I slip off the table as fast as I can, the floor chilly on my bare feet, but before I can get behind the privacy screen, Able catches my arm and stops me.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asks.

“What?” I ask, just barely holding back my tears.

“Thank the doctor and Mr. Holton.”

“Thank them?” I wipe at my face, the first of the tears spilling, and I swear I can still feel that man’s touch on me, the other’s eyes.

“Yes, Ivy. Thank them for taking time out of their day for us.”

I turn around, and I look at them. I make myself do it. I want to remember their faces. I want to know who they are, and one day, I swear to myself, I will make them pay.

“Thank you,” I say through gritted teeth.

Abel releases me, and I disappear behind the privacy curtain and wonder if my husband-to-be has demanded this humiliation of me without even being present, what will he demand of me when I am his?

7

Ivy

Neither Abel nor I speak as he pulls off the driveway. I feel humiliated. Mortified. What just happened in that house is only now fully dawning on me, and all I can do is sit here in the passenger seat with my knees drawn up under my chin and my face turned out the window so he won’t see my tears.

“Take your boots off the seat.”

“Fuck you.”

He drops it. I’m surprised when he doesn’t retort or reach over and make me take my boots off his precious seat, but he doesn’t. Maybe on some level, he’s been impacted too?

I wipe my face with the sleeve of my oversized sweater, glad I wore it, glad to have the protection of it. It’s when we’re pulling into the parking lot of the hospital that I turn to study his face in profile, mouth tight, forehead creased.

His hate has aged him. Made him ugly.

“Why did you make me do that?”

“It was his request.”

“You could have said no.”

He pulls into the circular drive and stops before the sliding glass front doors, then turns to face me.

“It needed to happen. If you weren’t a virgin, or even if De La Rosa claimed you weren’t after the wedding night, we’d have no recourse. The entire family would be punished.”

“Do you have any human emotion in there, Abel? Anything at all resembling empathy?”

“Empathy is for the weak, Ivy.” He checks his watch like I’m holding him up. “If you want to see Dad, you’d better head in.”

I narrow my eyes. “You’re not coming to guard me? Make sure I don’t run away?”

Shaking his head, he shifts his gaze to the street, absently watching traffic.

“What is it? Are you upset by what you did?”