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“We have a contract,” I remind her. It feels like the only card I have left to play.

She makes some garbled sound of frustration somewhere between an ugh and a scream. “I’m not staying married to a fucking liar.” She throws more clothes into her suitcase, emptying the drawers she just moved into. “I’ll check with my dad’s lawyer, but I’m pretty sure winning money to marry me negates the contract.”

“I never got any money,” I say. I don’t bother with the logistics of why he never paid me.

“Well, aren’t you a goddamn hero?”

“Ivy, I need you to know that yes, a bet is how the whole idea of marriage ever came up. Even before that, we had a bet about who could get you into bed first. But it’s not where I’m at now.”

“I’m not just another thing you get to win,” she says, and her words stab an ache right through me. “That’s not how relationships work. It’s not how marriage works.”

“I love you. Please, Ivy. Please, let’s make this work. Let’s figure this out. Please.” I’m begging. I’m desperate, and it’s the truth. I do love her. We’ve skirted around the words for weeks now. We’ve said we’re falling. But fuck falling, I’m all the way there, and the thought of her walking out that door tears me in two.

“Convenient timing to drop the first I love you,” she mutters.

“What about Nocturno?” I ask, desperate to hold onto any thread of her I can.

“My sister can figure it out.” She turns to the bathroom next, and she yanks open her drawers and tosses the contents into a big bag. She had several things out on the counter after getting ready this evening, and she sweeps all that into the bag too. “You should get back to your guests.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, the dread spreading through me as I start to realize that this is real. She’s hurt, and she’s walking out on me. She doesn’t give a shit about my explanation, and she shouldn’t. What we did was horrible, and she’s right to be angry.

It was never supposed to be love. It was never supposed to affect me like this. It was a stupid, drunken bet, one I told West I didn’t want any part of when real feelings got involved. But none of it matters because she saw the one thing that made her feel the most objectified. The most betrayed. The most embarrassed.

It was a text never meant for her eyes, but I guess looking back, it never should have been sent in the first place. Maybe I’m only getting what I ultimately deserved in the end, anyway, for objectifying her the way I did from the start.

It’s a shitty, hard-won lesson. One I never wanted to learn. One that I don’t know I’ll ever recover from.

For once in my life, I gave love a chance.

And now…this.

The pain slicing through my chest feels nearly unbearable as she tosses the bag into the suitcase with her clothes and kneels down to pull the zipper shut. “I’ll send for the rest of my things.”

She straightens and stands the suitcase up so she can pull it, and I rush over and pull her into my arms. She doesn’t hug back. She doesn’t move at all.

“Don’t go,” I say, my voice laden with emotion, a heavy contrast to the way she’s so flat. An unfamiliar heat stings behind my eyes, a heat I’ve only felt a few other times in my life and always due to an insurmountable amount of pain. Losing my father. Breaking my tibia when I was in college and finding out I’d be out for the season.

“Let go of me,” she says thickly.

I do what she asks. I have no other option. “Don’t go,” I repeat, my voice breaking this time as the heat spills over into liquid on my cheek. I swipe it away.

She chokes out her next words. “Bye, Cash.” She picks up her purse, slings it around herself, and takes off her ring—the simple silver band from the chapel, since I never made it a priority to get her a real ring even though I thought about it a hundred times. She sets it on my dresser and drags her suitcase out of the room.

I stand in place, staring at the door she slams shut behind her on her way out, trying to reconcile whether this is real or just some nightmare.

I remember my mom pinching me when I thought something was just a dream. It was a silly pinch, not a hurtful one, but something I could feel that was a clear indicator that I wasn’t sleeping.

And the feelings plowing into me now make it clear that this isn’t some dream.

I’m wide awake, and the only woman I’ve ever loved just left me.

CHAPTER 39: Ivy Maddox

0/10, Do Not Recommend

I drag my suitcase down the stairs, not bothering to pick it up, which makes it slam down on each step after step. I know everyone is staring, or pretending not to stare, but this is Cash’s mess to clean up.

Kellan rushes up the stairs and grabs the suitcase from me, carrying it down. “Is everything okay?” he asks quietly. He’s not the person I figured would come to my aid, but here we are.