Page 98 of Crossfire

As Grayson stared at me with a mixture of disappointment yet understanding, I forced the blood to return to my brain.

This is a survival situation, Ivy. Nothing more. There is no future with a hit man, and you can’t let yourself fall for him.

After all, he never said,I won’t kill you, did he? No. He just said he’ll help get to the bottom of this.

It appeared to take him several seconds to break through the fog that had enveloped us, but eventually, he stepped back and resumed cooking—the bubbling of the pan filling the silence between us. When it was done, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table, the steam from the spaghetti curling up toward the ceiling.

I twirled my fork absently, fixating on the swirling strands, trying to pretend I couldn’t feel Grayson’s gaze pressing down on me.

“I’d like you to tell me about yourself,” Grayson declared.

I looked up to find his piercing moss-colored eyes searching my face, my chest fluttering at the sight.

“Why?” I asked, my voice low.

“I want to know you,” he said, leaning forward slightly, his elbows resting on the table.

We’d talked in the coffee shop, and he’d even been to Grams’s medical facility.

Speaking of which, I needed to get back to everyday problems, like tackling her bill rather than surviving.

“We’ve done this already,” I said, my fingers tightening around my fork. “No one in my life set me up.” I left out the doubts that had been invading my mind.

“Not that,” Grayson said, shaking his head. “I want to know you, Ivy. Tell me about your childhood.”

No way. My walls slammed up around me, screaming at me to just go in the other room and wait this out alone. Even if I was a sharer—I wasn’t—I had no interest in revealing anything personal to a man who’d taken me hostage.

If anything, I wished I could take back the stuff I had already told him about myself. But the way he was looking at me—full of intrigue—made me question if that was the right move. Any moment, Grayson’s cell phone could go off with a fresh order to end my life—one he might no longer fight.

Maybe, just maybe, if he knew more about me, it would be much harder to pull the trigger.

Wasn’t that Hostage 101? Get the would-be killer to see you as human? I had a head start on that with what he already knew about me, but that was just surface level. Dead father, Grams, bills, asshole ex.

Maybe it was time to go deeper. I hated the thought, but Grams had already lost her son, and Mom had already lost her ex-husband.

I couldn’t let them lose me, too.

Fighting had failed. Running had failed. Maybe my only shot at survival wasn’t physical; maybe it was psychological.

I swallowed hard, my pride lodging in my throat. If revealing pieces of my soul was what it took to stay alive, then so be it.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

He was silent, and the tension in his jaw made it look like he was struggling to keep his restraint as he braced himself to ask something important.

“Tell me who hurt you, Ivy.”

44

IVY

Who hurt me?I twisted my hands, forcing the words out, unsure where, exactly, to start.

“Growing up, it was just me, my mom, and my dad. My mom and I had a good relationship, but she had to travel a lot for work, so my dad was kind of the primary parent in my household.”

I shifted.

“He and I had always been really close. When I was little, he would always make me my favorite lunches, and he would find things for us to do in the summer. Like going to the zoo or find a new park that had just opened up.”

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