Chapter 8

The fire in the lounge had burned down to a skeletal glow. On the velvet ottoman, the diary—that leather-bound catalyst of their shared ruin—sat abandoned in the shadows, no longer a weapon, nor a bridge. It was simply a book, its ink dry and its power spent, because the woman who’d written it was finally standing in the light.

Ivy looked at Aramis, really looked at him, stripped of the golden aura the school projected onto him and the dark, brooding hero archetype she had constructed in her mind. In the dimness of the lounge, he didn’t look like a king or a predator. He looked like a boy who’d been holding his breath for eighteen years, waiting for someone to tell him he could finally exhale.

“Show me,” Ivy said. Her voice didn’t tremble; the heat of the library desk had cauterized the stammer that had defined her social existence at St. Jude’s.

Aramis didn’t hesitate; he took her hand, his fingers lacing through hers. He led her out of the lounge and into the darkened arteries of the estate.

The house seemed different now. Before, the shadows had seemed like hiding spots for observers, for the judgmental eyes of a staff that didn’t exist or a father who loomed even in his absence. Now, the darkness was like an insulator, wrapping around them and muffling the rest of the world.

They ascended the grand staircase, past the portraits of stern Walcot ancestors. Ivy didn’t shrink or hunch her shoulders; she let the silk of her dress whisper against the banister, a quiet declaration of her presence.

He guided her to a set of heavy mahogany double doors at the end of the long, silent gallery, then pushed them open, and the breath caught in Ivy’s throat.

Aramis’s suite was a cavern of silver and charcoal. Moonlight poured in through floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked like lace against the winter sky. The bed was a sprawling island of dark wood and charcoal-gray silk sheets. The room smelled of Aramis—sandalwood and the faint sharpness of the cold air outside.

Midnight had passed, signaling that February 14th had arrived in the dark. It was now Valentine’s Day, and the Wallflower was dead. The girl who hid in the alcoves, who lived her life vicariously through the safety of paper—she had ceased to exist the moment the clock finished its chime. She was no longer observing the narrative; she was the ink.

Aramis walked toward the bedside table, his hand drifting automatically toward the drawer, perhaps looking for a light or a way to ground the moment in habit.

Ivy moved first; she crossed the room, the silk of the midnight-blue dress swishing against her legs. She reached out and placed her palm flat against the center of his chest. His heart was a frantic, trapped thing, hammering against his ribs with a violence that matched her own.

“No,” she said softly, seeing his gaze flicker toward the drawer where he might have kept the ‘instructions’ of her diary. “Leave it.”

Aramis looked down at her, his blue eyes adjusted to the shadows, searching her face for a hint of the character he had met in the biology lab.

“You wrote the scene, Ivy. I want to give you exactly what you dreamed of.”

“But I don’t want the scene. I wrote that book because I didn’t think I could ever have the man, so I invented a version of us because the reality looked like a locked door. But you’re real. And I’m real.” She tilted her head back, her hair spilling over her shoulders. “Can we just be naked now?”