Ties That Bind Us

by Nicole Knight

  “Fine. But if this night turns south, I’m blaming it on you.” I forged through the swarms of people until I finally reached the bar. I was going to need a strong drink to make it through this disaster of a party. At one point in my life, I’d thrived on this kind of environment. The booze and the partying and God only knew what else was going on below deck. A few months ago, I would have been all over it. Now, all it did was make me feel uncomfortable.

  I was happy to see a familiar face working behind the bar. Rick had bartended several of my dad’s parties and was a really nice guy. He’d fallen in somewhere between boyfriends, and lasted two dates. Luckily, the feeling was mutual, and we both agreed we were better as friends.

  “Ava! Good to see you! What can I get for you?” Rick smiled, filling a few cups in front of him with alcohol. He worked so quickly it was mesmerizing.

  “How about two whiskey gingers?” I smiled as I slipped a fifty-dollar bill toward him.

  “You can tip me later if you want.” He smirked, sliding it back to me and getting to work on our drinks.

  “In your dreams, bar boy.” I laughed, teasing him. He wasn’t being serious either. There hadn’t been anything between us for years now.

  He put his hand over his heart, pretending to be hurt, and turned his back for a few minutes. When he returned, he handed me the drinks. “Have fun tonight. I heard it’s going to be quite the shindig. You here with Max and Bella?”

  “Just Bells.” I smiled. “Max is out of town, and she felt the need to make an appearance.”

  “Bring her around before you leave!” He smiled before taking an order from someone else. “See you later, Ava!”

  “Bye, Rick!” I gathered the drinks in my hands and started to turn around. I wasn’t looking, and as I turned, I fell right into something, or rather, someone.

  “Oh my gosh! I am so—” I looked up at the man I had run into and quite possibly spilled my drinks on. When my eyes met his, my heart nearly leapt into my throat.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  It was him. Him, him.

  He looked shocked to see me at first, but it didn’t take long for a huge grin to spread across his face.

  “You know, you’re a hard person to track down. Ava, is it?” I could already feel my body betraying me in response to him. If it was possible, he looked even more incredible than when we first met. The stubble on his chin was a little longer and his hair slightly disheveled.

  “Yes, oh, my name is Ava,” I stuttered, darting my eyes away. A deep blush washed over my cheeks. Why did I suddenly forget how to speak in his presence?

  “And here all this time I was looking for a woman named Juliette,” he teased, piquing my interest. He had been looking for me?

  “Right.” I let out a sharp laugh, loosening up slightly. “Like your name is Romeo.”

  “It’s Nick, actually.” He dragged his thumb over his upper lip seductively. “I’ve been trying to find you since you snuck out of my hotel room a few weeks ago.”

  “Sorry about that.” I blushed feverishly.

  “Why don’t you make it up to me and let me take you to dinner?” he said, brushing his hand against my shoulder, moving me out of the way for someone to get to the bar. Even the small gesture sent shivers through my body as I remembered how he had handled me that night.

  “Nick, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Second dates aren’t really my thing,” I tried to explain without sounding to crazy. I barely knew this guy, and with any luck this would be the last time I saw him. He clearly had a hold on me, and I couldn’t afford to get involved with a guy like that. We both liked to be in control too much, and it wouldn’t end well.

  “But fucking strangers in hotel rooms is?”

  “Would you keep your voice down?” I hissed. “Didn’t we agree on a one and done thing anyway? Wouldn’t dinner be breaking one of your rules?”

  He got an amused expression on his face and crossed his arms.

  “Ava, I’m used to getting what I want, and I won’t stop until I do.” His voice was low and guttural as he spoke, sending fire through my veins. “I haven’t stopped thinking about how your legs felt wrapped around my waist or the way your sweet voice screamed my name, even if it was a fake one, into the morning. Fuck the rules.”

  I was rendered nearly speechless, and searched desperately for the right words. “Nick, I—” I started to say right at the moment a drunk guy bumped into him from behind. Nick whirled around with an angry expression on his face, as if this guy had squashed whatever moment we had going on.

  “Hey, man . . .”

  This was my chance. I had to leave right now or I would have no hope of getting away from him. The more time I spent standing here, the less likely I was to walk away. He was absolutely gorgeous, and seeing him in person again catapulted me right back to that hotel room. I couldn’t take any chances, though, especially with a man like Nick.

  He was dangerous and domineering; everything I didn’t need right now. Unless, of course, I wanted to wind up married to some old sleazebag as part of one of my father’s business deals. Taking my opportunity, I ducked away and tried to find Bella as fast as I could.

  “Bella, we’ve got to get out of here!” I practically threw our drinks down on the table and grabbed my jacket from the seat next to her.

  “What? We just got here, what’s going on?” she asked, confused.

  “I’ll explain everything later. We just have to go. Now,” I spat, tugging at her arm and pulling her toward the dock.

  She looked at me suspiciously but started to stand up. “Ava, I don’t know what it—”

  I didn’t even give her a chance to finish. He’d start looking for me soon and if he found me, I wasn’t sure I would have the strength to deny him again.

  Bella resisted at first, but when we were both off the yacht and on the dock, she took her shoes off and ran alongside me.

  “Would you slow down?” She was breathing heavily.

  “Sorry. I just needed to get away from there,” I said, desperately trying to catch my breath as well.

  “What happened?”

  “I ran into someone at the bar.”

  “And you couldn’t just talk to him like a normal human?”

  “It wasn’t just a normal human, Bells. It was him. The guy I told you about from the hotel.”

  Bella looked at me wide eyed as she processed all of this. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded quickly, pulling out my phone to call an Uber as fast as I could.

  “You mean to tell me you just ripped me away from that party because the guy you haven’t stopped thinking about the last month was there?” Now she was angry.

  “It’s not that . . .”

  “Ava! We just ran away from the one guy who has held your interest for more than a week in years and you want to tell me it’s not a big deal?” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Unbelievable.”

  She wouldn’t understand. I knew she wouldn’t. She wasn’t in the position I was in; she never had been. I was the one who was always messing up, especially after Andrew died. I couldn’t keep letting my parents down, and I had to get myself together this time.

  That meant staying far away from Nick whatever his last name was.

  Chapter 5

  Ava

  “You two are home early.” Vince chuckled from the bar stool as Bella and I entered the kitchen. He was eating a bowl of cereal even thought it was nearly eleven o’clock. I’d never understand why he still insisted on coming over after a shift at the warehouse instead of going to his own house. He had his own home and family, yet he was still always here.

  “Not by choice,” Bella grumbled, plopping onto the stool next to him and slipping her high heels off, letting them clamor to the floor. She was still mad at me, but had started to come around on our ride home. If she had had her way, we would have marched right back into that party, I would have found Nick, a
nd all would have been right in the world. That was her world, though. She believed in destiny and soul mates and all of those romantic ideals they tell you about as a little girl. Those things didn’t exist in my world, just like the possibility of anything more happening with Nick didn’t exist. It was nice to finally put a name to his face, though.

  “Anything interesting happen at the party? It was at Kyle’s, right?” Vince asked, his voice barely audible over his incessant crunching.

  “It was on the boat, and only if you call Ava running away from an old date and making us leave early interesting,” Bella retorted, grabbing the spoon from his hand and taking a bite for herself.

  “Sounds like a typical Saturday night for you.” He smirked.

  “Don’t you have your own family to go bother?” I snapped, throwing the fridge open. I wasn’t hungry but I needed to hide the blush on my cheeks behind something. My mood was worsening by the minute.

  “Easy, Avs. I’m just teasing.” Vince came up behind me and kissed the top of my head.

  “Someone is a little bit sour that she actually has feelings for this guy, despite all of her best efforts not to.” Bella smirked, happy to throw me under the bus for ruining her night.

  “Whoa, really?” Vince stopped in his tracks and turned to look at me.

  “No.” I slammed the fridge closed. “I do not have feelings for him. I don’t even know him.” I tried to sound convincing but by the looks on their faces, neither were convinced.

  “I’m confused, if you actually like this dude, why did you run?” Vince paused. “Not that I’m opposed to my baby sister running from boys. In fact, I’d much prefer that. Forget I said anything.”

  “She ran because that’s what she does. She runs from anything that even remotely resembles getting attached to anyone,” Bella sniped. She was being uncharacteristically hostile tonight.

  “Would you shut up?” I glared at her, wishing that we could just be done with this conversation. I wasn’t sure why my love life had suddenly become a group discussion.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You think you might actually like this guy, and that scares the shit out of you. That’s why you snuck out of his hotel room, why you ran from him tonight. You’re scared of what that might mean.” She had no idea how right she was.

  “Back up,” Vince barked, his face twisting in confusion. “Hotel? Why the fuck were you in his hotel room when you just said you didn’t even know him?”

  “Bella!” I hissed, covering my face with my hands. This was a nightmare.

  “What in the world is going on down here?” My mother chastised us, rushing into the kitchen in her robe. “I can hear your childish bickering all the way upstairs.”

  “Sorry, Mom. We didn’t mean to wake you,” Bella said. “We’ll keep it down.”

  “What are you even doing here, Vincent?” She narrowed her eyes at my brother.

  “Decompressing, Ma.” He gave her his most charming smile, immediately loosening up and dropping the protective big brother act in front of her, at least momentarily.

  “Go home and decompress with your pregnant wife.” She glared at him.

  “But she’s mean, Ma.” Vince chuckled. “Pregnancy hormones are no joke.”

  “It’s your own fault she’s in that situation. You get your butt home and take care of her. And you two”—she pointed at Bella and me—“stop all of this commotion. I’ll have you both scrubbing floors tomorrow if you wake your father up.”

  We all stood silent, like scolded children. She turned on her heels and was gone as quickly as she had come.

  “I’m going to bed,” I announced, completely flustered. I had had enough of these two and this discussion for the night. In fact, I’d had enough of it for a lifetime.

  “Don’t think this conversation is over, Ava.” Vince raised his eyebrows. “I want to know why you were in some guy’s hotel room.”

  “Go home, Vince.” Bella slapped his shoulder, unexpectedly coming to my defense and standing next to me. “Now isn’t the time to get into all of this.”

  Vince shook his head. “Do you know how bad I begged for brothers? So I wouldn’t have to deal with all this shit. And what do Mom and Dad do? Go and give me three little sisters.”

  “Vincent!” My mother hissed in a hushed tone from the hallway.

  “All right, all right.” He put his hands up in defeat. “Until tomorrow, ladies.” He threw a Cocoa Puff into the air and caught it in his mouth before disappearing out the French doors and jogging down the driveway.

  “You’d think the moron could at least pick up his own dishes,” Bella huffed, dumping them in the sink. I gathered up my purse and jacket and headed toward the stairs, but she caught my wrist. “Hey, Avs, I’m sorry. What you do with that guy is your business. I just want to see you happy. What if him showing up there was fate? What if he’s a good guy and you really could have a future together?”

  “I am happy. I don’t need to define my happiness by a man.” I sighed. Why was that so hard for everyone to understand? “I don’t want to get into all of this again, okay? It doesn’t matter how I feel about the guy, Mom and Dad would never be okay with it.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe you should give it a chance. What if they surprise you and they love the guy?” She followed me up the stairs and to our rooms.

  “And what if it seals the deal and Dad marries me off to some old guy he can make a deal with? Would you please just let it go?”

  “I will, but I want to say one thing first. You can’t live your life always jumping to the worst scenario. Not everyone is going to hurt you like Jimmy did. But I’ll let it go, only because I love you and I feel like I owe you one for outing you to Vince. Sorry about that.” She scrunched her nose up at me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Avs.”

  Bella bringing up Jimmy was like salt in a wound I thought long ago healed. Jimmy Bradford was my last serious boyfriend, and the main reason I was steering clear of getting too attached to anyone. When we first met, I thought he hung the moon and the stars, and by the time I saw him for what he was, he had his claws so far into me there was no way I could get out unscathed. When Andrew killed himself, I clung to Jimmy like he was the one thing keeping me afloat, and instead of helping me work through my grief, he threw cocaine at the problem, catapulting me into addiction. It was like the deeper I got, the more I blamed myself for what happened to Andrew, and Jimmy was always there with another hit to take my mind off of it. He enjoyed the hold he had on me, and we were stuck in a vicious cycle. He had been yet another person I had trusted who ended up letting me down. Once I stopped using, I knew Jimmy was the first thing that had to go, but that was easier said than done. His father had been a friend of my father’s for years, and I had to fight like hell to get myself to a place where I could break up with him for good. It was only after I’d done that that I found out he’d cheated on me during most of our relationship as well. Thankfully, the breakup had lasted, and that was a big reason why I wasn’t too keen on running right into a relationship of any kind right now. I was fragile, and who knew what would happen if someone I got attached to hurt me again?

  Bella was the only one who knew what really happened between Jimmy and me, and honestly, she was right. I had it in my head that everyone was going to hurt me the way he had, and even if it wasn’t true, I wasn’t really willing to risk it. It was just easier to keep my distance and not even chance going down that road again. I knew myself, and a tough breakup could be a lethal trigger.

  For the most part, the rest of the weekend was uneventful. I successfully avoided Vince’s judging eye for the majority of family dinner on Sunday, and spent the rest of the day working on homework.

  I had my ethics and law class bright and early Monday morning. It was an awful way to start the week, especially since there would be no ethics in the law I was going to practice. Like everything with my father
, sending me to law school was a personal gain for him. It was always nice to have someone around who knew the law and could help you find all the loopholes to make your business seem legitimate. In a desperate attempt to make him proud, I decided to be that person, and to my surprise, he went for it. Most of the time he kept the women in my family far away from anything business related, so this was a huge step.

  The lecture dragged on for about two hours before the professor finally let us out. I needed another cup of coffee like I needed a hole in my brain, but I made my way over to the coffee shop in the student center and scanned the menu. The fresh-baked croissants caught my eye, but I was meeting Bella for lunch in a little while, so I ordered my usual vanilla latte and worked my way over to the pickup counter.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  I froze at the sound of that voice behind me. It couldn’t be. Why the hell did this keep happening?

  I turned around and confirmed my fears. Standing in front of me in a tight-fitting blue suit was Nick—complete with his goofy, crooked smile and seductive eyes that held my gaze in a vice. Something about him in that suit stirred unimaginable things inside of me. Was it just me or was he more attractive with his unshaved grin and tousled hair? My heart fluttered instinctively, as if I had no control of myself when I was around him. He caught me off guard again, slowly chipping away at the wall I was desperately trying to build. This had to stop.

  “I’m beginning to think you’re stalking me,” I teased, grabbing my latte off the counter.

  “Not stalking, just keeping my word.” He followed me over to an empty table. He was already pulling another chair over so he could join me.

  “Please, sit down,” I said sarcastically. He was relentless. “What word exactly are you keeping?”

  “That I’m not going to stop until you agree to go out with me,” he clarified, sipping his coffee. He had one leg draped casually over the other, resting his ankle on his knee and making himself right at home.