“Hey.” His voice was right at my ear.
“Look at me. Look at me Ivy.”
I looked at him.
“You protected us,” he said. “You hear me? That’s all that happened in this room.”
I was shaking so hard I could feel my teeth. Brendon was on the floor and I couldn’t tell from where I was and I couldn’t make myself look directly and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with what was happening in my body right now, the adrenaline and the horror and underneath both of them something that might have been relief and I didn’t know what to do with that either.
Griz held me tighter and I grabbed his shirt with both hands and pressed my face into his chest and he stood there in the middle of that marble floor in the middle of that beautiful house and held me like he was never going to put me down.
“I got you,” he said. Low and steady. The way he said everything that mattered. “I got you bae.”
Outside the windows the neighborhood was still and quiet and had no idea what had just shifted inside this house.
I held onto him and let myself shake and somewhere in the back of my mind underneath all of it I knew one thing clearly.
He had told me he would protect me.
He had meant it.
And I was never going to have to question that again for as long as I lived.
—
Brendon didn’t die that night.
The bullet caught him in the shoulder and put him down and by the time the ambulance arrived Griz had already controlled the narrative. Self defense. A man who forced his way into a private residence, made explicit death threats, drew a weapon, and gotshot by the woman he had backed into a corner. The responding officers took our statements, looked at the evidence, and the case was closed before it fully opened.
Brendon was treated and released four days later. He never pressed charges. Pressing charges meant a courtroom and a courtroom meant the full story coming out and Brendon had spent his entire adult life building a reputation in this city that he wasn’t willing to sacrifice over something he couldn’t win.
For about two weeks after, I heard from him through lawyers only. Clean and professional the way he did everything. Assets were separated, my name was removed from the remaining joint accounts, and communication slowed to nothing.
Then it stopped altogether.
At first I assumed he had just moved on and I didn’t ask questions because I didn’t want answers that would complicate the peace I had finally found. But then his assistant called my office looking for him. Then his mother called my personal cell in a panic asking if I had heard anything. Then I saw the missing persons report filed quietly, no press, no noise, just his name and his last known location and a date that was eleven days after closing.
Nobody had seen him.
I sat with that information for a long time without bringing it up to anyone.
One night I looked at Griz across the dinner table and he was already looking at me. His face was completely still and unbothered in the way it got when something had already been handled and didn’t require discussion.
I looked back down at my plate.
I never asked.
And he never told me.
Some things didn’t need to be said out loud to be understood perfectly. My man was going to protect me with his life, and that much I know.
Griz pulled out of the doctor’s office parking lot with Ivy in the passenger seat. She was 12 weeks pregnant, and growing and glowing beautifully. Griz couldn’t stop smiling and he wasn’t trying to. The ultrasound photo was sitting on the center console and he had looked at it four times already since they walked out of that building.
Ivy had her arms crossed and her lip poked out just enough that he knew she was fighting her own smile.
“You did this on purpose,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything. Yo ass never wants to hop off. That’s what you get!”
