Chapter 66 Ch. 39.1
“Oh?” Ivanna said, a smile forming on her face as she lifted her brows. Dylan was waiting by her car, with flowers and a box of cookies.
“Hey love,” he said with a small grin as he saw her approaching. His heart melted a bit and did a few jumps. “I knew you’d have had a stressful day at work today. So I wanted to make your day better.”
And he had. Seeing him made her heart soften in a way she couldn’t explain. She wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve this kind of treatment from Dylan, but the thought filled her chest with warmth.
“Trust me, you’ve made my day go from zero to a hundred,” she said, reaching for the flowers.
“Did you drive here?” she asked as she looked around, noticing that his car wasn’t anywhere in the lot.
“No. Took an Uber,” he said, handing her the box of cookies. “Figured I’d drive your car to your house so we don’t have to drive separately.”
She laughed softly and unlocked the car. Dylan opened the door for her, placing the flowers gently on the seat before she slid in. He walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the car.
The ride was quiet for a while. The hum of the engine and the faint noise of traffic filled the silence between them. Then Dylan glanced at her, his fingers tapping the steering wheel.
“You asked me about a keyholder earlier,” he said. “Did you lock yourself out of the house or something?”
“No, no,” Ivanna said quickly, shaking her head. She shifted in her seat, folding her hands in her lap. “It wasn’t about the house. I just… forgot something important in my article.”
He gave her a sideways look. “What was it?”
“It’s complicated,” she said, biting her lip before she spoke again. “I think Ethan is linked to the Riverbend situation. When I was at the inn, I found his keyholder. Or at least I thought I did. If I could find it again, then I could prove he was there. And with what the police said about the hickey being the only mark…”
Her words trailed off and she stared out the window, her mind spinning.
“Oh,” Dylan said softly. He drummed his fingers once on the steering wheel. “So what are you going to do now? Since you can’t find the keyholder to prove your theory?”
“Well,” she said, exhaling, “I’ll have to find other ways. Maybe go back to Riverbend, maybe talk to more people. I don’t know yet. But I can’t let it go. It’s too strange.”
Dylan kept his eyes on the road, his jaw tightening for a moment. “You will forget everything about this,” he said quietly. His voice had a calm weight to it, steady, almost too steady.
Her lips parted slightly, confusion flickering across her face, but then her body relaxed against the seat. Her gaze softened as though her thoughts had been pulled away.
He let out a sigh, his hand gripping the wheel tighter. Guilt pressed at him, a dull ache in his chest. He hated doing this to her, hated controlling her mind this way, but what choice did he have? If she kept digging into Ethan, if she kept following every thread, she would stumble into something she wasn’t supposed to know.
He glanced at her, watching her stare blankly out the window, and he wondered when the right time would be to tell her the truth. He wondered how she had even remembered what she wasn’t meant to remember. He had compelled her before, made her forget about Ethan, about Riverbend, about the little details that could grow into dangerous truths. So how had she pieced it back together?
Had she written it down somewhere in her office? Had she tucked notes into her files, words that her mind would circle back to even after he pushed them away?
He ran a hand over his face, wishing he could shake the thought out of his head.
Beside him, Ivanna blinked and let out a small laugh, as though nothing had happened. “Anyway,” she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, “did you eat today? You look like you skipped lunch.”
Dylan chuckled, though it came out a little stiff. “Maybe I did. But I saved room for cookies, so I’d say I made the right choice.”
She smiled and leaned back in her seat. “Good thing I didn’t eat all day either. We’ll share.”
He nodded, though his thoughts were far away. He forced himself to smile at her, to keep the ease between them alive. “Sharing is what couples do, right?”
“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes playfully.
The conversation drifted after that. They talked about small things—how her boss kept piling work on her, how Dylan’s coworker kept showing up late and pretending to be sick, how the weather had been too hot for this time of year. Ivanna laughed at his complaints, teasing him for being dramatic about the heat, and he teased her back about how she always forgot her umbrella no matter how many times he reminded her.
But while his mouth moved and his words flowed, Dylan’s mind kept circling back to the same thought. She had remembered. Somehow, she had remembered what he made her forget. And if she could do it once, she could do it again.