Page 51 of My Sweetest Obsession
“I’ve never known you not to do the right thing, Ivy.”
A little half-laugh, half-sob slips from my lips. “But what if I don’t know what the right thing is?” I shake my head. “I can’t…I can’t stop hating him and being so fucking angry about what he’s caused. How am I supposed to forgive that?”
Marlo’s gaze cuts to the mural, and she stares at it for a long time before she finally returns her focus to me. “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t?”
“And keep him from his niece’s life?”
From mine?
It’s the last thing I should want after everything that’s happened, but I can’t deny that last night, the thought that he might not stay, that he might turn and walk away instead, had filled me with so much fear that it physically hurt.
Or that waking up and finding him gone felt like losing something important all over again.
But I also can’t deny this bone-deep anger I continue to carry with me every day at how things have turned out.
This baby will never know the man on this wall. She won’t know his laughter, or his gentle touch, or feel how much he loves her the way I always did.
And there’s only one reason for that.
One person to blame.
The identical little boy sitting next to him, who somehow always manages to break through the walls I build around myself and make me question everything.
Just like he is doing right now.
17
CAM
I shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be intruding.
I shouldn’t be letting myself in—uninvited—yet again.
I shouldn’t keep inserting myself into her life.
Especially after what happened last night…
But that’s exactly why I’m here again.
Because seeing her that way, knowing how much she must have been suffering to want me to stay so badly, to need that so much from me, of all people, means I haven’t been able to stop worrying about her all day.
This boulder of dread has sat in my stomach since I got home from painting the mural just before dawn broke, and nothing I did has been able to shake it.
Not a long, hot shower to attempt to wash away her scent while I scrubbed the paint from my skin.
Not smoking half a fucking pack of cigarettes.
Not pacing the studio until my bare feet ached.
It wasn’t until I turned onto her street that the unease finally started to ebb, that it finally felt like I could breathe again because I knew I would see her soon—even if that isn’t what she wants.
I push open the front door, bag with her dinner in hand, and pause, tilting my head and listening for her.
She’s usually home by now…
And I was half-expecting her to be sitting on the couch, waiting for me.
