Chapter 18
Ivy
I wake up late, still in last night’s clothes. The leather jacket smells like wind and gasoline, and for one disoriented second, I don’t know whose scent it is — Ghost’s, mine or something in between.
The ache hits low and dull, like a bruise I keep pressing. I strip off the jacket and shower so hot it hurts, scrubbing my skin like I can wash off the guilt along with the road dust. The water runs and I stand under it and tell myself to focus.
Killian is real. Killian is coming. Focus on what’s real.
I dry off, pull on shorts and a hoodie, and leave my hair damp. I have dark circles deep enough to scare a doctor. I look like a woman who spent her night holding one man and her morning waiting for another.
The sound reaches me before he does. Everything inside me ignites. The Monster’s growl shattering the morning quiet is aggressive and unmistakable. I’m at the window watching him pull into the driveway. He looks like death and safety fused into one person and I don’t understand how that’s possible.
I open the door before he reaches it. We stand in the doorway staring at each other. His hair is messy, his obsidian eyes are heavy-lidded, and his gaze lingers on me like he’s casting a spell I can’t break.
Five days. We spent five days together in a warehouse. And somehow, he knows me better than anyone alive.
Except —
I cut the thought.
“You brought a bag.”
The smirk that spreads across his face is annoying and gorgeous. “Was it presumptuous to assume you’d let me stay?”
“Presumptuous would be showing up without one.” I step aside. He moves past me and his body nearly presses against mine in the doorway.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back.” The words escape before I can filter them. They are raw and embarrassingly honest.
He sets the duffel down and turns to face me fully. “I told you I would.”
“You could’ve changed your mind.”
“Little Moth.” He steps closer. “I will always come back to you.”
The words land in my chest like a stone dropped in still water. His face is serious — no smirk, no deflection. He means it.
“I thought about running,” I say, and his jaw tightens. “Not from you. Just… in general. But I didn’t.” I meet his eyes. “I don’t want to do this alone.”
Something in his posture shifts. Not a softening, exactly — more like a lock releasing. “Then you won’t.”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
He follows me without a question. Up the stairs, through my bedroom, into the closet. I reach behind the row of dresses and press the hidden panel. The pivot wall swings open.
His pupils dilate. He steps inside slowly, scanning the room the way he scans every room — threat assessment first, then curiosity.
But there’s no threat here. Just my drawings covering the walls.
Anatomical models on shelves. Jars of preserved specimens.
Scalpels laid out on the drafting table with the precision of a surgeon who’s never been allowed to operate.
Notes in my handwriting everywhere, pinned and taped and scattered, a mind mapped out across every surface.
The vulnerability is instant. He’s seeing the inside of my head — the premeditated obsession, the meticulous research, the years of building something in secret while Malachi thought I was playing with makeup and dresses.
“Malachi never knew about this. No one did.” My voice is soft, and I keep my eyes on the floor. “You’re the first person to see it.”
He runs his fingers along the edge of a sketch of the muscular system of a human hand.
“You built this yourself?”
“Piece by piece. It’s the only part of this house that’s mine.”
“Show me your favorite.”
The softness in his voice disarms me completely. I move to the drafting table and pull out the heart — every valve, every artery, shaded with the kind of precision that comes from loving something enough to learn it by touch.
“Most people think a heart is romantic. But it’s a pump. Four chambers, four valves, a hundred thousand beats a day without you asking.” I look up at him. “I think that’s more romantic than any love poem. Don’t you?”
He’s quiet, looking at me the way he looked at me when I told him about the Ledger — like he’s discovering a weapon he didn’t know existed.
“You’re a surgeon who never got to cut.”
The words hit a nerve I didn’t know was exposed. My breath catches.
“Malachi said medical school was beneath a Vane. So, I taught myself. In secret. In this room.”
His fingers move to the edge of the sketch, close to mine, but not touching.
“When we’re done with the Ledger, you can go to medical school. Or just start cutting people open with the scalpel. Either way —” His voice drops. “You’ll never have to hide this room again, Little Moth.”
No one has ever offered me a future. Not a transaction, not a merger, not a ninety-day engagement. A future. The possibility of becoming what I was always supposed to be.
I don’t know what to say. Before I can figure out what to say, my stomach betrays me. He looks at me and I lead him toward the kitchen with a defeated sigh.
“Sit,” he commands softly.
I watch him work. He fills a pot with water and sets it on the stove, then picks up a knife and starts chopping an onion with clean, even strokes — the blade is moving fast and controlled.
Those hands. I’ve seen them hold a gun, grip a steering wheel, zip-tie my wrists.
Now they’re dicing onion. Killer hands and surgeon hands.
He doesn’t realize they’re the same thing.
Precision, steadiness, and the willingness to cut.
“I can’t cook,” I say, embarrassed.
“Silas believed in self-sufficiency. I’ve lived alone for ten years.” He glances at me. “You learn.”
He plates the food and I follow him to the dining room. He takes one look at the twenty-seat table and rolls his eyes. He reaches for a chair and drags it from the far end until it’s right next to mine. He sits, and I look at the plate in front of me before glancing back at him.
“What?” A smirk spreads on his lips. “If you want me to restrain you, Little Moth, you just have to ask. You don’t need to wait until we eat.”
My face catches fire. I drop my eyes to the pasta and start eating in silence, refusing to look at him. I can hear the chuckle he’s trying to contain.
The domesticity of our actions feels like a temporary peace before reality hits. Once the plates are cleared, we go back to my bedroom. I start packing and Killian watches from the doorway. It feels like I’m shedding.
When the bag is finally zipped, we end up on the balcony watching the sunset.
The ocean crashes against the rocks below, and neither of us speaks.
His hand finds mine on the railing. My fingers intertwine with his, and the contact grounds me in a way that’s becoming necessary.
My throat tightens. My eyes get glossy, and I don’t know why — or I do know why, but I can’t say it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
He doesn’t push. He just holds my hand while I silently mourn someone he doesn’t know I’m mourning. Or maybe he does. Maybe he can feel the ghost of Ghost in the way my grip tightens around his fingers.
The cold ocean air drives us back inside, but the silence follows us.
Now we’re in the living room, bathed in soft lamplight. We’re on the couch, facing each other, and I don’t know how to do this.
“I don’t know how to do this.” I let out a loud breath. “This.” I gesture between us. “Being with someone without rules. During the kidnapping we had roles. Now we’re just… two people.” I look away. “I don’t know how to be a person.”
“You think I know how?”
The surprise must show on my face because something softens in his.
“I don’t know how to be anything other than a weapon.” He runs his fingers over his scar briefly — the tell, the habit. “I don’t sleep well. Not without a perimeter check and a weapon in my hand. And sometimes not even then.”
He pauses and the silence is heavy.
“I’ve shared a bed with two people in my adult life. Both times I woke up with my hands around their throats.”
“Is that why you didn’t sleep during the kidnapping?”
“Part of it.”
His gaze locks on mine and it’s so intense my pulse spikes. I can see him calculating how much this is going to cost him.
“The other part was that if I slept next to you, I wouldn’t have been able to have it any other way.”
The air thickens, and my lungs stop working. He looks away, his shoulders tensing, and I understand what just happened — he gave me something with no tactical value, no strategic purpose. Just raw truth.
“I don’t sleep either.” His gaze snaps back to mine. “Some of Malachi’s business partners liked to wander at night when they stayed over. I learned to sleep with one eye open.” I pause. “Nothing happened.”
The rage that crosses his face is a physical thing — jaw, neck, fists, all of it constricting at once. But he doesn’t explode. He pushes up his sleeve instead. Circular, overlapping cigar burns cover his forearm. The ink covers some but not all.
I look at the scars, then at him. He gives me a small nod. My fingers touch them immediately — gentle, careful, tracing each one the way I’d trace an anatomical diagram. His muscle flexes under my touch, but he doesn’t pull away.
“How many?”
“Stopped counting at forty.”
My eyes burn. “I don’t have scars. He needed me pristine. Sometimes I wished he’d hit me, so I’d have proof.”
His other hand comes up and cups my jaw gently, forcing me to look at him. “You have scars, Ivy. You just can’t see them.”
My breath catches. I lean into his palm. “Neither can yours. The ones that matter.”
We stare at each other. We let every wound we’ve ever carried pass between us without words. I don’t want this moment to end. I want to live in this silence forever — a place where two broken people see each other’s damage and don’t look away.
But the silence eventually shifts. We stand as one, the air between us thick and charged as we walk toward the stairs.
In the hallway, we reach the point where the night has to end or become something else.
I gesture toward the guest room. “Through there.”
“Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” He picks up his duffel and starts walking.
Something in my chest pulls tight. I watch him disappear around the corner, and my ribs ache with it. I go to my room, brush my teeth, change into pajamas, and crawl into bed.
My ears are ringing from the silence. Every time I close my eyes, the house creaks and my heart rate spikes.
I shift to my side. My back. My stomach.
The sheets tangle around my legs, and every muscle is so tense it aches.
The room is too big, the bed is too cold, and the space where another body should be is screaming its emptiness at me.
I get up and I open my door quietly. My feet are bare on the cold marble. I take three steps toward the guest room and stop.
Turn back, Ivy. You don’t need him to sleep.
I stare at his door for a beat before I take a step back.
His door opens and I flinch. He’s standing there in a black t-shirt and tactical pants, with disheveled hair, looking like he was doing exactly the same thing I was doing — lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and fighting the urge to cross the hallway.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
We stare at each other in the dim light. I wrap my arms around myself, feeling exposed in a way that has nothing to do with clothing. I’m standing barefoot in a hallway in silk pajamas, asking a killer to sleep next to me without the words.
He comes to me and takes my hand. His palm is warm and calloused, but the moment his skin touches mine, I get goosebumps.
“Come on.”
He leads me back to my room, and we lie down on our sides, facing each other. The distance between us is measured in inches, and every one of them is charged. Moonlight spills through the balcony doors, filling the room with molten silver.
I can see every detail of his face. The scar, the jaw that clenches when he’s thinking, which is always, and his obsidian eyes that are softer than I’ve ever seen them — not guarded, not tactical. They are open, like he’s letting me look at something he usually keeps locked.
My heartbeat is so loud I’m sure he can hear it. His hand reaches out slowly, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from my face and tucking it behind my ear. The touch is so gentle it barely exists, but my entire nervous system responds as if he’s touched every part of me at once.
I melt into him, pressing my cheek against his rough skin as his thumb finds the corner of my mouth.
We shift closer at the same time. Neither of us planned it — our bodies decided before our brains could argue.
Our foreheads are almost touching. I can feel the heat of him radiating, warming my skin through the silk.
My eyes drop to his mouth. His lower lip is fuller than the upper one, where the scar pulls it. I want to know what it feels like. What the texture of that silver line would feel like against my lips. What sound he’d make if I traced it with my tongue.
He tilts his head. The movement is slight — a fraction of an angle — but it brings his mouth close enough that I can feel his breath on my lips. Closing the distance would take less than an inch.
I close my eyes, letting my lips part. The anticipation is a physical ache, concentrated in my chest and between my thighs.
My fingers are curled into the sheets because if I touch him right now, I won’t stop.
I can feel him there — the heat of his mouth, the controlled stillness of a man who is holding himself back with everything he has.
Then he pulls away, and the air rushes back between us, leaving nothing but cold where his warmth was.
“Not yet.”
The words are a whisper. His voice is rough, like he’s speaking through something that’s breaking.
“When I kiss you, I want it to be real. No secrets between us.”
My breath hitches and the ache in my chest shifts. No secrets. The words land differently than not yet. Not yet is a promise. No secrets is a condition.
“What secrets?”
His eyes search for mine. For a second — a fraction of a second — I see something behind them that looks like fear. The fear of a man who’s about to lose something he can’t get back.
“Nothing that changes this.” His thumb brushes my cheekbone. “Just… things I haven’t found the right time to say.”
“You can say them now.”
“Not tonight. Soon, Little Moth. I promise.”
I want to push. My clinical mind is cataloguing his micro-expressions — the tightness around his eyes, the way his jaw works, the flicker of something that could be guilt.
But the rest of me — the part that’s lying inches from a man who smells like safety and tastes like promises — that part lets it go.
“Okay.”
He exhales. The tension in his body releases just slightly, like a wire loosening one notch.
I close the distance differently. Not with my lips. With my body. I shift forward, tuck my head under his chin, and press my cheek against his chest. His arm wraps around me instantly —like he’s been waiting to do this since the park bench.