Page 26 of His Orders

She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to protect her. Even if she fights me or hates me for it.

I check the rearview mirror, watch a car drift past behind me, then shift into drive. But I don’t go far. My mind won’t calm. It hammers like it’s chasing something I haven’t touched yet. Hervoice, her silence, that lie she tried to tuck behind a tight breath, it all loops in my head like a bad refrain.

It isn’t in me to drive away, so I circle the block once, passing the same row of sycamores rising like old bones from the concrete, their leaves rustling low over the sidewalk. A second lap, slower. The air smells like damp pavement and winter rain, sharp and clean, but it does nothing to clear the need sitting in my gut. I catch a glimpse of her rental again. The porch light is on now. Golden behind the thin veil of her curtains. Her shadow moves through the living room. Her hair’s down again, loose around her shoulders. She’s barefoot. She always used to be barefoot when she was trying to breathe.

By the third loop, I know I can’t abandon Ivy.

I park at the curb, headlights off, engine ticking quietly in the hush between street lamps. I can’t stop seeing her in that ER bed, pale against the sheets, trying to pretend she wasn’t terrified. I can’t stop thinking about her mouth, trembling before she steadied it just enough to lie through her teeth.

I see the way she looked away when I said I was taking her home. The way she wanted me to go but didn’t say it like she meant it. She’s always done that, spoken in defense but never offense. She doesn’t know how to hurt people. She only knows how to survive them.

And I want her. God, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

I want to drag her against the wall of that perfect little guesthouse, push up that soft cotton dress she wears like armor, and remind her what it feels like to come undone in the hands of someone who sees her. I want her breath in my mouth and myname on her lips, want to fuck her until there’s no space left in her body for fear, until she forgets every reason she ever thought she had to lie to me.

I want her pregnant and moaning andmine.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel, every muscle coiled with restraint I’m about ready to stop showing. She’s hiding something, and she’s doing it to protect me. That’s the part that wrecks me the most.

Because if she just told me, if she gave me even a fraction of the truth, I’d burn the entire damn city to keep her safe. I’d walk into the offender's boardroom and bleed him dry with a smile. I’d rip up every contract, every name he thinks he owns, until there’s nothing left of his empire but smoke.

So I pull into the shadowed mouth of a side street, kill the headlights, and sit there, watching the upper window of her apartment through the windshield.

If she’s in danger, I’ll know. If someone comes for her, I’ll be here.

My mind runs through every possible scenario. Every man who’s ever looked at her too long, and among them, one name keeps coming up. Daniel Holt, the man she dated right before she fled town. Every whisper I’ve heard in hospital corridors about the Holt family’s reach. Every time I’ve seen her flinch when someone mentions her past.

Whatever she’s hiding, I’m going to find out.

9

IVY

It's the day after I learned I’m pregnant. Well, Ethan and me.

The floor creaks softly beneath my feet as I pace the narrow hallway of the Airbnb. It’s past noon but the blinds are drawn, the filtered light casting pale streaks across the hardwood floor. I haven’t touched my laptop, though it sits open on the table next to a half-finished mug of tea. Work was supposed to be my escape today. I was going to dive into client edits, lose myself in color palettes and ad copy for a boutique candle company that thinks phrases like “scent journey” are the peak of branding. Instead, I’m walking tight circles in my rental like I’m preparing for battle.

My body still aches in strange, unfamiliar ways. The soreness is more than physical, as if my cells are trying to catch up with the fact that I’m no longer just Ivy Dawson. There’s another presence inside me now, quiet and still, but there, nonetheless. This morning, I pressed my palm flat against my lower stomach and tried to imagine the heartbeat forming there, tried to picture a future with a child that feels both impossibly far and terrifyingly near.

Daniel cannot know. That truth sits at the center of everything. I’d burned my way out of his life with the last of my strength and if he hears this, he will do everything in his power to destroy me.

I groan and rub my eyes tiredly. Ethan’s face still lingers behind my eyelids, all steel and heat, filled with the kind of masculine fury that vibrates under the surface but doesn’t lash out. When he’s angry, he gets quiet. The only sign is the way his hands flex, the subtle flare of his nostrils, the stillness that wraps around him. I’ve only seen that look a few times. Yesterday, in that hospital room, was one of them.

And I lied to him.

To protect him, I remind myself. To keep him far away from the fallout that’s coming. Because Daniel may not have me under his roof anymore, but he still has claws in this city. The kind of power that doesn’t disappear when you move out—it follows you, disguises itself in social niceties, resurfaces at the worst possible moments. One headline, one whisper in the wrong boardroom, and Ethan’s career could unravel. And I know him. He would take the blow, would walk straight into the fire with his jaw set and his fists ready if he thought I needed him.

I sink onto the couch and pull my knees up to my chest. My phone lies facedown on the cushion beside me, vibrating against the fabric with a muted urgency I’ve ignored for too long. I swipe it open and dial Drew.

He answers on the second ring. “About time.”

“I didn’t realize I was on a schedule,” I say with a grimace.

“You sort of are. Mom’s lawyer wants to schedule mediation this week and Dad’s pretending he doesn’t know how to use a calendar. It’s like refereeing two toddlers in designer shoes.”

I sigh and cup my chin with my free hand. “Are you free for dinner?”

There’s a beat. “That depends. Are you actually cooking or is this going to be a frozen pizza situation?”

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