Page 62 of His Orders

ETHAN

Iwait, but it’s not with patience or hope. I wait the way a man waits for a verdict, the kind that changes everything. Either it sets you free or it buries you.

My breath hangs visibly in the cold, but I hardly feel it. The air around us hums with the kind of tension that doesn’t move. It just presses. Heavy. Absolute. Ivy hasn’t said a word, and every second she doesn’t speak feels like a confession in its own right.

She’s not denying it.

That alone speaks louder than anything Daniel could have said.

“Ivy,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I already suspected. I was waiting for you to tell me.”

She flinches like I struck her, and maybe in some way I have, because this is not the way I wanted this moment to happen. This is not the version of reality I was ready to be handed, not like this, not in the shadow of that smug bastard still leaning against the car like he owns the scene.

“I was going to tell you,” she says. Her voice cracks on the wordgoing, and her arms wrap around her middle, protectively, instinctively, like she can hold herself together through sheer will alone. “I just—I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know how to tell you something that huge, not when we were still figuring out what we were to each other.”

“You weren’t ready? You didn’t think I deserved to know that I’m the father of your child?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she says quickly, stepping toward me, eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. “You don’t understand, Ethan, I?—”

Behind us, Daniel claps once, slow and mocking, the sound slapping against the cold air like an insult.

“Touching, really,” he drawls. “You two are adorable. Such a strong foundation, built on lies and delusions. Who needs trust when you have sex and secret babies?”

I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. He’s the static in the background, the noise I refuse to give weight to right now. My eyes are only on Ivy.

And what I see there rips me open.

She’s shaking. Shoulders hunched. Lips trembling. Not because I’m yelling but because I’m the one person she didn’t want to lose and she thinks this might be what breaks us.

“I was scared,” she whispers, and the words don’t excuse it but they hit me in the chest all the same. “I was scared of what it meant to share this with someone again, to trust someone with something so huge. Daniel made me feel like nothing I chose was mine, like everything I shared belonged to him in the end. Ineeded space to feel like this child was mine first, like I had a say in what my life would look like. I needed time to believe I could keep her safe on my own before I let myself believe you would stay.”

Her voice catches on that word—stay—and I feel it twist through me.

“I never compared you to him,” she says. “Not in my heart. But my mind… my mind still remembers what it was like to be loved like a possession. I didn’t want to hand you something sacred just to watch you turn it into something you could use against me later.”

I close my eyes, jaw clenched so tightly I feel the ache in my molars.

“I am not that man,” I say, barely keeping my voice level. “I have never been that man. And you should have known that before you ever let me touch you.”

“I do know that,” she says, and now the tears are falling, streaking down her cheeks like guilt and grief and relief all at once. “I do. But I didn’t know how to unlearn everything he taught me about what men do when they have power over you.”

Daniel laughs again, louder this time, pushing off the car with slow, satisfied steps.

“Touching little speech,” he sneers. “But do you really think she would’ve told you if I hadn’t forced her hand?”

That’s when I snap.

I round on him in a heartbeat, grabbing the front of his coat and slamming him against the car door with a thud that rattles through metal and bone.

“You ever touch her again,” I say, low and steady, each word a promise, “and I will show you just how far I’m willing to go for what’s mine.”

His breath hitches, but the smirk stays. His eyes flick toward Ivy, then back to me.

“She’s always been good at keeping secrets,” he says, voice thin now, smugness cracked at the edges. “What makes you think this is the last one?”

I let him go. Not because I believe him, not because I’m done, but because I feel Ivy’s hand on my back, her fingers curling into the fabric of my coat like she’s anchoring me to the last shred of sense I have left. Turning, I look at her, and it takes every ounce of my will to not kiss her.

For a solid moment, I just stand there, the weight of her silence still ringing in my ears, louder than anything Daniel said, louder than the wind cutting through this miserable lot. My breath comes slowly, the kind you have to measure when you’re in the middle of a trauma rotation and the world is crashing around you and the only thing that matters is not letting your hands shake.

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