was nothing. Or I could just walk away; remove myself entirely from this situation. Which is what I wanted to do…. but what was exactly not happening.
“What does the word ‘blackheart’ mean?” he changed his tactic, his voice softly begged with me to open up. He reached out his hand to me, stretching it across the void between us.
I melted, I couldn’t help it. Nobody had ever cared enough to interrogate me like this, to get to the bottom of something I could possibly be feeling. “What do you think it means?” I tested a bit desperately.
“Because of all the guys?” he guessed accurately.
“How would you know?” I countered, trying to put him on the defensive, still not ready to make myself so vulnerable. Although, I was fighting a losing battle. If Ryder kept trying, kept putting all of him into these questions like this, like he wanted to know every single intimate detail about me, I was bound to give in. I felt raw from his investigation, completely rubbed down to the bone. Exposed.
“People talk, Ivy. Especially about you. All I have to do is listen,” he explained gently. I winced at the compassion in his tone, at the pleading in his eyes for me to trust him. “Is that about Sam? Do you think you have a black heart because of Sam?”
I physically shuddered at his interrogation. How dare he! How dare he bring up Sam and assume that’s where all my messed up issues came from. Sam was just the frosting on a screwed up, pathetic, life-ending cake. “Don’t talk about Sam. You don’t know anything about him,” I ground out through clenched teeth. I wrapped my arms around waist tightly, holding myself together, trying to protect everything hurt and broken inside…. trying to protect Sam. Or at least his memory.
“I know he was the one driving that night, Ivy. I know he was the one drinking, not you. I know you can’t blame yourself because he wrapped his car around a light post and sent himself to the hospital,” he paused to let his words settle in. My chin started quivering before I registered that I was on the verge of crying and I looked up desperately at him, silently begging him to stop. “You do not have a black heart because some seventeen year old kid was stupid enough to drive intoxicated and recklessly ruin his life.”
There was a full minute of silence between us as I tried to digest those words…. listen to them…. really hear them. But I already knew the truth. Knew it. There was no lying to myself. I had been over this same argument a million and thirteen times before, always trying to convince myself of the same thing.
“I know all that,” I said so softly Ryder took a step forward to hear me better. “But here I am today. Walking. Going to school. Going to more parties. With Chase. And there will be more boys. After Chase. And after the guy after that. And I get to graduate high school. And live my life. And I won’t look back at him, not ever. Not Sam, not Chase, not the dozen guys before them, or after them. I have to get out of here…. I have to.” I paused for breath, to get something into my lungs, anything to keep from passing out. And then I announced with a tiny gesture toward myself, “Blackheart.”
“Ivy, that-“
Whatever Ryder was going to say was cut off abruptly when Chase, Phoenix and Kenna walked into the room noisily. They called out our names and were laughing about something that happened downstairs.
Ryder held my gaze though, not turning, not even acknowledging them. Quietly, so only I would hear he said, “That’s only true if you believe it, Ivy.”
I nodded like his words had some deep impact on me, but the truth was I did believe it. All of it. Because it was true. His psychobabble was completely lost on me. But I didn’t want to invite any more conversation with Ryder about it, so I turned my expression thoughtfully sad and just nodded.
Ryder let out a frustrated sigh, apparently my act wasn’t Oscar worthy by a long shot.
“Ryder-“
He cut me off, turning his back on me. “I’m not going to tell anyone, Ivy.”
He was disappointed in me.
But at least he knew the truth. At least his eyes were completely opened to the vapid, black hole of emotional trauma that I really was. Still the strong