Page 283 of Love Me in the Dark
“So I waited. ‘Cause I couldn’t leave for good until I knew you were okay. Been sittin’ here damn near every day just waitin’ for you to come back. And here ya are.”
I stare at the wad of cash in my hands. More than twenty thousand dollars, made up solely of hundred dollar bills.
My fingers move before my mind catches up.
I press it into his palms. All of it.
“He meant it for you,” I say.
He stares at the money like it’s made of gold. But he doesn’t refuse.
His hands close around it, and something in me cracks.
“You got a good one, girl,” he says quietly. “Little messed up in the head, sure. But who ain’t at the end of the day? And if he’s good to you, it doesn’t matter what he does to the rest of the world.”
I don’t answer.
Because I don’t know if he’s right.
But I do know if I really walk away from Roman, I’m walking away from the one person who ever took on the world for me. Only now, I know that I don’t want to stop Roman. I just wanted him to ask before he uprooted everything I’ve ever known. And now? Now there’s nothing in my life that I can’t leave behind. Nothing except him.
“I’ll reach out.” I tell him with a curt nod. Clearing my throat, I swallow before saying anything else. “My name is Ivy, by the way.”
“Figures.” He chuckles. “My name is Basil. We’re both named after plants. Knew I liked you, girl.”
With that, he pats me on the shoulder and starts to head in the other direction.
I don’t remember turning the car around.
One moment I’m walking away. The next, I’m behind the wheel again, the forest swallowing the road as if it knew I’d come back.
The drive to Roman’s compound is quicker than it was when I was headed to the city.
Returning feels right.
Like I’m coming home.
But the air is heavy as soon as I open the car door.
Thick. Buzzing. Wrong.
Choking me like grief.
I push open the front door and feel it before I see it.
Something shattered. Something undone.
The foyer is wrecked.
A chair lies in pieces across the floor. A lamp bleeds glass like it was thrown. The air smells like smoke, sweat, despair.
I step over broken fragments. Into a ruin I sure as shit didn’t cause.
The hallway’s worse—scrapes on the wall, a splintered mirror, deep gouges on the doorframe like someone tried to claw through it.
And upstairs?—
My breath catches.
