
I used to think it was getting revenge on the evil man who raised me. But now he’s rotting in a cell inside an insane asylum and he can’t hurt me anymore.
I have you now, and no shortage of people who’ve hurt you in the worst ways. None of which you’ve done a fucking thing to deserve!
I would gladly hurt anyone who so much as glanced in your direction in the wrong way.
I would gladly spend the rest of my life breathing for you, just to know you’re okay. Protecting you. Bringing you pleasure. Making your life happy and complete and the best life that you could ever possibly have.
You are killing me, day by day, drawing my life source out of me.
You are my Kryptonite, Ivy. An insidious toxin that has merged with mine.
We are two dark souls destined to be together.
You feed on me, and I willingly let you take, take, take.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I would die for you, Ivy. Don’t you see how much I love you? Don’t you see how much I need you to go on? For life to have any meaning?
Because as much as I’d die to keep you living… if you weren’t here, if you weren’t part of my life, I would literally fade away.
I will follow you into the beyond. I will happily let you haunt me in this world and into the next.
We are two souls, on a mission.
You are my venom, and there is no antidote. And I don’t want one.
I don’t want to be cured of you.
I want to be riddled with you, incapacitated by you.
And in the same way, I want to consume you, too.”