Page 66 of His Orders

“But you did.”

I swallow the ache rising in my throat. “I love you,” I say, because it’s the only truth I have left. “I didn’t know I would, but I do. I love you so much I can’t breathe without thinking ofyou. And I was trying to protect you, but I see now that I broke something instead. Please, Ethan. Please don’t shut me out.”

He studies me, his jaw tight, the muscle ticking near his temple.

Then, without a flicker of change in his voice, he speaks.

“Go home, Ivy.”

My chest caves in.

He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t rage. He just says it like it’s done. Like I’m a chapter he’s finished reading.

“Ethan—”

He closes the door in my face.

25

ETHAN

The door closes hard and the slam sounds final, like the end of something I didn’t realize was already slipping through my fingers. I stand there for a moment, hand still on the wood, forehead nearly pressed against it as the air between us settles into silence that feels too dense to breathe through. She’s on the opposite side, waiting for me. My chest is tight, not with rage anymore, not even with disappointment, but with something quieter, deeper, the kind of hollow ache that comes when hope has been scraped raw. I want to open the door again. I want to believe I misheard her, that her silence was something else, that her lies were rooted in fear and not in the same damn betrayal I’ve seen before. But the weight of what she didn’t say is still echoing in my bones.

I back away from the door like it might burn me if I stand too close, unbutton my shirt with numb fingers, then tear it off and toss it across the arm of the couch. The air feels cold against my skin. Or maybe I’ve just gone numb. I don’t know anymore. I open the cabinet beneath the bar cart and pull out the bottle I’ve been saving since last year, a deep amber bourbon I once promised myself I’d only open to celebrate something good. Itwist off the cork and pour until the glass is full. No ice. No pacing. I down half of it in a swallow that scorches the inside of my throat, the burn welcome, grounding, something to hold onto while everything else slips through the cracks.

The couch groans when I sit, leather creaking under my weight, and I sink into it like it might pull me under. I stare at the dark window across the room, at the faint ghost of my own reflection in the glass, and wonder who the hell that man is anymore. I loved her. God help me, I still do. I let her into my life, into the spaces no one else gets to see, and she looked me in the eye and lied.

And not about something small.

She lied about the child growing inside her. My child.

And I knew it was mine, yet somehow, the confirmation that she lied to me, that she didn’t trust me with the truth, hit me hard. Lied to. Again.

The glass is empty before I realize I’ve finished it. I pour again, slower this time, the tremble in my hand not from the alcohol but from everything else pressing down on me. I thought I knew pain. I’ve held dying hands. I’ve told mothers that their sons were never going to wake up again. I’ve cut into bodies and felt them stop breathing beneath my palms. But nothing prepared me for the way this feels.

Like my ribs have cracked open and the cold air has settled inside.

I lean my head back, close my eyes. Sleep doesn’t come. Just the sound of her voice, the image of her standing in my doorway with tears in her eyes and too much silence in her throat. I wanted her to fight. I wanted her to say my name and tell meshe was scared but she still chose me anyway. I wanted to believe that I was different, that I wasn’t just another man to disappoint or be left behind.

But she didn’t say anything.

And I couldn’t stay.

So now I’m here. With bourbon on my breath, her scent still clinging to the shirt I left crumpled on the floor, and a memory I don’t know how to live with.

I think about the last time I felt like this, about the woman I once planned a life with. I think about how she smiled the night I slipped the ring onto her hand, about how she cried and kissed me and promised forever. I think about how, less than a month later, I found the messages on her phone. About how I stood in the doorway of our apartment while she packed a bag, telling me it was complicated, that she was sorry, that she loved me but couldn’t be what I needed.

She said I wanted too much.

I didn’t think I was asking for anything more than honesty.

The bourbon bottle is nearly gone now. I don’t remember pouring the last glass, just that my head is spinning and my limbs feel heavy and slow, and I am so tired of this ache, of this pattern that keeps rewriting itself across my life in different names and different faces but always the same ending. I loved her. God, I love her still. And I don’t know what to do with that.

The room spins when I shift. I try to stand, but my knees betray me. The floor tilts. The couch catches me as I fall back onto it, head hitting the cushion hard enough to make my teeth clack. And that’s the last thing I remember before everything blurs out.

When I wake, it’s to the sharp taste of morning in my mouth and a pressure behind my eyes that feels like someone took a hammer to the inside of my skull. My mouth is dry. My throat feels raw. My neck aches from the angle I fell asleep in, half-twisted, one arm dead beneath me. I sit up with a groan and run both hands over my face, then through my hair, then back down as I try to pull myself together. I smell like sweat and regret and old bourbon, and the weight of last night hangs over me like smoke.

I shower fast, scrubbing hard, not because it helps but because I need to feel clean, need to feel something other than the rotting grief curling in my chest. I throw on scrubs, ignore the headache pounding behind my eyes, and drink two cups of black coffee before I even find my keys. On the drive to the hospital, I think of nothing and everything, my fingers gripping the wheel like it might steady the rest of me. But it doesn’t.

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