Page 42 of My Sweetest Obsession
A place so filled with happy and beautiful memories for us that he made their place, only for it to become somewhere filled with the sadness I saw on Ivy’s face the other day.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I take a deep breath and force myself to look away from it before a tidal wave of emotions can overwhelm me.
Fuck.
I’ve tried so hard to find a way to sort through all these feelings over the past few months, but each time it seems like I might be getting a grip on the constant internal turmoil, that I might be finding a way to make it through a single day without breaking down and having to fight for my sanity and sobriety with every fucking fiber of my being, something sets me back again.
A memory.
A smell.
A single look from the woman whose house I’ve just let myself into.
She’ll hate me for being here, for me having to be the bad guy by not letting her slide down this slippery slope that leads nowhere good.
But I already am anyway.
Always will be.
And I have to keep my promise to Drew and give myself some peace of mind that she’s all right.
I make my way past the closed office door and to her bedroom, pausing just inside the jamb, refusing to invade this space that belonged to them.
I’ve crossed so many lines that never should have been, but this one seems more like a vast canyon I refuse to leap over.
Ivy lies with her back to me, her dark hair spread out behind her on the pillow. If she’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake her, but I need to know that she and the baby are okay.
“Ivy?”
She flinches, as if hearing me say her name is somehow painful to her now, when she used to shiver in anticipation when I whispered it before. I squeeze my eyes closed and drop my forehead against the doorjamb, sucking in a long, slow breath, gathering the strength I need to face whatever wrath she might throw at me tonight.
“What are you doing here?”
Her voice is somehow soft but heavy with a thousand different emotions I’ve also struggled with so intensely.
I lift my head and gaze at her again—the slope of her exposed shoulder blade, the way her hand rests protectively on her growing stomach, the elegant length of her neck, and the smooth line of her jaw. My hands itch to touch her, to run over her soft skin and absorb all that addictive energy she always puts out.
Instead, I fist them at my sides, preventing me from overstepping—again. “I stopped by the shop to bring you dinner because you usually work late on Friday nights before a wedding…”
She tilts her head slightly toward me, still not looking over her shoulder but clearly listening.
“Marlo told me you left early because you were tired.” I swallow thickly. “I was worried.”
That probably wasn’t the right thing to say.
It was only a week ago that we stood on that beach and she told me she didn’t want me to worry about her.
And I don’t have the right.
Ivy isn’t mine.
She never has been.
Even when she was in my arms and my cock was buried deep inside her, she was always Drew’s, and no matter how badly I want to believe that could ever change, it won’t.
Her heart will always belong to him.
And that’s how it should be.
