Page 43 of Lust

“Kace.” I shout to his back, and he turns around and I see tears in his eyes.

“I won’t do it.” He says something that confuses me.

“Do what?”

He clearly wasn’t talking about punishing the man that had hurt Ivory. Cause he is covered in blood. Unless he had beaten someone else up lately.

“She’s yours Henderson.” He says looking me in the eyes, and I frowned.

“She was always was mine.”

He shakes his head. “I was a fuck head for risking it.” He again says something that confuses me.

“What you on about Striking?”

“My heart. I should have known it would turn out badly.” He locks eyes with me and I see tears but I don’t think they are for Ivory. “I always lose everything I love. She was no different. After all I was taught to love by choking things.” And he shakes his head, turning around and storming off.

Why did I suddenly get a feeling that my sister had been having a thing with him? He said the word love. A man doesn’t love a woman, without encouragement.

I walk back into her room. And wonder for a moment, what had my little sister started with the biker? And how did she cause a monster like Kace to love her. Or Loved. To be correct.

27

Ivory

Three Weeks Later

He never wrote back to my messages. At first I put it down to him being busy. At first I made excuses, for a week. I thought he was staying away because of my family. But he had to know I would want him here, hell it might not have taken me two weeks to wake up, if he was there.

Gabe mentioned Kace came up three days into my stay, only to leave abruptly. It wasn’t until the second week in hospital that I realized. He didn’t want to see me. I knew then he knew the truth; and didn’t want me anymore. After all I was caught up with a loan shark. I was that desperate and poor at one stage. Kace now knows I’m serious when I say I don’t have any money. And he has seen me for the leech I could possibly be.

So he has washed his hands of me. And while I accepted that, it still hurt like a stabbing pain in my heart. I couldn’t lie and say that it didn’t hurt, it did. I cried many nights in the hospital once my family had left. I let him in. I gave him a piece of me. And he burnt it, or threw it away like it was nothing.

“Okay can someone,” Elle looked at me. “Aka you, can you please explain this to me why we are home alone on a Saturday night?”

I rolled my eyes. I was crashing at Elle’s because the family deemed it as unsafe—me being by myself that is.

I had recovered well, and I think that was what Elle was getting at.

“Come on Ivy, let’s hit the clubs. Dance a little, flirt a lot.” She nudged me with her shoulder.

I looked at her dryly. “I’m black and blue Elle.”

“Nothing a bit of makeup won’t cover?”

“No.”

“Come on.” She whined.

“Nothing is stopping you.” I threw back at her “Now I’m going to bed.”

“It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday night!” She exclaimed. And gave me a look like I had lost my mind.

“Night Elle.” I say over my shoulder and head for her guest bedroom. I wasn’t going to lie, going out, meant people, and for some reason since it happened I felt unsure in social situations. After all at the charity event, I had been basically relying on an old supply of Valium to get me through.

I closed the guest bedroom. But I knew the real reason I didn’t want to go, it was because I didn’t want to move on from him. I clenched my fists together. Why did it have to hurt so much? Why couldn’t I be good enough? Why couldn’t he see that I wasn’t like normal girls? That I wouldn’t use him for his money. That I loved him for him. Not the money that came with him.

Tears swell in my eyes. I couldn’t face him again. Which had me making a life decision. I was leaving the tracks and Kace behind.

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