by Julie Kriss
There was thunderous silence in the office as all three of them stared at me. “Up to Ava?” Noah said.
Aidan’s tone was decidedly chill. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d come into this meeting with every intention of keeping what happened between Ava and me a secret, but these were my brothers in everything but blood, and I couldn’t lie to them. I couldn’t sit here and tell them to their faces that nothing had happened in the past week, that I was considering a job offer like any other job offer. My life was in fucking disarray, or it was about to be, and my Tower partners were the only guys I wanted to talk to about it.
Besides, it was time to man up. If I wanted Ava—and I did—then I had to own it.
I looked at Aidan. “Ava and I got involved while she was in Chicago,” I said.
His face showed not a flicker of expression, which I knew from experience was very, very bad. “What did you say?” he said.
“You’re involved with Ava?” Noah said.
“I am.” I glanced at the others. “I want to be. We were involved eleven years ago, and when we were together last week, we started again.”
There was a loud clatter as Aidan pushed his chair back and stood up. “What do you mean, eleven years ago? Say it, Dane. You slept with my sister?”
Lots of times. Oh, and I took her virginity, and she took mine. I didn’t say it out loud, thank God. Instead I said, “We were serious. At least, I was.”
“When the hell did this happen?” Alex said, incredulous. “And where was I?”
“I didn’t notice it, either,” Noah said. “I know we were all distracted, but come on. I definitely would have heard the noise if you two were—”
“Shut up,” Aidan said to him. He turned back to me. “Ava has never told me this. So both of you have been lying to me for all this time.”
Now he was being a dick. “It’s been none of your business all this time,” I shot back. “Ava makes her own decisions. She moved to New York and I stayed in Chicago. We’ve been broken up for years.”
“Until last week.”
“Yes.”
“Did you break her heart?”
This was why he was so mad, I thought. He’d told me that Ava was fragile, that he was worried about her. He was worried I’d hurt her, that I would hurt her again.
He was right to worry about it.
Had I hurt Ava? It felt like we’d broken each other’s hearts, though we hadn’t meant to. It also felt terrifyingly like we might do it again, though it was the last thing I wanted. “I didn’t dump her eleven years ago, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said to Aidan. “We had a problem we couldn’t get past.”
“What problem?”
Fuck. The baby wasn’t only my story to tell. I wasn’t sure if Ava wanted me to discuss it. “It doesn’t matter now,” I said, hedging. “We both thought it was over. But it isn’t.”
“I can’t fucking believe this.” Aidan paced away from his desk. Outwardly he was calm, but we all knew better.
“Easy, Aidan,” Noah said.
“Actually, I think it’s nice,” Alex added. “I always thought Ava had a bit of a thing for you, Dane.”
Aidan’s voice was icy anger. “That’s easy for you to say. She isn’t your sister.”
Alex shrugged. “No, but she may as well be. So what if they like each other? You know Ava dates assholes. Dane is better than any of them.”
“He isn’t better if he’s been lying for eleven years,” Aidan said.
“Hold up.” Noah held his hands up. “Okay, so Dane, the two of you hooked up for a week.”
“Shut up, Noah,” Aidan said.
“Jesus, Aidan, your sister is thirty. She isn’t a nun. So she got it on with Dane. So what? My question is, why aren’t you together now? And what does this have to do with Okada?”
“Ava left town and wouldn’t say why,” Aidan said, pacing. “That tells you something about how happy she is about this.”
“She left town because she needed some time,” I said, trying not to get angrier than I already was. “There’s shit going on with her that you don’t know about. And it has to do with Okada because Ava might be pregnant, and if she is, I’m not going to Japan.”
Aidan stopped pacing and looked at me. “Pregnant?”
“This gets juicier by the minute,” Noah said.
I kept my eyes on Aidan. He looked like he might vault over the desk any minute and rip my spine out, Mortal Kombat style. “It’s what she wanted,” I said. “What we both wanted.”
“A baby?” Aidan said. “Ava doesn’t want a baby. She never has. She lives in a tiny apartment with roommates, for God’s sake. She works freelance work. She doesn’t want a baby.”
“Have you ever asked her?” I shot back at him. “Have you ever talked to her about what she wants at all?”
“I don’t have to ask her. I know my sister. She’s never even thought about having a baby.”
It came out. I couldn’t stop it. “She thought about it when we got pregnant the first time eleven years ago.”
This time he did come around the desk, fast and lethal. I got out of my chair, ready to take him, but he got to me before I could find my balance and shoved me back against the wall. “Tell me I’m mistaken,” he said in that cold voice of his. “Because I just heard my best friend say that he knocked up my sister. Twice.”
Now I was good and pissed. “Are you going to beat me up, Aidan? Because if you want to fight, we can fight.” We may be classy millionaires now, but we’d all grown up tough, and we were all able to fight. Aidan was wearing an expensive suit, but I knew for a fact he could hit quick and hard. And until today, he’d never even thought of hitting me.
“Okay, you two.” Alex and Noah had gotten out of their chairs and stood by, ready to tackle Aidan if he moved. “Back up, Aidan,” Noah said.
Aidan ignored him, his fists still in my designer shirt, his eyes still fixed on me. “Leave Ava alone,” he said.
He was out of his mind. “No.”
“We aren’t friends,” he said. “It’s all been a lie. We’ve never been friends.”
“We were friends,” I said. “We were brothers. But if you’re going to make me choose between you and her, Aidan, I’ll tell you right now: I choose her. I choose Ava. Every fucking time.”
There was a pause—Aidan on the edge of attacking me, Alex and Noah ready to drag him down. Me against the wall, watching the relationship with my best friend crumble into dust.
Then Aidan let me go and stepped back.
“Well, we’ve solved your problem, Dane,” he said, his voice as cold as ever. “Go to Japan, or don’t. It doesn’t matter, because you’re not a Tower partner anymore. I’m kicking you out of the company as of now. You’re done.”
Twenty-Three
Ava
* * *
The beach house was beautiful.
It had once been a modest house, maybe fifty years ago when this stretch of Long Beach Island was nothing but small bungalows and fishing shacks. Over the years it had been updated, renovated, and lovingly cared for. The main room was bright and cozy, lined with large windows that looked down the short road to the ocean. The bedrooms were clean and snug, the kitchen clean. Behind the house was a large roofed terrace and a pool. Everything about it was perfect. And for a little while at least, it was mine.
Once I unpacked, I didn’t think about much. Something about this place made you leave your life behind, as if you were a new person. I stocked the kitchen, I napped, I watched Netflix, I napped some more. I ate healthy food, because I had some money right now and I might be feeding a baby. I didn’t drink. I slept.
On the second day I swam in the pool, letting the water wash over me. When I was standing in the bathroom drying myself off, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked pretty good—rested and relaxed, my skin glowing with sun—but the blonde hair was all wrong. Just…wrong, like I had the hair color of a w
oman I didn’t know.
I got dressed, went to the local CVS, and bought brown hair color in a box. On a whim, I added dark purple nail polish and a good pair of hair-trimming scissors to my basket. Then, trying not to think about anything much, I added three different home pregnancy tests and checked out.
Back at the beach house, I put the pregnancy tests on the bathroom counter, still in the boxes, neatly lined up. I wasn’t ready for them yet. Then I took a nap, wondering if frequent napping was an early sign of pregnancy, or whether I just liked napping.
I awoke with an idea swirling in the back of my mind, something new and scary and a little exciting. I mulled it over, glancing frequently at the three pregnancy tests in their tidy line as I opened the hair color box and dyed my hair brown again. I used the scissors to trim some of my ends and layers—anyone who has worked fourteen hours on a photo shoot, sometimes with a dozen models, knows how to do an emergency bang fix. I carefully cleaned the hair and the dye garbage from Dane’s nice bathroom, and then I removed my nail polish and replaced it with dark purple.
The entire process took nearly two hours, but when I was finished I put on a navy blue sundress, stood in front of the mirror, and thought, That woman looks like me.
Then I took out my laptop, opened up a notebook program, and began to write ideas.
On the third day, I went back to town and bought a sketchpad and a few pencils. I sat next to the pool, under the covered verandah, and sketched for hours, going through half of the sketchpad. Twice I went inside, to the bathroom, and looked at the pregnancy tests. Both times I went back outside without touching them and returned to sketching my ideas.
I should probably take the tests. Answer my questions. Decide my future. Leave this quiet period of not-thinking and start making plans.
But I didn’t want to do it without Dane.
I missed him all the time, even when I was napping, or in not-thinking mode, or sketching. The missing was an ache deep in my belly that had nothing to do with hunger or worry or even pregnancy. It was because I didn’t have Dane here, the sound of his voice and the touch of his skin, his big, muscled body against mine. I missed him because if I had a baby growing inside me, it wasn’t just mine, it was ours. I had left him to get some space, but I had come to this house—Dane’s house—because I still wanted to be close to him. I had been too far away from him for too long.
On the fourth day, the sky clouded over and threatened rain. I sat by the pool for a while, sketching, and then I went inside and stared at the three pregnancy tests again, lined up neatly on the counter. I picked up my phone and dialed Dane.
“Ava,” he said when he picked up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve been resting. And thinking.”
“What have you been thinking about?”
“I bought home pregnancy tests,” I said. “I have them sitting on your bathroom counter right now. I’ve been staring at them for days, but I haven’t touched them because I wasn’t ready.”
He seemed to get it, like he always did. “And now?”
I blinked, never taking my eyes off the tests. “I’m ready,” I said. “I want to find out if I’m pregnant. If we’re pregnant.”
“Don’t do it without me,” Dane said, because he always—always—knew what I was thinking. “I’m coming. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Twenty-Four
Dane
* * *
“Well,” Noah said, putting a pint of beer in front of me. “You seem to have made a giant fucking mess.”
I glared at him. We were in a midtown bar, surrounded by Manhattan’s after-work crowd of office workers, stockbrokers, advertising execs, and publishing types. Half of these people probably worked at Twitter or Facebook; they were young, eager, well-dressed, slightly lit, and buzzing with energy. To me, they seemed like a different species. “I told the truth,” I said to Noah. “It’s Aidan who made a mess of it.”
“Somewhat true,” Alex said, sipping his own drink on the stool next to me. “Though you straight up told the man you’d impregnated his little sister twice. It’s kind of a big surprise to throw at a man.”
“He can’t kick you out of the company, by the way,” Noah said, sliding his own beer in front of him. “He doesn’t have the power. In order to do that, he’d have to get Alex and me to agree.”
“Which Aidan knows, and which he’ll remember when he gets his head on straight,” Alex added. “He overreacted, and things got out of hand. We can patch it up.”
“It’s been four days, and he won’t answer my calls. Samantha can’t get him to talk to me, either.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. I kept seeing Aidan’s expression as he held me against the wall, his fist in my shirt. He’d looked angry, yes, and cold. But I knew Aidan. He’d looked fucking hurt. His best friend and his sister had kept a secret from him for eleven years, and it had cut him. I did that—I hurt my best friend.
“Maybe it shouldn’t be patched up,” I said.
Alex gave me a disbelieving look. “You can’t say you’re ending your friendship with Aidan over this,” he said. “Besides, you say you’re serious about Ava and you might be having a baby with her. Aidan’s going to be a part of your life whether you like it or not.”
I shook my head. “I don’t mean that. Aidan and I will be friends again, even if it takes him years to forgive me. I mean the part about him kicking me out of Tower VC. If Aidan can’t fire me, maybe it’s best if I quit.”
“You want to resign?” Noah’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know you were so unhappy.”
“Neither did I.” I took a deep drink of my beer. “I thought I was fine until Ava came back. Then I realized that I’ve been fucking miserable.”
“You do have an atrocious personality,” Alex agreed. “I guess now we know why.”
Noah leaned back on his stool, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. You have money, a penthouse, all the women you could want if you just got out a bit more. You’re saying you were unhappy until a specific woman came along?”
I glared at him. “Yes, asshole. That’s what I’m saying.”
Noah glanced at Alex, but Alex shrugged. “Don’t look at me for answers,” Alex said. “I was in love once, remember? I went through the worst divorce in the fucking world. I’m never doing that again.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, guys,” I said. “Really helpful.”
Noah grinned. “I know, we’re assholes. And cynics. We should be more supportive, because this isn’t some random woman we’re talking about. This is Ava. She might as well be my little sister.” He frowned. “Which makes all of this weird enough that I can see where Aidan is coming from.”
I drained my beer. “Are we done? I’m going to go back to my expensive hotel room and mope, like I’ve been doing for the past four days. I haven’t moped enough today.”
“Leave Aidan to us,” Alex said. “He won’t stay mad forever—we won’t let him. You need to figure out what you’re going to say to Kaito Okada.”
I left the bar and walked out onto 41st Street as a light drizzle of rain started. It made no dent in the crowds on the sidewalk, a mix of tourists and native New Yorkers in a hurry to get wherever they needed to go. I wondered what Ava was doing right now in the Long Beach house, what she was thinking. Whether she was okay. Whether she wanted me there, or whether she was thinking of ways to move on.
As if she could read my mind, my phone rang in my pocket. Ava. I answered it as fast as I could as I made my way down the street. “Ava. Are you okay?”
It was her voice, the one I knew so well. The one I’d been waiting for. It said, “I’m fine. I’ve been resting. And thinking.”
In the hired car on the way to Long Island, I called Kaito Okada.
“Dane Scotland,” he said when he answered. “Do you know what time it is in Japan?”
“No,” I replied.
“Do you care?”
“No.”
“Just checking. Y
ou’re a day late in giving me an answer. How do you know I even want to talk to you?”
I had no idea the deadline had passed. I’d spent a few days in New York in a blur of worry over Ava and Aidan. “I know you want to talk to me because you answered the phone.”
“It’s true, I did answer. Well? Should I send the jet to Chicago to collect you?”
I looked out the window at the landscape passing by the gridlocked traffic, and I thought about Ava taking a pregnancy test. I hoped she’d wait for me. “No,” I said. “Don’t send the jet.”
“Dane,” he said, sighing. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious. Don’t send the jet. But I never said we couldn’t work together.”
There was a brief pause. “I’m listening,” Kaito said. “Mostly because it’s the middle of the night and I’m too tired to hang up, but I’m listening.”
“I’ll contribute to your cancer project on two conditions,” I said as the bridge fell away behind the hired car and Manhattan started to recede.
“What are they?”
“First, that I work only as a consultant. And second, that you don’t pay me.”
“Okay, you’ve actually managed to surprise me. You don’t want any pay?”
“What I want is freedom,” I said. “I want to work on whatever projects I want, whenever I want. I’ll travel to Japan twice a year and contribute everything I can to the cancer project. The rest of my time is my own.”
“And what about Tower VC?”
I looked out the window again. “I’m no longer part of Tower VC. I’m resigning. I’m going to be independent, at least for a while, so I can start a family.”