“Hello, Jay.”
I had to stop myself comically rubbing my eyes, wondering if I was seeing things. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
Okay, so she wasn’t here to kill me.
“Come in. Sit down.” I guided her into the kitchen-dining area and dragged a chair out from the table. “It’s so good to see you.”
She didn’t say it was good to see me, too, but that was hardly surprising.
Perhaps she was here to deliver my punishment herself. Maybe she’d brought a knife, just as her brother had done, and now she was going to slit my throat as payback.
If that was her plan, I would lift my chin for her but keep my eyes open, so the last thing I ever got to see was her beautiful face.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ivy
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NONE OF THE FEELINGSI’d had for him had faded over the past couple of months. Seeing him again was like someone had punched me in the chest, bruising my already fragile heart and stealing my breath. He was so beautiful, perhaps even more so because of the pain I saw in his eyes. I wanted to go to him, the pull was almost impossible to fight. Everything felt wrong to have space between us, both physical and emotional.
I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed him until I was with him again. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his skin and inhale that familiar scent of him.
I trembled from nerves. How did he feel about me now? What was going through his head? Was seeing me here having the same emotional impact on him as it was me, or was he cold inside, everything he might have once felt for me gone?
He’d brought me into the kitchen-dining area instead of the living room, where Bruno had died. Had he done that deliberately, or was it an unconscious action? I glanced down at his hands—hands that had once given me nothing but pleasure—and tried to marry them with the idea of the violence that had led to my brother’s death. I’d expected to see a monster when I looked at him, but I didn’t.
He was still just Jay.
My stomach churned with nerves at the news I’d brought with me.
I hadn’t told anyone the truth of my predicament. How could I?
The thought of going up to either my brother or father and saying ‘Hey, guess what, I’m pregnant, and the father is the man who murdered Bruno’ left me sick with nerves.