Chapter 76
Ren
My phone rang, and I grabbed it on the first buzz. Ivy’s name lit the screen, and my chest tightened before I even answered.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
I’d spammed her with messages. Too many. Asking if she needed me. If she was safe. If she had gotten released. Every unanswered text had made my thoughts spiral darker.
“As good as can be expected,” she said, and I heard it immediately. The strain. The way fear sat in the back of your throat. “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Ren. And they still have Sabastian.”
Then she broke.
I pressed my palm to my eyes as her sobs filled the line. Logically, I understood why the guys had done what they had. I could recite the reasons. The threats. The risks. But moments like this made me wonder if I was truly built for this world.
How did you ruin someone’s life…then listen as those you loved cried, and still believe you were doing the right thing?
“Did you see him? At the jail?”
“Yeah,” she sniffed. “He wouldn’t even look at me. He thinks I had something to do with this.”
Guilt hit fast and sharp, like a slap across the face. I dragged a hand through my hair and resumed pacing as the walls closed in around me.
“I swear to you, Ren,” she said desperately. “I didn’t.”
“I know,” I said immediately. “I believe you.”
“What is wrong with me,” she asked, her voice breaking again. But this time, she didn’t cry. “Both of the guys I love are in jail? Do I just have terrible taste in men or what?”
The question wasn’t really about men. It was about blame. About control. About needing something to make sense.
“This isn’t about you,” I said. “None of this is.”
“It sure feels like it is,” she shot back. “I never should’ve told Sabastian coming to Wayward was a good idea. When he brought it up, I should’ve shut it down. Maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
Maybe. The word lodged in my throat.
I didn’t know if it would have changed anything. But the possibility that his transferring made it worse pressed down on me just the same.
“Ren,” she said softly, and I braced myself. “Be honest with me. Did the guys do this to him?”
There it was. The question I was praying she wouldn’t ask, but knew would come, sooner or later.
Hope and fear tangled together in her voice, and it hurt more than if she’d just accused me outright.
I bit my knuckle and breathed in slowly through my nose.
“This is Christov’s fault,” I said carefully.
It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
“What,” she asked, clearly confused. “He put his own son in jail. Why?”
“This started long before any of us,” I said, trying to explain as best I could. “There’s history there. Decisions he made that Sabastian is now paying for.” I swallowed. “I’ll see if Theo can find out anything. Legally. But Ivy…don’t hope too much. I honestly don’t know what any of us can do.”
She was quiet for a beat.
“Since the day I met you, you’ve never dodged a question. The fact that you are right now…tells me everything.”
The silence stretched, heavy and accusing. I stared at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser and wasn’t sure I liked the person I saw staring back.
I hated being in this position. Hated that I was carrying secrets that weren’t mine to share. Hated that I could hear my mother’s voice in my own when I spoke next.
“There’s nothing I can say that will make this better.”
The words tasted wrong the moment they left my mouth. The irony of the situation was not lost on me.
“Can’t, or won’t?”
I closed my eyes.
“Both,” I admitted. “And I hate it. I really do.” My voice softened. “I think of Sabastian like a brother. I hate that this is happening to him.”
“That’s not enough,” she said. Not yelling, but I still heard the thread of anger beneath. “You’ve been shutting me out since last summer. Every time I turn around, there’s something else you can’t tell me. And now this.”
“You told me that you didn’t want to know anything,” I said gently. “Remember? And I warned you about Sabastian. I told you he was trouble, Ivy. You stayed with him anyway. Even after you found out about his father, what he was involved in, and with who.”
“Sabastian is not his father,” she snapped. “Did Owen or Lawrence stop you from dating Myles and Nash? No.”
She was right…it hadn’t. “I know,” I said.
“I know that. But this isn’t a clean world.
There weren’t bombs falling, but a war was still being fought.
And in any war, innocent people get hurt.
” My chest ached as I added, “It doesn’t make it right.
I’m just trying to be honest without dragging you deeper into something that could destroy you. ”
She laughed then, the sound void of any humor.
“That’s a fancy way of justifying doing something terrible.”
The disappointment in her voice cut deeper than anger ever could.
“When I first arrived, Myles told me that sometimes good people do terrible things, but it doesn’t make them bad people. I didn’t believe him then—but I understand it now. I can only hope you’re never forced to carry the weight of those words yourself.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say something like that, Ren.” She exhaled heavily. “I need to go. I’m exhausted.”
“Okay,” I said, even though panic curled tight in my stomach. “I’ll call you later.”
“No,” she said. “I think…we need some space.”
The floor dropped out beneath me.
“You don’t want to be my friend anymore?”
The question came out quieter than I intended.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and my chest ached under my ribs like my heart was being squeezed.
“All I know is that in the span of two weeks, two people that I love were thrown in jail. I don’t know if or when they’re getting out.
And the common denominator is you and the Kings.
” Her voice softened, just a little. “I just need time, Ren.”
“Ivy—”
The call ended.
I stared at my phone long after the screen went dark, my reflection faintly staring back at me.
Some losses didn’t come with explosions or blood. They just walked away.
1:45 AM
Nash
I didn’t knock. I stood there with my fist raised and thought about what to say. Then, I listened to the quiet on the other side, like it might tell me whether I was about to lose my wife or just another piece of her faith in me.
Trying my luck, I knocked once.
“Go away.”
I exhaled through my nose. “No.”
Ren yanked the door open. Her eyes were red, but not puffy, crying red. The kind of red that meant she’d already broken and stitched herself back together without me.
That hurt worse.
“What do you want, Nash,” Ren asked flatly.
“I want you to yell at me,” I said. “Because you’re doing that thing where you go quiet and pretend that you’re fine, and that scares the shit out of me.”
She laughed once without humor.
“You don’t get to be scared. Not after you set this all in motion.”
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The room smelled like her. Warm, comforting, home. I would never feel guilty about Sabastian, but I did about everything else.
“Ivy called,” she said before I could speak. “She thinks I did this. She thinks I chose you over her. Over my friendship or morals.”
I swallowed. “Ren—”
“She’s not wrong,” she snapped. “You all made a choice without me. Again. You decided who deserved protection and who didn’t. And it didn’t matter what I thought or felt as long as you got your way.”
My jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“No?” She stepped closer. “You put cocaine in his trunk, Nash. You set him up for drug trafficking or intent to distribute or god only knows what else.”
“Sabastian is not innocent,” I shot back. “He’s Christov’s son, he’s unstable, and he’s already hurt people.”
“Oh my god! And that makes it okay?” Her voice cracked.
“Yes, there was a real threat.”
“No. You treated him just as my mother treated you. You looked at him and judged him based on his father. You don’t get to decide who gets destroyed just because you’re afraid. That is something your father would’ve done.”
Fuck. She wasn’t pulling any punches.
“I’m nothing like him, and I’m not afraid,” I growled.
She shook her head.
“Nash, wake up,” she said, paralleling the words I’d said to Sabastian. “You may not be like your father, but you still acted like him. And yes…you are afraid. You’re terrified of losing me, so you would rather burn the world before it can touch me.”
I opened my mouth to dispute what she said, but I couldn’t. She was fucking right. I would destroy everything and fly her away if I thought it would keep her safe. I would kill anyone who hurt her. No question, no guilt.
“I would do it again,” I said, quietly admitting the truth. “If it means you’re breathing tomorrow, I’d do it again. I can’t apologize for that. I can’t say I’m sorry because I want you to live and…I just can’t.”
Her shoulders slumped as if I had finally admitted her worst fear.
“That’s what scares me, Nash. It’s what scares me about all of you. Because at the end of the day, you think you’re doing the right thing, the only thing that can be done. And it’s for love.”
I took a step toward her.
“Do you think I enjoy becoming the villain in your story?”
“No, I think you will choose to be, because you think you have to be.”
I blinked as I tried to wrap my head around that.
“Nash, I get why you did what you did. But…once again you didn’t tell me,” she whispered. “You let me stand there and watch as Sabastian, someone that I love like a brother, was taken into custody. A spectacle for the whole world to see.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “Because if you’d asked me not to, I would’ve been forced to lie and say we wouldn’t do it. Nothing was going to stop me from keeping you safe. I did what needed doing.”
“And consequences be damned,” she said, her voice flat.
Tears burned my eyes. I hated that she could do this to me. Stripped bare with nothing but disappointment in her gray eyes. I cupped her cheeks, silently pleading with her to understand.
“I can live with you hating me,” I said. “I can live with you being disappointed. What I can’t live with is you thinking I don’t care about consequences.”
Her voice dropped.
“Then why does it feel like you didn’t even hesitate?”
Because I didn’t. Because the moment Sabastian looked at her and Yuliana like he wanted them dead, something inside me broke clean in half.
“I couldn’t hesitate. I have said it before…I can’t and won’t lose you. I will do whatever I must to keep you safe, or I might as well lie down right now and have you shoot me. If something happens to you, and I could’ve prevented it…I think about Ella and…” I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Ren’s eyes searched my face, and she slowly licked her lips. I wanted to kiss her and hold her in my arms.
“Nash…I need you to understand something,” Ren said. “If you keep deciding things for me, you will lose me. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. At some point, you’re going to cross a line that I cannot justify.”
That terrified me more than prison or death.
“I hear you,” I said. And for once, I meant it without conditions.
She nodded slowly. “Good, because I don’t know how to forgive you yet. I will. But not today.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I’m just asking you not to shut me out while you try.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll go sleep downstairs for the night to give you space.”
Ren backed away.
“Thank you for that,” she said, walking over to the bed.
She pulled down the blankets, then stopped and looked at me.
“Sometimes I really hate you.”
“I love you too, Princess,” I said, with a smirk, and slipped out.
It felt like a win, even though love wasn’t about winning the argument. It was about standing in the wreckage and waiting to see what had survived and what had been destroyed.
Ren telling me she hated me…that gave me hope.