Anger laced his tone, pure, raw fury. “Ivy, is that you?” he demanded.
Before I gave over to the riot of emotions shooting through me, I jammed my finger on the end button and stopped the call. Then I ripped the charger from the wall and shut the damn thing off.
Oh, god.Why did it hurt so much?
Why couldn’t it be simple to save him? Why couldn’t it be easy?
My breaths came in gasping sobs and I sank to my knees, unable to find the strength to hold myself up anymore.
Lost.
I felt lost. Which was a profound feeling, since I had felt lost most of my life.
Until Ryder.
And then I had felt intensely found.
But I had given that up so he could be safe, so he could live his life without the weight of me dragging him down… drowning him.
I had given up everything for him.
Except what if we were still in danger? What ifhewas still in danger?
I had trouble living with myself on a daily, hourly… minute-by-minute basis. If something happened to Ryder, even my tenuous grasp on survival would slip.
I would never be able to live with myself. I wouldn’t be able to endure this lonely existence anymore.
Stuck at a crossroads between two impossible outcomes, between two scenarios that both felt like mistakes, between what my heart wanted and what my mind argued, I made the only decision that would let me breathe again.
I went with my heart.
Chapter Three
My plane landed on the tarmac of Omaha, Eppley Airfield at 6:43pm on a Wednesday.
I would have called that fate, except I had met the Fates and I highly doubted they hadanythingto do with my good fortune.
In fact, if they had been in charge of my flight plans, I was convinced my plane would have ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
I had packed lightly in the same purse I’d used around the island. I’d abandoned my entire bungalow, leaving behind enough rent to cover me through the end of the month, just in case.
After a quick call to Fleur, explaining to her that it was time for me to go home, she’d said, “You were always going to go home.”
“How did you know?” I asked on a strained whisper.
“Because it’s home. We are nothing without a home. And you, little girl, are more than nothing.” The conviction in her tone surprised me. I hadn’t known her that long and the entire time I had, I was convinced she only put up with me… nothing else.
But she was right. And as I stepped out into the heat of a stifling Midwestern summer, I contemplated how I hadn’t realized this sooner.
This was right. I felt it in my bones. And it wasn’t just Omaha calling to me, whispering that I had stepped back into the sublime familiar, it was more than that.
There were thicker strings than childhood memories and nostalgia that held me to this place.
I hailed a cab, one of the few circling the airport drop off lanes and gave instructions on where to take me.
I didn’t have much with me, except for cash. That I had brought a lot of.
I stared out the window and breathed in the north part of the city. I noted new construction and new businesses that had opened in my absence. I watched pedestrians swelter in the heat and city traffic maneuver around one-way streets and evening congestion.
