Page 1 of Poisoning Ivy
Chapter one
Ivy
It’s funny how things change slowly and then all at once. Someone goes from laughing at a joke to being offended, bananas turn from that perfect shade of yellow to rot, and lovers become enemies… and then sometimes, lovers again.
My safe place, similarly, turned into my own private hell.
The abrupt slam on the brakes makes my stomach lurch as I skid toward the dashboard at a dangerous rate of speed. I don’t even have time to see if something was in the road because I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will soften the impact and throw my hands out before me to brace myself in a misguided attempt not to go careening through the windshield.
I hear the crack as my wrist collides with the glove compartment, and then the weight of my own body slams over the top of it, pinning me in place as I yelp in pain.
It’s agony, but it’s not the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Tears fill my eyes and flood my cheeks as I try to tamp down the visceral reaction to internalize the screaming ache. But it’s not enough. When I open my eyes and blink away as much of the teary haze as I can, Cody is glaring at me.
“Knock it off, Ivy. You’refine.”
I pull my lip between my teeth to stifle the words I really want to say and then nod my agreement, focusing on breathing through my nose. “I—I think it’s broken.”
I haven’t gotten the courage to look at my wrist because the pain is already churning in my stomach with the adrenaline and the bile.
“Sprained, if anything.” Cody rolls his eyes. “And if you had just given me the fucking map, I wouldn’t have had to slam on the brakes. Now give it to me.”
My eyes flicker to the atlas that fell at my feet. It’s probably older than I am and yet somehow in better shape. My parents took meticulous care of all their possessions… They just didn’t know that raising a child was different from owning something.
I grit my teeth and double over to grab the pages, using my uninjured hand to brace myself against the dash and get the leverage I need. The atlas is just out of reach, and I’m about to move my seat back to get the room I need to bend over further, when a hand on the back of my head pushes me further.
Now I really do think I’ll throw up, as white-hot pain rips through me when my fingers close around the edge of the book.
He isn’t delicate about taking it from me, ripping it from between my fingers without so much as a look of sympathy. Because he isn’t capable of sympathy, empathy, or general human emotion.
I don’t think I married a psychopath—or a sociopath, even. He wasn’t always so cruel… In the beginning, he hadn’t hated me so much. I’m not delusional enough to think that he ever loved me, and I’ve certainly never loved him, but it wasn’talwayslike this.
Cody used to be milder, kinder, and capable of human decency. But I guess the world took that from him.
Or rather, the hospital took it from him.
He told me he had to build up a callus, to let his skin thicken so that each loss and grief wasn’t affecting him. And I believed it. After the first patient he lost, he came home and cried in my arms for hours. It was the first time we connected, the first time I thought maybe there was a chance that my husband and I could love each other one day. By the end of his residency, he was coming home angry, as ifIwere the one who was making him lose patients. He built up a callous, and so did I, getting used to him dumping boiling pasta on the floor because we’d had spaghetti two nights before and the feeling of a hand whipping across my face followed by gentle kisses over the sting.
It isn’t like Ilikehis anger or the way he hurts me. But as often as his eyes take on that wicked hatred, there are times where I see in him a chance to make good on our wedding vows.
I’ve definitely got the ‘for worse’ part down.
Turning my focus out the window, I watch the trees pass us by.
The woods are thick here, even more than I remember, crowding out all the light from the setting sun as we drive deeper into the backwoods.
Cody whips the wheel at the last minute, noticing the turn for the road.
Reaper’s Run.
I don’t know who chooses street names, but they should be fired. Calling a gravel road with a steep incline anything associated with a reaper is a choice I’ll never understand. And yet, as foreboding as it is, as much as I know I’ll never leave this mountain again, part of me feels like I’m coming home.
Dread blankets everything at the thought of my husband ruining my safe space, the last part of me he’s never had access to. Although, I suppose, if I’m honest with myself, my ‘safe place’ was ruined years ago. All this time I’ve just been ignoring the heartbreak and the pain. It’s what I’m good at—the only thing I’m good at, I suppose.
The headlights cast a glow on the hill, the warning sign not to continue without four-wheel drive.
Joining with the bile in my stomach, anxiety coils low as Cody pushes the car forward, taking it past its limits.
One wrong move up here, and our car goes slipping off the edge of the road—I saw it happen once.
