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He was right.
The adrenaline had seeped from me, and now the pain in my face was my main focus. That was fine by me. Physical pain, I could deal with. It was all the emotional torment I was in right now that I couldn’t handle. I considered picking a fight with someone else—get them to finish the job—but I couldn’t muster the energy. Maybe I should just step outside the pub doors, onto the street, and then walk out in front of a bus or something. What a way to go. But knowing my luck, that wouldn’t take me out either, and I’d end up paralysed or some shit like that, trapped inside my own head to torture myself forevermore.
That wasn’t a risk worth taking.
The stupid thing was that I still nursed a tiny spark of hope inside me that somehow things would change and Ivy would come back to me. Some days, I thought that spark had completely died and all that was left was a black nothingness, but other days it flickered back to life.
When that hope went out completely, then it would be time to call it a day.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ivy
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IWAS HEARTBROKEN.Not just broken, shattered into a million pieces. I couldn’t even bring myself to get out of bed, never mind take a shower or brush my teeth. I knew my other family members moved around the house sometimes, but they might as well have been ghosts.
I didn’t care about my degree. I knew I could do my exams next year instead, but I didn’t want to. What was the fucking point? Everything was ruined now.
I missed Jayden and hated him in equal measures. The emotions warred inside me. How could I ever forgive him? I couldn’t. It was as simple as that. If I did, I would lose the rest of my family, too. My father and surviving brother would never forgive me, and I couldn’t blame them. It had only been my begging for Jayden’s life that had prevented them killing him already.
Someone had come into my bedroom and was now moving around, picking things up and opening the curtains.
“Come on, Ivy,” Mara said. “It’s been a month now. You have to get up.”
A month. It couldn’t have been a month already, surely? A couple of weeks I could accept, but not a month.
I suddenly thought of something.
When had I last had my period?
Oh, fuck.
How could we be so fucking irresponsible?
Did I feel any differently? I pressed my fingers to my breasts, probing carefully. They felt a little swollen and tender but no more so than they normally did before I got my period. There was a low ache in my belly, too, but again, that was normal. I wasn’t nauseous or anything like that. Maybe my period was just late. It would be understandable, considering all the stress I’d been under and dealing with my grief.
