End With A Bang (Slap/Bang Duet #2)

28. The Answer

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Answer

What did she want more than anything in this life?

The answer dawned on her the moment it threatened to slip away.

Suddenly, she felt it in his cooling skin; heard it in his shallow breath, saw it in his icy, sparkless gaze. In that suspended instant, Ivy Tyler knew exactly what she wanted.

It wasn’t him. Not entirely. Yes, she loved him, and she’d loved him for months, long before it even made sense. But what she truly wanted, needed, had to have? Was what they could become together . She hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but her every transgression with Sever was her way of coaxing that barren seedling to a vibrant, brilliant bloom.

Sever Mark had changed her life, and she was finally seeing that he’d changed it for the better.

“Come on,” she urged, patting his face with a blood-soaked palm. “Stay with me. I love you!” Why wasn’t his chest moving? Why was he still bleeding? Wasn’t love supposed to save the fucking day? “Sever! Please! I know the answer!”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Jason was muttering to himself, sitting on the floor, shell shocked. “I didn’t mean to...”

What did he think would happen, bringing a gun and his batshit sister in here?

“Move,” someone said behind her. Terrell. “Put his arm down.” He lowered Sever’s bent knee.

Ivy panicked. “Don’t move him, he—he could get hurt.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Terrell said, pulling gauze out of a kit and pressing hard on Sever’s chest. “Wrap that duvet around him. Now.”

She pulled at the duvet coming off the bed and covered his shoulders and legs. Sever gave her a dreamy smile. She touched his face.

Terrell gave Ivy a pulse oximeter. “Put this on his finger.” As she did that, her hands shaking, he said, “What happened?”

“I killed her,” Jason said, voice hollow and haunted.

“She tried to shoot Jason,” Ivy explained, trying desperately to keep it together. “Sever got in the way. His hand is getting cold!”

“It’s okay, he’s in shock. He’s not dead. Hey, look at me, man,” he told Sever. “We’re gonna fix you up. Good as new.”

Sever blinked. That was a good sign, right? She kissed his hand, squeezed it. Wiped her teardrops from his forearm.

“Put his arm down, Ivy,” Terrell reminded her firmly, and she backed away, let him do what he needed to.

Her ears seemed to fill with gauze then, muffling all the sound in the room. She watched the scene unfold as if it were a movie: Terrell kept talking to Sever, kept him awake, controlled the bleeding. The medevac crew arrived, put Sever in a stretcher. All the while, she caught flashes of Kara’s lifeless stare, her crumpled doll limbs. The splatter of red on the wall.

As they wheeled him out, she tried to follow but Terrell stopped her, said there wasn’t enough room on the helicopter.

“But—” she felt her throat constrict, “he... he doesn’t know.” What do you want more than anything in this life? “I need to tell him...”

“He knows, Ivy.” Terrell squeezed her shoulder with a blood-stained hand. “We all know.”

At that, he glanced at Jason, who looked up at them, lost.

“Cops are coming,” Terrell told her. “Don’t let him talk, we called you a lawyer. You need anything, you call Vik. You hear?”

Numbly, she nodded.

Left alone with a dead body and her broken husband, she leaned against the wall, and hugged herself.

He sniffled.

She peered at him. “Are you all ri?—”

“Don’t talk to me,” Jason said, so she didn’t say another word.

Sever’s lawyer came before the police did. Jason refused the help at first, but the power of persuasion, and his exhaustion, won out.

They were at the police station all day. Vikram came with the news that Sever was still in surgery, that he probably would be for several more hours.

Ivy burst into tears, and Vik held her. He assured her that Sever had the best care possible, had his own blood stored for transfusions?—

“He’s alive,” she said, shaking her head. “I was so afraid...” She wiped her wet face. “I want to be there when he wakes up.”

“I’ll see to it that you are,” Vikram said, but then she caught a flicker of doubt in his eyes; one that told her he wasn’t altogether convinced he would wake up.

Ivy had lost enough people in her life to take that flicker seriously. As much as she wanted to hope for the best, she had to brace herself for the worst.

She called Amy, asked if she and Chris could take the dog for a few days. She nearly broke down again when Amy asked if everything was okay.

Nothing was okay. It seemed like nothing would ever be okay again.

They weren’t free to go until after dark. He didn’t look at her, just pushed past her to get outside, where they were mobbed by reporters. Who shot your father? What happened in that hotel room? Is this your wife? Are you Ivy Tyler? Did you have an affair with Sever Mark?

Disoriented by the chaos and bright lights, they found each other’s fingers and, hands joined, made their way to the car Vikram had arranged to wait for them.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

Where else could they go but home? As much as she wanted to be at the hospital, Vikram made her promise to wait until Sever was stable, and Jason... he had no one right now. Ivy gave the driver their address.

When they opened the door to the loft, the reality that it wasn’t her home anymore became painfully clear. Without Huey, it was cold and unwelcoming. There was nothing left for her. Nothing but the painting.

“I’m gonna shower, if that’s okay with you.” She flipped on the hallway light, shrugged off her coat. The blood on her shirt had turned brown.

“You really met my mom?”

She turned to Jason. He looked even more adrift than she felt. “Yeah.”

“Is she...” He put his hands in his pockets. “What’s wrong with her?”

With a sigh, Ivy gauged the Scotch bottle he’d left on the hallway table. Just enough for two.

He lowered his eyes to the floor.

“Sit down,” she told him. She changed her shirt, went to the kitchen to pour them each a glass, sat down beside him, and told him everything she knew.

They fell asleep on opposite ends of the couch; Jason sprawled across it, Ivy curled against the armrest, phone at her chest. She kept waking up to check it. Finally, it chimed.

She read it, and looked at Jason. His shoes were still on. She eased them off, covered him in a blanket, tried to smooth his furrowed brow, and said, “I have to go see your father now.”

On her phone, the message read:

Condition stable. T is waiting in your parking garage.

They were flamenco dancing on a giant chessboard, to a strange, twisted version of Let’s Face The Music And Dance .

He pulled her close, and they began to tango. “Gonna tell me the answer?”

She smiled. “I thought you already knew.”

“Well, yeah. It’s what I've been trying to show you all along.” They spun. “I wanna hear it from you.”

He dipped her. She laughed.

“Well?”

“I forget the question.”

Sever pressed his cheek to hers. “What do you want more than anything?—”

“Sever,” Terrell said. “You’re awake.”

Ivy opened her eyes. The hospital room. Terrell, Vikram, knitting needles in hand... staring at the bed.

Sever was awake?

Sever was awake!

No excitement , the doctor had stressed, giving her an especially pointed look.

Forcing her demeanor to a quiet calm, Ivy pursed her lips and said, “Hey.”