HATE ME SLOWER

Chapter Seven: Crossing Lines

IVY

I spend three days replaying that kiss in my head like a song stuck on repeat.

It's embarrassing, honestly, how thoroughly Ryan Blackwood has rearranged my entire nervous system with a single press of his mouth against mine. I find myself smiling at nothing in the middle of meetings, forgetting entire sentences mid-conversation, catching myself staring at my phone willing it to light up with his name.

"You're insufferable right now," Olive informs me over coffee, watching me check my phone for the fourth time in ten minutes. "Genuinely unbearable. I liked you better when you were plotting his demise."

"I was never plotting his demise."

"You once suggested, and I quote, 'accidentally' leaving him stranded at a gas station two hours outside the city."

"That was one time. And he deserved it."

"My point stands." She steals a sip of my latte, grimacing at the amount of sugar I've put in it. "So. The kiss. Tell me everything, and don't you dare leave out details."

I feel heat crawl up my neck just thinking about it. "There's nothing to tell."

"Your face says otherwise."

Before I can respond, my phone buzzes. Ryan.

Ryan: Come over tonight. I want to cook for you.

I stare at the message, something warm unfurling in my chest.

Ryan: Unless that's too domestic too soon. In which case, disregard, and we can go back to formal dinners with our families monitoring our every word.

I laugh out loud, earning a curious look from Olive.

Ivy: I'll be there at seven.

RYAN

I burn the first attempt at the sauce, forget to preheat the oven, and nearly set off the smoke alarm trying to sear the salmon, and somehow, none of it matters, because Ivy Monroe is standing in my kitchen laughing at my complete inability to cook, wearing one of my old university sweatshirts she found draped over a chair and claimed without asking, and I have never in my life felt more content.

"You could just let me help," she offers, watching me battle with the pan for the third time.

"Absolutely not. I said I'd cook for you, and I intend to follow through, even if it kills us both."

"Very noble. Also possibly true, given the state of that salmon."

I shoot her a look, and she grins back, unrepentant, perched on my kitchen counter with a glass of wine, looking more at home in my penthouse than anyone else ever has.

It should terrify me, how quickly this has become natural. Three weeks ago, she barely spoke to me without an edge in her voice. Now she's teasing me about my cooking in my own kitchen like she belongs here, and the worst part is I think she does.

"Okay," I admit finally, setting down the spatula. "Maybe a little help."

"Finally." She hops off the counter, rolling up her sleeves, and together her directing, me mostly following orders we manage to salvage dinner into something actually edible.

We eat at the kitchen island instead of the formal dining table, close enough that our knees brush, conversation flowing easy and unguarded in a way I've never experienced with anyone else. She tells me about her childhood fear of the garden statues at the estate. I tell her about the summer I broke my arm trying to impress Noah by climbing the oak tree in his backyard. She laughs really laughs, head thrown back, the sound doing something dangerous to my chest.

"I like this," she says eventually, when the plates are empty and the wine is half-gone. "Just talking. No audience, no expectations."

"Me too." I reach across the island, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, lingering there longer than necessary. "Ivy, can I tell you something?"

"Always."

"I think I've loved you for a very long time. Longer than I've probably admitted to myself."

She goes still, eyes widening slightly, and for one terrifying moment I think I've misjudged everything moved too fast, said too much too soon.

Then she's moving toward me, closing the distance between the stools we're sitting on, her hands finding the front of my shirt.

"I think I'm starting to feel the same way," she whispers, "even though I spent eleven years telling myself I never would."

The kiss this time is different from the one outside the restaurant slower, deeper, charged with something that feels less like discovery and more like inevitability. Her fingers slide into my hair, and I pull her closer, until she's standing between my knees, the heat of her body pressed against mine sending every careful, disciplined thought in my head scattering.

"Ryan," she breathes against my mouth, and my name on her lips, finally free of hatred, undoes something in me I didn't know could break.

IVY

I don't plan to stay the night.

But somewhere between the kitchen and the living room, between kisses that grow slower and more desperate, between his hands mapping careful, reverent patterns along my waist like he's memorizing something he's terrified of losing, the idea of leaving stops making any sense at all.

"Stay," he murmurs against my throat, voice rough, hands trembling slightly where they rest against my hips. "Please, Ivy. Stay tonight."

I pull back just enough to look at him really look at him, at the vulnerability written plainly across his face, the man who has spent eleven years guarding every piece of himself now laying it bare in front of me like an offering.

"I'm staying," I whisper, and watch something in his expression crack open with relief.

He leads me toward the bedroom slowly, deliberately, pausing at the doorway like he's giving me one last chance to change my mind. I don't take it. Instead, I close the distance myself, pressing my lips to his, and feel him exhale against my mouth like he's been holding his breath for eleven years.

What follows is slow and unhurried, nothing like the eleven years of careful distance between us his hands reverent, his voice low and rough with words I'll remember long after tonight, every touch a quiet confession of everything he's never let himself say out loud.

Later, tangled together in the dark, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek, his fingers tracing absent patterns along my spine, I think: I don't hate you, Ryan Blackwood. I don't think I ever truly could.

"Ivy," he murmurs into the quiet, voice thick with something that sounds dangerously like wonder.

"Hmm?"

"I'm glad my father forced this engagement." A soft, disbelieving laugh. "God help me, I never thought I'd say that sentence."

I laugh against his chest, pressing a kiss to his sternum. "Don't let him know that. He'll be insufferable."

"Too late. I already am."

I smile into the darkness, safe and warm in his arms, and for the first time since my mother's phone call shattered my entire world, the word "wedding" doesn't feel like a sentence.

It feels, terrifyingly and wonderfully, like a beginning.

To be continued in Chapter Eight...