Page 34 of Stolen Love

Ivy

I stand mute and immobile as my mother leaves. With Rogue at my back, I watch her cross the sweeping lawn to a black town car.

Nathaniel opens the door and she disappears inside without another glance.

How could I have been so blind for so long to how vicious she is? But it’smyreaction that scares me. A visceral, graphic desire to physically make her bleed keeps me as still as a statue.

“Let’s go.” Rogue’s jaw is a study in tension. His blue eyes are burning with coldness.

“We didn’t have any other choice.” I try to reason with him. “Not while we have no way of proving Nicole is a monster and a murderer.”

“Fuck.” He bellows and lifts me off my feet.

Jackson meets us at the car. He holds the door open.

I’m dropped into the back of the car.

“Rogue—”

His jaw bulges. His eyes flare. “Stay.”

“You can’t—” The door shuts in my face.

He rests his hands on the roof as he takes deep breaths. I watch his chest move through the window.

I flinch when he brings his hands down on the roof. At the roar that follows. He spins away from the vehicle, his shoulders heaving. His hands are bunched into tight balls at his sides.

I scoot back across the leather when he turns and attacks the back panel again and again. Each blow lands with a bang and I cover the sound that tries to escape with a hand to my mouth. Not because I’m scared of him, but because I’m the reason he’s lost control.

The helplessness he’s feeling, I feel it too. We’re careening toward a loss neither of us will ever recover from and there doesn’t seem to be any way to fix it.

When even my own father wanted me to marry Nathaniel… then perhaps it’s time to stop fighting the inevitable. There must have been a reason my dad wanted the arrangement. I have to believe he did it out of my best interest. Perhaps even to protect me from my mother.

He had to have known his time was short. That she would win.

If he couldn’t survive when he knew more about her motives than I do, what hope is there for Rogue and me?

The blows slow and then stop. His head hangs between the mountains of his shoulders, rising and falling with his breaths.

Jackson climbs in the front. “Are you all right, Ivy?”

“Yes,” I whisper as my tears stain my face. At least in the way he’s asking, I am. I’m not scared of Rogue’s fury. It isn’t directed at me. I know he would never hurt me.

My beautiful, sweet man lifts tormented blue eyes to mine.

I press my palm to the window. “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry I can’t see any other way. I’m sorry I won’t let him give up his life for mine. When the time comes, I will do what it takes to make sure he doesn’t pay too much for loving me. Doesn’t pay with his soul for trying to protect me.

His face contorts in pain. He shakes his head and opens the door. “Jackson, get out. Take a walk.”

Jackson scrambles to give us privacy as Rogue shuts us in together. He can’t flatten his hands as he places them on his knees. His knuckles are grazed.

For a moment he looks anywhere but at me.

I hate how much I’ve hurt him. I hate myself for putting him in this position. “Rogue, we need a plan.”

Slowly, he glances up at me. His eyes are flooded with pain and hurt, love… the world disappears.

---