Crossfire (Cross Duet #1)

44. IVY

44

IVY

Who hurt me? I twisted my hands, forcing the words out, unsure where, exactly, to start.

“Growing up, it was just me, my mom, and my dad. My mom and I had a good relationship, but she had to travel a lot for work, so my dad was kind of the primary parent in my household.”

I shifted.

“He and I had always been really close. When I was little, he would always make me my favorite lunches, and he would find things for us to do in the summer. Like going to the zoo or find a new park that had just opened up.”

I could see his smile in my mind, his hand outstretched toward mine as my little fingers clasped his.

“He was a firefighter, and I just remember feeling so proud that I was a daughter of someone who saved lives for a living. He even came to my school one time when I was in third grade to give a presentation on fire safety. But I think he just did it as an excuse to get to see me in school.”

Dad always looked for every opportunity to spend time with me.

“He’d always been my hero, but one day, when I was in middle school, something happened…” I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “If my dad hadn’t been there, I don’t think I’d be alive right now to tell you about it.”

Grayson’s features darkened, and he gripped his fork so tightly, his knuckles turned white.

“What happened?” His voice was a low growl.

I stared at my spaghetti, my stomach churning.

Lord, this was hard.

When I paused, Grayson set his silverware down and leaned back in his seat. Evidently, this event in my life was more important to him than his own hunger.

His eyes narrowed as they roamed over my face, searching for something, while his jaw clenched and unclenched—the muscles tensing beneath his skin. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then pressed his lips together, furrowing his brows and looking down at the table for a few seconds.

After a deep breath, he kept his voice steely as he said, “Ivy, I need to know what happened to you.”

I need to know. What an interesting choice of words.

I blinked. “Why?”

My childhood had nothing to do with this situation we found ourselves in now.

“If you don’t tell me,” he began slowly, “I’m going to…” He paused and scrubbed his face with his hand. “The unknown will torment me worse than the known.”

Torment .

The word lingered between us, a haunting echo of the feelings we had shared.

It was in this moment that I realized I wanted to know something about Grayson, too. I wanted to know what happened in Grayson’s life that took this seemingly protective person and made him into a trained killer.

“When I was thirteen,” I started, the words coming out slow like even they wanted to stay buried inside of me, “I was fiercely independent. I was at that age where I thought I knew everything, that I was a grown-up and not a child anymore.”

Grayson hung on my every word.

“For over a year,” I continued, “I had been having a battle with my parents over loosening my leash. All the other kids had more freedom than I did. To me, one of the symbols of that freedom, I guess you could say, was being allowed to walk home from school.”

Grayson’s breathing became shallower.

“My school was only a mile away from our home at the time. My parents kept pushing back on me, saying that even if we didn’t live on the outskirts of a major city with a corresponding crime rate, kids in even the safest towns would go missing. I thought they were being ridiculous. Overprotective, stifling my life.”

“I think it’s fair to say most kids think the same thing,” he assured.

I shifted. “Anyway, one day, finally, my dad agreed that I could walk home from school. Provided I took a preapproved path, and I walked home with a friend who lived a block from my house.”

I fidgeted with my fork, turning it over.

“I knew if I showed my parents that I could get home alone, they would give me more and more freedom. Maybe start extending my curfew and start letting me do more things.”

Grayson tilted his head to the side slightly, waiting for me to continue.

“Anyway, so there I am, waiting for my friend, and I’m beyond excited. Until I get a call from her.” Back then, less than half the kids in my school had a phone, and the only reason I had one was because of how safety conscious my parents were, wanting to make sure I could always call 911. Ironic, when you think about it. “It turns out that during the last period of the day, she came down with a stomach flu and threw up and went home. By this point, the buses had left.”

I shut my eyes momentarily. Even to this day, I still struggled to forgive myself for what I did next.

“I should’ve called my parents. I mean, honestly, what had I been thinking?” I shook my head. “Breaking my parents’ rules the first time they gave me freedom? It was the stupidest thing I could’ve done in terms of having the chance to get more freedom. Not to mention what happened next…”

So stupid.

“I guess when you’re thirteen, you don’t think as rationally as an adult would.” I took a sip of water to combat the drying of my throat. “So, I walked home alone, following all the other safety measures. I took the direct, highly public route we’d agreed upon and watched my surroundings. But then…”

I paused, shuddering at the memory.

“I got this bad feeling. At first, I dismissed it, thinking it was probably just from my parents instilling so much fear about the bad guys out there or whatever.”

“But the feeling didn’t subside?” Grayson deduced.

I shook my head.

“By that point, I was a block and a half away, so I thought I could just make a run for it. But…a car came out of nowhere with screeching tires. A guy jumped out and grabbed me.”

At the confirmation someone had laid hands on me, a vein pulsed in Grayson’s temple.

“He slammed me into the pavement so hard, my forehead split open.”

Grayson licked his teeth, his line of sight drifting to the faint scar above my left eyebrow.

“He, uh…started punching me in the head repeatedly.”

“He punched you,” Grayson repeated in angry disbelief, his deep voice pulsing with vengeance.

“My assailant started shoving me toward the vehicle, where there was another guy waiting in the driver’s seat. When I screamed, he covered my mouth. It was a blur, like my eyes were looking in a million places and nowhere at the same time—looking up and down the block, thinking someone will see this, someone will come along and stop this. And at the same time, trying to memorize the red scar on his arm so I could give police a better description.”

My throat swelled at the memory of being so helpless.

“But no one came. And as he dragged me, kicking and screaming, I knew that if he got me into that vehicle, I was dead.”

That was the moment when my entire world changed. You went from thinking about the next school dance or wondering if the boy you have a crush on liked you back to knowing you were about to die. That was too crushing for an adult, let alone a thirteen-year-old.

“It’s weird how so many thoughts can go through your mind in a split second. But I thought about my parents and how devastated they would be. I was their only child, and after all those years of trying to keep me safe, I knew they would blame themselves for something that was completely my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Grayson snarled. “It was the scumbags who were trying to abduct you. They were predators, and you were a child.”

I don’t know why Grayson’s words surprised me; I guess I would’ve thought someone whose job it was to eliminate the worst of humanity would see how dangerous the world actually was and might look at me like I was naive. But he wasn’t treating me like I was naive at all.

If anything, he looked so furious, with his narrowed eyes and bulging veins, that I wondered what he would do if he was sitting in the room with the two men right now.

“Did they get you in that car, Ivy?”

Grayson looked like he wasn’t certain he could handle the answer; after all, two grown men abducting a thirteen-year-old girl wouldn’t fall under the motive of robbery.

“He had me halfway into the back seat when his grip suddenly loosened. I stumbled backward, falling onto the sidewalk. Next thing I knew, I saw both kidnappers fighting with someone who’d come to my rescue. Fists were flying everywhere. The guy with the scar must’ve panicked when this wasn’t the easy target they’d expected, because he bolted for the car and peeled off, abandoning the original driver. That guy curled up on the ground, arms raised to protect his head because my rescuer was relentless with blows until blood streamed from the man’s face.”

Grayson’s lips twitched slightly.

“I remember lying there, frozen, watching the little drops of blood get absorbed into the sidewalk while the sounds of thumps and groans were broken up by a muttering of curse words.”

I shifted.

“That’s when I finally looked up. Turned out, the man beating the absolute shit out of my would-be kidnapper was my dad.”

It looked like it took Grayson a conceited effort to move past the image of a grown man trying to abduct me and move on to my father saving my life.

“Sounds like a good dad.”

He was the best dad. My hero. My protector. My everything.

I swallowed the ache in my throat.

“Later, I learned that my dad found out my friend went home sick and had started walking toward the school to intercept me. But at the moment, all I knew was that something inside of him snapped. I had never seen my dad like that before. It was like he was possessed; his teeth were clenched and his knuckles were getting bloody, but he didn’t stop hitting him. Not even after the guy went limp.”

“If I had gotten my hands on him,” Grayson said, “you can rest assured the guy would’ve suffered a much more brutal death.”

His words seeped into my heart and planted its roots. I should have been repulsed by them, and yet…there it was, blooming in my heart—affection.

“I don’t know how long it lasted,” I forced myself to continue. “But at some point, another man pulled my dad off him. If they hadn’t, I’m pretty sure my dad would have killed the guy.”

Grayson’s chest rose slowly as he clenched his hand into a fist, and in a voice so calm that it was haunting, he asked, “Are you telling me that the man who tried to abduct you lived ?”

The last word was spit out in disgust and angry disbelief.

When I said nothing, Grayson clenched his eyes shut.

“Did they catch the guys, Ivy?”

His anger caught me off guard.

“The one my dad had beaten was an unconscious lump of bloody flesh, so yes.”

“What happened to him?” Grayson’s voice teetered between fury and desperation.

“He was charged with a class-two felony for attempted kidnapping and sentenced to three to seven years in prison.”

Grayson’s eyes snapped back to mine, and I swear on my life, all the color had drained from them.

“Three to seven years,” he spat.

I know. People who are a violent threat to children should be locked up forever.

“They never found his accomplice. The guys had been wearing ski masks, so the only description I could give was his body type and the scar on his arm. But police speculated the two might’ve been responsible for a string of girls that had gone missing in the area. Some of them turned up dead; some of them never turned up at all.”

It felt like an eternity passed before he finally broke the silence.

“And that’s why you learned to fight,” Grayson mused.

I twisted my fingers on my lap.

“When you’re almost killed, the world doesn’t feel safe anymore. You realize that all the horror stories and bad guys that you’ve been warned about your whole life are very real and exist right outside your house. Who would want to walk through a jungle, densely populated with mountain lions? Everywhere I turned, I just saw danger.”

I shoved a hand through my hair.

“I took self-defense classes, but I graduated them. I wanted to learn more, so I kept going. Every aspect of fighting made me feel like I could protect myself that much more, you know? I never wanted to feel that small and helpless again.”

Grayson cleared his throat and locked his compassionate gaze onto mine.

“Ivy, you might be small, but you’re the least helpless person I’ve ever met. You mastered your skills so sharply that you’re a force, Ivy. That’s something you should be proud of.”

My cheeks roasted. Somehow, Grayson managed to untangle the web of self-damnation in my chest. And that meant a lot to me.

“Did it help?” he asked. “Learning to fight?”

I shrugged. “It did, in a way.” The martial arts training had given me the strength to venture out into the streets of Chicago once more, but it couldn’t erase the scars that fateful day had left on my soul. “But the guy…he still haunts my dreams,” I confessed, my voice hoarse. “There are nights when I wake up screaming, trapped in that moment when his fists were pounding on me or when he was shoving me into that car with an iron grip.” I paused. “In my dreams, sometimes…sometimes, he succeeds, and I’m powerless to stop him.”

Grayson ran a hand over his mouth. “And then I put you in my trunk.”

I stilled. He looked furious now, this time at himself. Repulsed even that he’d brought me back to that dark place.

“I didn’t know, Ivy. I’m sorry.”

Once again, I was struck by how sincere he was, tormented for having hurt me.

I wasn’t sure what to say. It’s okay? Don’t worry about it, man? Kidnapping is under the bridge? The truth was far more confusing—the two incidents felt worlds apart to me.

“Three to seven years.” He kept his tone calm, but I could hear the rage simmering through it. “That would put him out of prison today.”

I said nothing.

“What was his name?” Grayson asked.

I blinked. “Why do you want to know his name?”

“Why do you think?”

Was he seriously saying what I thought he was saying?

“I’m not a good guy, Ivy, but this…” Grayson tapped his finger on the table. “This is something I can do.”

He waited for understanding to wash over me.

“Give me your nightmares, Ivy. So you can finally sleep.”

I swallowed, my heart thundering because somehow, in that moment, I knew that if I gave Grayson my assailant’s name, that man would turn up dead.

A wave of goose bumps washed over my skin with a strange mixture of fear and exhilaration. There was an intimacy to his profession, a shared secret that we’d both take to our grave, should I let him go through with it.

Spoiler alert: I’d never do that, but the unexpected closeness between us in this moment was both thrilling and terrifying, and I found myself fighting against the sudden rush of affection I felt for him, knowing that I couldn’t allow myself to be drawn in by his intense devotion. Nor his intoxicating blend of allure and danger.

How could someone so kind become a violent hit man?

“I’m not giving you his name,” I declared.

The muscles along Grayson’s jaw tightened, and he studied me, looking for any sign that I might change my mind.

“But now that I’ve answered your questions,” I started, “I have one of my own.”

Grayson took a deep breath.

“What made you become an assassin?”