Ivy glances up at me. “Everything.” She releases a jagged sigh. “Excuse me if it takes me a while to get through it all.”
“Then I’ll keep paying the ticket guy until you’re done.”
“Thanks.” She laughs softly, and it’s so peaceful compared to the loudness of the fair. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you, but I doubt it’s something I’ll ever get over.”
“Don’t apologise,” I whisper.
She sucks in a breath. “I know you’ve heard about Ben.”
I run my tongue along my lip. “I only heard about him, I know nothing about what happened.”
“It was probably for the best.” She attempts a smile, but it doesn’t meet her eyes. I continue to caress the back of her shoulder because I need to touch her, I need to be close to her. “I wanted to be the person to tell you, not anyone else. People tent to twist the truth.”
“Whatever you want to tell me, I’d never demand answers.”
Her eyes glance over the fair as we reach near the top. “Ben used to be one of Finn’s friends. We met at a party and clicked instantly. Obviously Finn hated the idea of it because they were friends. But we dated for a year and everything was going well, then I started getting these strange vibes from him.”
My brows crease. “Like what?”
She pauses and pivots to look at me. “At first, I never got any feelings that he was possessive or super jealous, but the closer we got to leaving for university, he started acting out. He became too attached, clingy. He said that I probably wouldn’t say no to other men when I went to university.”
I keep my eyes on her carefully as she continues. “I couldn’t handle it, being accused of something that I would never do. Then these rumours came out, they spread like wildfire.Someone said that I cheated on Ben with some guy I met at a club, but it wasn’t true. I’d never cheat on anyone and hurt them like that.”
I nod in agreement, not wanting to interrupt her.
“So, one evening he was dropping me home from a day at the beach and we got into an argument about the rumours. I was trying to convince him they were lies, but it kept getting more and more heated. I couldn’t control the direction of the conversation, he barely let me talk.”
Her voice falters, and I take her fingers in mine, giving them a little squeeze. When she glances up at me, her eyes glisten. Her chest is now moving quicker than before, so I hold her hand tighter and brush back her hair with my other.
“We were in his car but he started freaking out, crying, shouting at me. I-I was terrified. He kept speeding up, going faster and faster until my heart literally felt like it was going to burst. He was demanding I admit that I cheated on him, and said he would slow down if I admitted it.”
Her eyes flutter shut, the memory too painful to think about. I watch her and wish I could push away all her agony.
“I’ve never seen him so angry.” She shivers. “He literally switched. One moment his eyes were on the road, the next he undid my seatbelt, opened my passenger door and threatened to throw me out of it.”
Jesus Christ.
“He grabbed me here,” she says as she brushes her hand over the base of her throat. “So tightly. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get him off me. He hung me half out of the car, and if he didn’t throw me out, I thought he was going to suffocate me. We were easily going one hundred miles an hour, and then he started to loosen his grip. I thought he was going to let me go. And I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. Filled with hatred over something I didn’t do.”
My hands start to shake from the fury rolling through me.
“I cried at him to stop and slow down, but he refused, and I could see a bridge ahead of us.” Her fingers now tremble in my hold, and I raise them to my lips and give her knuckles a little kiss. “I thought I was going to die. It’s a feeling I don’t even know how to describe.”
A single tear rolls down her cheek, and I brush it away with my vacant hand. I never want to see her upset, it brings out emotions I didn’t even know I had. “But he kept going,” she gasps, and now I wrap my arms around her and tug her head into my chest. “He told me I was his and that I did this to myself. Then he purposely slid into the the side of the bridge, and the car fell into the water. The windscreen smashed and I was pierced by a piece of metal that missed my heart by like two centimetres. I was knocked out when it happened, and I was barely alive when they found us. I should have died; I should have died right there.”
I shake my head over and over. “No, princess,” I whisper into her hair before pressing a kiss to her crown. “Don’t say that.”
A fire lights in my stomach knowing Ben put her in danger like that. He tried to hurt her.He did it on purpose.
“I was so scared,” she chokes out. “I thought that was the end.”
My eyes burn at the thought, the panic, the fear.
“After the accident, I was never the same.” She peeks her eyes up at me, filled with sadness. “It took me a while to recover. Weeks in the hospital. Then I fell into this shell that I hated. I haven’t been myself in years, my insecurities got stronger, and my anxiety has been so bad that I don’t even recognise myself, let alone my body.”
“Ivy,” I rasp and press my forehead to hers.
Her lips tremble. “I felt like the scars that cover my body—especially the one on my chest—define me. It wasn’t just whathappened that had an effect on me; it was the aftermath, too. It affects the way I see myself, and I started overthinking it because I believed others would see me that way, too. All of Ben’s friends, outside of his friendship with Finn, were blaming me for what happened, that I deserved it for what I did. When he went to prison, it made everything a thousand times worse. That’s why I left this town.”
