“Get home, Ava. These childish antics have gone on long enough. You are twenty-two years old. It’s time you started acting like it.”
“Most twenty-two-year olds are still drinking in bars with their friends while getting their college degrees,” I said.
“Enough! Get home or I will come find you.”
My skin tingled at his threat. The last time my father had to retrieve me from somewhere, he made it a public spectacle. Chastised me in public and dragged me out of Cassie’s by my arm. I had fled to her house the first time my parents tried to marry me off. I ran to her house and stayed for the weekend, and when I refused to come home my father drove over, yanked me out of the house by my arm, and forbid me to leave the house for the rest of the month. If I wanted visitors, they came over, and the only place we were allowed was the sitting room.
But if he went to Cassie’s this time and found I wasn’t there, I knew I would suffer worse.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be home shortly.”
“It’s about time you started obeying. No husband of yours is going to want to chase behind you whenever you run because things get tough,” my father said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Understood.”
I hung up the phone and sighed. I had all my stuff in my car. What was keeping me from just going on to California? It was obvious my parents hadn’t looked for me enough to see that most of my stuff was missing from my closet, so what the hell did they care? My father was a control freak, and I knew he would stop at nothing to shove me into the mold he’d created for my life. And if I ran to California while he was in tracking mode, he would stop at nothing until I was back within his grasp.
What the hell was I thinking? That I could just run away and my family would forget about me? I was the only daughter. My father’s prized possession. It was my legacy to be the most graceful, most beautiful, and most appetizing woman on the planet. That was what people expected of Harold Lucas’ only daughter, and that was what my father was determined to give them.
I closed my eyes as Travis’s voice hit my ears.
“You know you don’t have to go back.”
I snickered and shook my head.
“And what would you know about that?” I asked.
“Do you love him?” he asked.
“Do I love some banker who’s twice my age and allergic to dust mites? Hardly,” I said.
“Then you shouldn’t go back.”
“It’s not that easy,” I said.
“Running away was that easy.”
“Until my father begins to track me down. He won’t stop until I’m home,” I said.
“It’s not your responsibility to marry that guy. Or to date, for that matter.”
“Tell that to my father,” I said, snickering.
“Okay. Hand me your phone.”
I turned around and looked at Travis leaning against the kitchen counter. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were stern against mine. He frowned underneath the thick beard that covered his face and his flannel shirt was riddled with oil. But he stood tall and strong. Proud and confident.
My ears warmed as my eyes raked up and down his body.
“It took a lot of guts to do what you did,” Travis said. “Packing all your stuff and running away. You don’t have the tools necessary to figure out what you’re doing, but you’re determined to do it anyway.”
“I most certainly am capable of creating a life for myself,” I said.
“That’s not what I said. You don’t have the tools to create your own business. I never said anything about a life of your own. That you can do. But you have to face your family head-on to do it.”
“Wonderful observation, Sherlock. Got anything else for me?” I asked.
“If you don’t want their life, don’t go back,” he said.
“Easier said than done.”
“And you’ve already done the hardest part. Just get in your car and keep going toward California. That was your goal, right?”
“You don’t understand my father. The last time he came and got me, he dragged me out of my friend’s house by my arm, publicly chastised me for her entire neighborhood to hear, then relegated me to the sitting room for the rest of the month. It’s an adult version of being grounded, for fuck’s sake,” I said.
“He only has the power over you that you give him,” he said.
“Thank you, Ghandi.”
I watched Travis shake his head as he turned back toward the sink. I sank down into the couch, closing my eyes so I could calm my heart. I had no other choice. Whatever choice I thought I had was ripped from me the moment my father called on the phone. In my mind, my plan worked if they didn’t exist.
But in my reality, my plan would never work. Because no matter where I ran, my father would always find me.
Six
Travis
I wasn’t going to stand there and act like I knew what she was going through, but it was bullshit. Her family sounded like something out of some old English textbook. Marrying her off for practical purposes? Not allowing her to live her life? Keeping her uneducated? It was practically primal, in this day and age, to treat someone like that. And she had spunk. A spark that would take her far if her family simply allowed her to unleash it. Ava could turn that fucking spark into a forest fire, scorching everything in her path in order to create room for new life. All she needed was someone to give her the tools to work with. Someone to believe in her and root her on in her dreams.
But instead, her family was hellbent on holding her back.
I didn’t know why it made me sick to watch her get off the couch, but it did. She grabbed a plastic bag that had her clothes from yesterday in it and made her way for the door. I threw my rag in the kitchen sink as I watched her open the door, then she turned toward me with her hazel eyes and nodded her head.
“Thanks for saving me,” she said. “I would’ve died in that car had it not been for you.”
“Stay out of thunderstorms,” I said. “And try to keep your head above water.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” she said with a snicker.
I knew my advice was pathetic and filled with nothing but hot air. Try to keep her head above water? Was that really the best I could do? My family had leaned on me for every major business decision over the last five fucking years, and all I could give this young woman was, “keep floating along?”
“If you want, you could stay here.”
Ava stopped in her tracks and whipped her head over toward me.
“What?” she asked.
“If you don’t want to go back, you could stay here,” I said.
“And… do what?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Hadn’t gotten that far, I guess.”
Ava crinkled her nose in confusion, and I couldn’t blame her. I was confused as to why I brought it up in the first damn place. Stay here? What, just… in the fucking guest bedroom? What the hell was she going to do here? Twiddle her thumbs and take online courses or some shit? I barely knew this girl. For all I knew, she was a lying sack of shit like the rest of the women that had come in and out of my life. For all I knew, this was a ploy to get underneath my skin.
I had to remind myself of who she was. Who her father was and what he had tried to do to our family.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Ava said.
“Suit yourself,” I said.
She left the cabin and I watched as she got into her car. I could tell she was scared. Worried, even. Her confidence drained from her the moment she shut her car door. Like she didn’t think anyone could see her. It was amazing people thought they were hidden once they got behind the metal encasing of their cars. People picked their noses and yelled at their children. Sang terribly along with music and unleashed their road rage. It was like they suddenly lost the ability to comprehend exactly what a window did.
And Ava was no different.
I watched the fire in her beautiful hazel eyes slowly drain down her body. H
er confident form collapsed as her forehead rested against her steering wheel. It was like just hearing her father’s voice had collapsed her somehow. Pulled some imaginary rug out from underneath her and brought her crashing back into a reality she hated. I watched her take a few deep breaths as her dark brown hair fell around her face.
She really was a beautiful woman, if someone could get past the helplessness she tried to ignore in herself.
I still wasn’t sure why she was heading home instead of California. If that was really her goal, then she would continue on with her journey. Many people had come before her and struggled through harsher times to get what they wanted. It was hard to imagine that her father had that much control over her life. Maybe he governed her by fear or maybe she was just some spoiled rich kid who blew everything out of proportion. I hardly knew the girl, so who the hell was I to judge her family dynamics just from what she’d told me?
I already had an opinion of her father as a businessman, but I’d never seen him in action as a parental figure. Maybe she made a habit of this kind of thing. She admitted that this wasn’t the first time she had run from her parents, so maybe this anger her father displayed was just him fed up with her antics. Maybe they had tried to make her go to college and she didn’t want to, so marrying her off was their last effort to try and give her some semblance of a life outside of the home.
There were several scenarios that could explain what Ava was really going through. After all, if I heard her conversation correctly, she was only twenty-two. And I remembered what it was like to be that young in my twenties. It felt like the entire world was against me. I had graduated college with a business degree to help the family and I thought I knew everything. I was in love with the woman I thought I would to spend the rest of my life with and I thought nothing could touch me. I thought everyone with an opinion that wasn’t mine wanted to see me fail, and I stopped at nothing to make sure people knew I wasn’t going to take their shit.
Maybe that was what Ava was doing with running away.
Maybe that was her way of exerting some sort of control over her life.
Whatever the case was, Ava needed to face it. On the slim chance that she was emotionally intelligent and hyper-aware twenty-two-year-old, she needed to admit her own faults. She needed to admit that she had more control than she did. She also needed to come to terms with the fact that her parents only had control over her because she allowed them to. In her mind’s eye, she had no other choice. She could either go home and deal with the abuse of her family, or she could run until they beckoned for her.
And as long as she went running back to them, they would continue to beckon for her.
I watched the young woman as she cranked up her car. Her dimly-lit eyes lifted toward her rearview mirror, then she pulled away from the cabin. I went and stood on the porch, watching her car recede down the driveway. With every inch she drove, I felt the cabin grow lonelier. I felt a light fade away from the inside of my home that hadn’t been there in a very long time. How the fuck was that possible? How could a young woman with her kind of disposition bring that type of warmth into a place?
I shrugged off the notion as I grabbed my coat and headed into the woods.
I walked whenever I needed to get my mind off things and having Ava in my cabin kicked up painful memories. Just seeing a woman lying by a fire drew up within me a carnal desire I had left sedated for years. Her body had been sprawled out underneath those covers trying to get warm while her hair called out to my fingertips. The soft and supple curves the blankets dipped into on her body caused my mind to swirl the other night. It had been years since I’d felt the velvety soft skin of a woman against my body. Warming my aching muscles and drenching my dry bones with her succulent fluids.
Just having her musky scent fill up my living room all night brought back swirling memories. Memories of when I was happy and ignorant. Memories of whisking myself away with the woman I loved. The ground was squishing beneath my feet, drenched from the rainstorm and unable to keep its own composure.
Lana loved the rain. Thunderstorms and lightning and torrential downpours. The louder it was, the more peaceful it was to her. It was like she fed off the drama of it all, and that should’ve been my first cue.
My first cue that she would’ve left me where I stood.
I walked through the woods and took in the scent of it all. The deeper I breathed, the more the scent changed. It morphed into lilac and lavender, the smell of Lana’s hair whenever she laid down next to me. I could still smell the tingling electricity that had battered the mountain top last night. I could smell the wet dirt underneath my boots morph into the smell of Lana’s skin. The smell that would encompass her when my tongue explored her body.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought she would’ve left me at the altar.
I clenched my fists as I thought about it. I stepped into the wild meadow a mile outside of my cabin and I paused. My body slowly burned with anger. I gave that woman everything. I took her to every place she could’ve ever dreamed and bought her every dress she could’ve ever wanted. I cherished her body every night and drew her from her dreams every morning with my cock between her legs. She sank her teeth into my heart and drew me into her gravitational pull.
Then she left me at the altar to starve without her soul.
Maybe that was why it was hard watching Ava leave. It had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with Lana. The love of my life left me standing at the altar, and I had walked outside just in time to watch her get into our limo and leave. I could still remember the trail of her veil as it got slammed in the car door as the limo driver took off. Taking her fuck-knows-where.
I hadn’t seen Lana since that day. Since she left the wedding, she had planned to go live another life elsewhere.
I never expected her to leave, and I never expected to be alone. As I stood on the edge of the meadow with my clenched fists and my aching jaw, I watched a family of deer step into the woods. A buck with a ten-point rack, a doe pregnant with children, and two baby fawns leaping alongside her. I thought about the children I could’ve had with Lana. The children I could’ve watched grow. I thought about all the family functions I did chance to attend that only served to remind me of what I didn’t have. A woman. A family. A purpose to live.
All I had was that fucking cabin. And for a moment, it was filled with a warmth I thought Lana had robbed me of the day she left.
I watched the family of deer eat their fill of the grass and flowers before I started my journey back to the cabin. Whatever I thought this walk was going to accomplish, it had failed. Instead of finding relief and solace in the nature that surrounded me, all I found was an emptiness I hadn’t yet come to terms with. An aching loneliness that fueled the anger pooling inside my chest.
It was good Ava was gone, because there was one thing Lana and her did have in common.
They were both flippant.
Flippant and temporary.
Seven
Ava
I drove through Kettle, Washington and back into Seattle territory. I had to use my GPS to get to the town limits, but once I was there I recognized where I was. My phone rang off the hook as I continued to drive, and all I could hope was that my father hadn’t tried to go to Cassie’s. The last thing I needed was to try and explain to him where I actually was and what I actually had been doing. The wrath I would incur from him would snuff out any chance I had of getting away.
The more I continued to drive, the more I thought about Travis. Why in the world did the name “Travis Benson” ring such a bell? Did my family know a Travis Benson? Had he been on the news somewhere? He didn’t look or sound familiar, so I knew I’d never met him before. But there was still something oddly familiar about him that I couldn't shake.
I couldn’t get him off my mind. The way his amber eyes were so serious even though he always seemed to be grinning underneath that beard. And his hair was beautiful. Just long enough for someone to
be able to tangle their fingers up within it. I lived in a world where men didn’t grow their hair out. They kept it trimmed and swept off to the side. Anything else was considered weak or unprofessional.
But I enjoyed the length of Travis’ hair. I enjoyed how long it was.
He had been scary at first, but he surprised me with the work he had done on the car. He struck me as a woodworker, not as someone who could fix machinery. I wondered what other hidden talents a man like him had. I daydreamed about him and those amber eyes as I made my way home. I had no idea why he was so stuck in my head. I had no idea why part of me wanted to turn around and go back to him. It wasn’t like we had sat and talked for hours and hours and had all these things in common. But I could still feel the way he cradled me in his arms.
The way he had taken care of me when I was so frozen I couldn’t speak.
The way his voice had been so worried before he knew I was aware of his presence.
I took in a shaky breath as I pulled into my family’s compound. I refused to call it a home, because it didn’t feel like that. The massive wrought iron gates parted, allowing my car to wind all the way up the hill. The driveway was lined with apple trees my brothers and I had eaten off of for years, filling the yard with a luxurious smell. It had always been my favorite smell, apples and cinnamon. My mother made the best fucking pies around. It was why my favorite seasons were fall and winter.
Because I could indulge in all the apple and cinnamon treats I wanted.
It was the only time I ever truly felt free. Whenever I would run around with my brothers outside, I felt like I was in control of my own life. They never told me what to do or how to behave. If anything, they had encouraged my rebellion against my father. They kept telling me that what I was doing was right and how my father treated me was wrong. They went along with his antics because they knew that was what they needed to do, but for men it was different. They had the promise of running father’s business someday. They had trust funds built for them and beautiful women lined up just waiting to be their brides. They got the promise of a future while all I got was the promise to be an accessory to someone’s future.
March Heat: A Firefighter Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 32