The jagged, piercing sound of something breaking woke me from a dead sleep.
Startled, I reached out to feel for Ivy, to lay a hand on her to settle her nerves. I didn’t know what had made the noise, but it was the very reason I’d wanted to have security close by at all times.
The bed beside me was empty, and with a brief sweep of my hand, I found the sheets were cool to the touch.
Ivy had been missing for a while.
Panic oozed, suffusing the sinew of my muscles and putting them on alert immediately.
My back cracked as I jumped up from reclining to standing in one swift motion, but I ignored the twinge in my spine and set out searching.
I’d meant to sleep with an ear to Ivy, but the stretch of days, two weeks and counting at this point, of avid attention had apparently rendered night watch impossible.
“Ivy?” I called into the darkness.
She didn’t answer.
But a soft cry from the bathroom was all the indication I needed.
I moved expeditiously, rounding the bed in the nearly blacked-out room and pulling open the curtains at the foot of it. The light from the full moon poured in and eased my way through the giant walk-in dressing room and into the bathroom, allowing me to move faster.
The door was closed but unlocked and swung in easily as I turned the knob.
Perched on the edge of the tub, Ivy was cradling a bloody hand and crying quietly.
“Ivy,” I murmured, the whisper of my voice tortured with the knowledge of what had driven her to this point. Pain, acute and all-consuming, made you feel like anything would relieve the itch to crawl outside of your skin. Even physical harm.
“What happened?” I asked, glancing to the shattered mirror before rephrasing my question to the more important one. “Why did you do this?”
“I can’t stand it,” she declared in an aching whisper. Tears carved rivers down her cheeks, and the slice of her voice cut me up inside.
My chest tightened exponentially.
“Seeing her everywhere I look. Half the people at the funeral commented on how we were…how I’m…” A sob broke from her throat. “No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself from seeing her when I look in the mirror. I can’t stop myself from seeing myself in her place and wishing that’s the way it was.”
God.
Blood trickled down her bare leg and pooled on the floor as she squeezed at her injured hand with the other.
The physical pain was an escape—a shift of focus—but it certainly wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t sit aside and watch her torture herself just because she wanted to take Cam’s place. I understood her drive, but fuck, the mere thought of that reality felt like a cleaver to the heart. I didn’t know where I’d be if Ivy had been the one at the edge of Boyce’s blade.
“Baby, stop,” I ordered softly, forcing her hands to separate with a delicate tug of her wrist. “Let me look at this.”
“No!” she yelled, yanking the carnage back from me. “You have to do something. You have to make it so I don’t see her in the mirror anymore!”
“Ivy—”
“You have to!” she bellowed.
A knock on the door brought my head around as Baylor called through the door, “Everything all right?”
The screaming had apparently finally awoken the other people in the hotel suite.
“Yes,” I called back swiftly, knowing Ivy would want privacy. Baylor was a trusted employee, and I knew he wouldn’t spread any of what he saw behind closed doors around to the media. He’d done a great job of seeing to our privacy for the last two weeks, and for the time we’d been in LA, he’d even sent Hampton to run most of our errands.
Sure, being in the room all the time was a little bit stifling, but I knew Ivy wasn’t ready to have the eyes of the world upon her. Hell, six years after Grace’s death, I wasn’t ready for one set of fucking eyes. Even brilliant, loving green ones. I couldn’t even imagine millions of judgmental ones.
“No,” Ivy called suddenly, defying me. My eyebrows pulled together as I surveyed her face, but she was determined. “I need a box of hair dye,” she called through the door. “Blond.”
“Ivy,” I murmured, knowing the decision to home-dye her hair a completely different color wasn’t the kind of thing you did in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the kind of thing you didn’t carefully pick out yourself, and you didn’t do it in a hotel bathroom unless you were on the run from the police.
“Blond?” Baylor called to confirm.
“Ivy,” I said again, trying to intercede.
“No, Levi,” she protested, shoving me away and getting to her feet. “I’m doing this. With or without your help and I’m doing it now.”
“Let me look at your hand, Ivy,” I ordered, a gravelly need making my throat roll.
“If you dye my hair, I’ll let you look at my hand.” Her face was hard and determined, and I knew I didn’t have any wiggle room at all.
She’d said it herself; with or without me, she would be doing this, and she would be doing it now. But with me, I could look after her. I could do the work so that she could keep a bandage on her hand.
“Baylor,” I called, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath as I dropped my head forward. “Blond dye. Bandages. And a first aid kit. Please.”
His response was immediate, and so was my regret. “Yes, sir.”
Still, there was no turning back now.
I closed the door behind me, CVS bag in hand, and Ivy shifted from her perch on top of the toilet.
While we had waited for Baylor to get back, I’d convinced her to hang her hand over the edge of the sink and let me check it for pieces of glass.
Luckily, she’d listened to those instructions.
Everything else, though? Not so much.
She’d been a terrible patient, grouchy and uncooperative and completely resistant to everything I suggested. But she was talking to me, and after a battle, she eventually gave in.
For as difficult as I had been to manage for the last six years, I thought she was doing swimmingly.
“Hand first,” I decreed, capturing Ivy’s glare and absorbing it without resistance. I was all about making my woman happy, but I’d be damned if I was going to delay any longer in seeing to her well-being.
“Come on and stand up, baby,” I ordered gently. “I need to wash it out.”
She moved without much of a fuss and stood, facing the sink and standing in front of me. I reached around her body, enveloping her with my own and heating the surface of her back with the touch of my chest. She shivered at the contact.
We’d been together since Camilla’s passing, but it hadn’t been without its weirdness. She was either stiff or way too aggressive, and she had a really hard time closing her mind down enough to enjoy herself. I was more than willing to wait for her to get back to herself, but she’d been insistent each time we’d had sex. Still, I was always careful to let her lead, just to be certain she didn’t feel pressured.
Carefully, I pulled the skin of her hand this way and that, searching a final time for slivers and gently washing out the cuts. Her knuckles had suffered the worst of it, but overall, it seemed like she’d gotten pretty lucky.
“This doesn’t look too bad,” I told her, washing each finger free of the stains from dried blood. “I think it should heal without too much scarring.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Well, that’s good. I guess at least some part of me should get out unscathed.”
Deeply and affectionately, I sighed and shoved my lips into the hollow between her chin and collarbone. She smelled like the woman I knew, but the words said something else.
It’d be a long time before she healed completely.
Silent and thinking, we both went through the rest of the motions without comment. She was lost in her head, and I was trying to let her be. Feelings were meant to be felt, and it seemed wrong to deny her any outlet that didn’t end with her cutting up her hand.
The directions to the dye were fairly simple, so I set out on my task while she stared at the wall.
It wasn’t changing, and maybe that was its appeal.
But knowing something else wouldn’t change prompted me to remind her. To tell her so she knew and always would, that no matter the circumstances, she and I would be in this fight together.
“I love you, Ivy. Red hair, blond hair, no hair, I love you.”
Her eyes closed slowly, and her chin lifted to me. With her lips upturned and her face serene, I took the opportunity and robbed her of space.
Flesh to flesh, lips to lips, everything else melted away.
When I pulled back several moments later, she only had one thing to say.
“I love you too, Levi.”