Page 141 of The Devil of Downtown

“I won’t stay long,” she says. “I just needed to see with my own eyes that she’s okay. That you’re okay?”

She sits with me. I’ve no idea how long, every so often squeezing my hand. After a while, Charlotte presses a kiss to my cheek before slipping out, leaving the room quiet again.

Sometime later, deep into the night, I feel Ivy stir.

Her breathing quickens. Her brow furrows. A sound catches in her throat, half-formed, frightened.

“Ivy,” I murmur, leaning closer. “Hey. You’re safe.”

Her eyes flutter open, unfocused, panic flaring briefly as if she’s back in the car, back in the moment everything went wrong.

I take her hand carefully. “It’s okay. You’re in the hospital. I’m here.”

She relaxes inch by inch, fingers tightening weakly around mine.

“Dane?” she murmurs, barely audible.

“Yes.”

That seems to be enough. Her grip loosens. Her breathing evens out. She drifts back under, the tension slowly leaving her face.

I sit in the chair beside her bed and stay there.

Hours pass in fragments—her breathing evening out, nurses drifting in and out, the city thrumming faintly beyond the glass.

I stay all night. I don’t sleep. I just watch her, counting each rise and fall of her chest, guarding the quiet, knowing that whatever comes next, I’ll never let her out of my sight again.

Chapter thirty-one

Ivy

I wake slowly, the way you do when pain pulls you back before consciousness is ready for it. My ribs ache with every breath, a dull, insistent reminder that something went very wrong. For a few seconds, I lie still, staring at the ceiling, and then it hits me fully—Brody is dead.

The thought lands with a quiet finality, and before I can stop it, a single tear slips sideways into my hairline. Not for the man he became, not even for the choices he made, but for the boy I once loved, the one who never learned how to outrun his own damage.

The impact had come from his side of the car. Mine took enough to leave me bruised and breathing. Whether that was coincidence or something planned, I don’t let myself follow the thought. I just lie there, the weight of it pressing down.

I turn my head, swallowing past the tightness in my throat, and then I hear him.

Dane’s voice carries faintly from the corridor outside my room, low and controlled, softened in a way I’ve never quite heard before. He’s on the phone, pacing by the sound of it.

“No,” he says, voice calm. “That can wait. Have Julian handle it. I’m not available.”

A pause. Then, quieter still, undeniably certain: “I’m with Ivy. I’m not leaving her.”

Warmth slips through the heaviness in my chest. I smile despite myself.

I push the blankets aside and slide my feet to the floor, wincing as I stand. The movement sends a sharp reminder through my ribs, but I grit my teeth and pad toward the door anyway, drawn by the sound of him like gravity. I ease it open slightly and peer through the crack.

He’s standing a few feet away, phone pressed to his ear, hair mussed as if he’s been dragging his hands through it all night. His shirt is open at the collar, tie gone, sleeves rolled back showing off his strong forearms, his free hand braced on his hip as he paces in short, restless arcs. Even like this—tired, unguarded, worried—he’s devastatingly handsome.

“Excuse me,” I say, my voice rough but teasing. “How’s a girl supposed to sleep around here?”

He turns instantly.

The phone drops to his side, forgotten, and for a heartbeat, he just stares at me like he’s seeing a mirage. Then he’s there, closing the distance in three strides, his hands coming up to cup my face as if he needs the confirmation that I’m real, that I’m upright, that I’m breathing.

“Ivy,” he breathes.