“You think this is about my ego.” I laugh once. It tastes like copper. “You look like someone used you as a speed bag; forgive me for having an issue with that.”
Her smile thins. “You’ve seen me worse.”
Yeah. Curled on my couch with mascara tracks and a migraine, shaking from a nightmare she refused to name. Drunk in my hoodie laughing at memes with her legs over my lap.
“You think I’d forget?” I say.
“No, you just ghost.”
I go still.
“What.”
She crosses the room, putting the kitchen island between us. It’s a stupid, meaningless barrier, but my body responds like she just pulled a knife. Her movements are stiff, measured out of necessity. Rib. Fuck. Every reach and twist must hurt.
She grabs a glass from the drying rack, fills it from the filtered tap, not looking at me.
“Two weeks,” she says, water running. I wait for her to continue, and when she doesn't, I feel the next words before I say them.
“I had shit to handle.”
“Wow. Strong communication. Gold star. You leave a Post-it? Smoke signal? Thought not.” She takes a long swallow of water, throat working. The movement tugs her tank again. My eyes drop to the bruise before I drag them up. “So now you show up here, act like my face is your property, and what? You want a thank you? You want me to cry about how scared I was?”
Her words land like punches. I take them. I have it coming.
“I’m not asking you to cry,” I say. “I’m asking who put their hands on you so I know whose teeth to knock in.”
“God, you are so fucking arrogant.” She tips her head, eyes sharp. “Maybe I put my hands on them first. Maybe I’m not your little breakable thing, Asher.”
“You’re nothing of mine.”
The second it’s out, I want to rip it back. Her mouth twitches and goes still.
“Message received,” she says quietly. “Took you long enough.”
Silence drops. The hum of the fridge, the faint hiss of the AC. My own heartbeat loud in my ears.
Fuck.
“Ivy—”
“Don’t.” She lifts a palm. “Don’t do the thing where you pretend you didn’t mean it. You meant it. You meant it when you left too.”
“I had to go to—”
“I don’t care,” she cuts in. “I don’t care where you went, what you did, whose bed you used as a landing pad. I’ve known you ten months. You don’t owe me shit.”
I step closer to the island. My hands press to the cool stone, tracking a thin vein of gray. Anything to keep from reaching for her.
“You’re walking around with someone’s fist on your face, and you don’t want me to give a shit?” I say. “That’s cute.”
“Stop calling it cute. You sound like every condescending man I’ve ever met, and I married one, so my quota’s full.”
I know I should turn around, leave, do all the shitty fucking things I need to do that doesn't include dragging her further down the pit with me.
But maybe I want it.
Maybe she does.
