27. Nick
NICK
Two hours and fourteen minutes. That’s how long Ivy is out. I know because I keep track while sitting in the seat across from her on the jet with my elbows on my knees and my eyes on her face, watching for the first sign of movement.
I used zip ties this time. Her wrists are secured to the armrests of her seat. Not tight enough to cut into her skin, but tight enough she won’t be free before I see it coming. I remember what happened the last time she woke up restrained. I’d rather not end up half-blind again.
We’re somewhere over the Alps by now. Liam arranged the flight within hours of my call—no questions beyond the ones that mattered, no judgment in his voice when I told him what I was planning. All he said was, “Bring her home.”
I spent the past three days watching her from a distance.
Following her through Milan, keeping far enough away that she wouldn’t spot me but close enough that I could reach her if anything happened.
Three days of standing on street corners and sitting in parked.
I gave up the safe house when she didn’t come back to it and couldn’t bring myself to leave the city without her.
Three days of telling myself I was giving her space, when the truth is I was terrified.
Not of losing her. I’ve already lost her twice—once when she was fifteen and the world exploded, once on that cobblestone street when she turned the corner without looking back. I’ve survived losing her. I know what it feels like. I know the hollow feeling it leaves behind.
What terrified me was the possibility she was right.
That the mission was the mission, and everything else was something I built in my own head because I needed it to be real.
That I’d spent weeks falling in love with a woman who was never falling back, who was only tolerating my presence because I was useful.
A woman who walked away the moment she no longer needed me because there was nothing left to stay for.
I didn’t really believe it, though. Not after the bridge.
Not after she told me she wanted me to be part of whatever came next.
But belief is a fragile thing at three in the morning when you’re sitting in a car watching a hotel window and wondering if the woman behind it is thinking about you at all.
I followed her on the fourth day. Watched her leave the hotel and followed her to the piazza.
To the restaurant. I watched as she and Lucia disappeared into the restaurant together.
There I was, standing across the street with my hands in my pockets and my jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth would crack, and I waited.
When she came out alone, something had changed. I could feel it. The look of a woman who just figured something out and wasn’t happy about it.
That was when I made my decision. That was when I knew I couldn’t wait another minute. I wasn’t going to let fate decide. I was going to act, because acting is what I do. So I did it.
She’s starting to stir. At first, it’s a small sound. Not quite a groan. More like a confused murmur. Her head lifts from where it was resting against the window, and her eyelashes flutter.
I watch the moment consciousness comes back. The tightening of her features. The automatic flex of her hands against the restraints. The quick, sharp intake of breath that says her training kicked in before her brain did.
Her eyes snap open. Green, clear. Instantly focused. They find me, and for a second, neither of us moves. We might not even breathe.
I’m ready for anything, or at least that’s what I need to believe.
For anger. Even fury. Maybe the cold, calculated look she wore the first time she woke up restrained.
The look that said she was already planning three ways to kill me.
I’m ready for her to spit at me, to curse at me, to promise to make me regret this.
I’m ready for the fight, because with Ivy there’s always a fight, and I’ve learned to love the fight because it means she still cares enough to have one.
She looks at the zip ties. Looks at me. Then looks out the window, where the clouds are bright and white and seem to stretch on forever.
Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, and I brace myself for whatever comes next. “What took you so long?” she asks.
At first, I can only stare at her. She stares back. There’s no anger in her face. No strategy. She looks tired and honest, and maybe a little relieved. “What took me so long?” I repeat.
“Three days.” She adjusts her position in the seat, testing the zip ties again. Not like she’s trying to escape. It’s more absent, like she’s still taking stock of the situation. “You made me wait three fucking days.”
I fell asleep, right? I haven’t done much sleeping over the past few days, after all.
I’m dreaming now, because there is no version of reality in which this is happening.
But I hear the jet engines humming, and I smell the leather seats, and the weight of her in my arms when I held her up after I used the syringe was very real.
I clear my throat, then point out, “You walked away from me.”
“Yes.”
“You told me the mission was over.”
“I did.”
“You walked around the corner and didn’t look back.”
“I looked back,” she says quietly. “You just didn’t see it.”
Something swells in my chest. I lean forward in my seat, studying her face for the flicker that would let me know this is a strategy.
A new approach to an old problem. It’s what she does, what she was trained to do.
Adapt, improvise, use whatever tools are available—including the feelings of the man sitting across from you.
I don’t find any of it. Either she’s gotten better at hiding it than I am at reading it, or it isn’t there at all.
“Were you waiting for me?” I ask. “Is this a game?”
“No.” She doesn’t blink or look away. She doesn’t hesitate at all. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I wasn’t sure you’d want anything to do with me after what I said.”
“You thought I’d just let you go?”
“People let go all the time. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do.
You just… stop holding on.” She turns her face toward the window.
The clouds throw soft light across it and make her look younger than she is.
Fragile, almost, though she’d gut me for using that word.
“I thought maybe, once you had time to think about it, you’d realize I was right.
That the mission was the only reason you were there, and without it—”
“Goddammit. That’s not true, and you know it.”
“I know it now.” She looks back at me. “I didn’t know it then. Three days is a long time to sit in a hotel room with nothing but your own thoughts and a ceiling that won’t answer your questions.”
I almost smile. “I was watching you the entire time.”
“I know.”
She is determined to make me fall out of my chair. “You knew?”
“Not until today. But I should’ve known sooner.” She pauses. The jet hums around us, steady and constant. “You were never going to let me go, were you?”
“No.”
“Even if I told you to.”
“Even then.”
She nods slowly. Then something crosses her face, something more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen from her, and I’ve seen a lot from this woman. “There’s something I need you to understand. I need you to actually hear it, not just listen to it.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be Laura again.”
At first, there’s nothing but jet engines to fill the silence while her words echo in my head. She gives me time to process, or at least to begin processing, before she continues.
“I know the doctor said it might happen.” Her voice is steady, but I hear the strain underneath it.
“I know you and Liam have been hoping for it since the day you found me. Every time you take me somewhere from our childhood, every time you tell me a story about the girl I used to be. Every time you watch my face and hope something clicks—I see it. I feel it. And I can’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my life watching you look at me that way.
Expectant. Waiting for someone who might never show up. ”
“Wait a minute—”
“Let me finish.” She holds my gaze, and I hold hers, because she asked me to hear this, and I owe her that much.
“I need you to decide who you want to be with. Laura, or me. Because we might not be the same person. She was a girl who loved you when she was fifteen. I’m a woman who loves you now, and I come with a lot of damage.
Twelve years of things I’ll never be able to undo.
If you’re waiting for Laura to come back and fix all of that, you might be waiting forever, and I won’t do that to either of us. ”
I have to look at her, really look at her.
The way I’ve been looking at her for weeks, but with something cleared away now.
A fog I didn’t realize was there until she pointed at it and made me see.
She’s right. Some part of me, buried very deep down, was still hoping even now.
Every time I took her to a familiar place or told her a story about us, there was a sliver of hope underneath that this would be the moment.
The trigger. The thing that brought Laura back.
And every time it didn’t happen, there was a flicker of disappointment I thought I was hiding. Clearly, I was not.
How fucking unfair to her. To both of us, when I think about it.
I was a kid when Laura knew me. A teenager who thought the world was simpler than it turned out to be. I loved a girl on a dock at sunset and believed that love was enough to keep people safe.
I’m not that kid anymore. Years of working with Liam, building something from nothing, tearing down things that other men built—I’m not the boy she remembers any more than she’s the girl I remember.
People change. Time changes them. Trauma changes them.
You don’t get the same person back just because you want to.
You get the person they became, and you decide if you can love that person, too.