His face went determined in the snap of an inhale. "No way, don't even go there right now."
The hands on my back went from soothing to strong, cupping my shoulders so I couldn't turn away.
"How can I not?" I asked, feeling positively wretched.
"Ava." His eyes seared into mine, and I felt my tears slow, my heart speeding up at what I saw there. "I want to be with you. And I refuse to let them get in the way. I refuse to allow them any sort of power over this thing we're building. Because make no mistake, we've been building something amazing whether we've put it into words or not."
My lip wobbled at his declaration. All I could do was nod because he was right. We'd slipped so easily into our relationship, and labels had nothing to do with it. No conversation would've changed that.
"Beautiful girl," Matthew said in a low, soothing voice. He pulled me into his arms again and spoke against the top of my head. "I wish I could go with you. I wish I could make this easier on you."
"You are right now," I told him. "You're making it better right now."
"I'm not doing anything."
"Shut up," I said into his chest. "Just hold me while I pretend I didn't just lose my shit at work."
"Done." His voice was a quiet murmur against my hair, but I felt it everywhere. Matthew Hawkins had some sort of magic inside him, maybe even a part he wasn't aware of, to be exactly what I needed him to be and say exactly what I needed him to say.
I wished to do even half the same for him.
"Oh shit," I gasped, pulling back and staring at him in horror. "Ashley is making me meet her. You planned our date. My red dress."
He smiled in understanding, despite my stammered, disjointed, grammatically incorrect sentences.
"I'll cancel with her," I said firmly. "She didn't tell me she was coming, so she can't expect me to drop everything."
Matthew cupped the side of my face. "When does she leave?"
"Tomorrow, I think." I sighed. "Not soon enough, at any rate."
He blew out a breath. "Wear the red dress, meet her for one drink, and then come to me when you're done."
"But—"
My words were cut off when he gently kissed me. "It might not feel like it right now, but we will figure this out. I'm glad your mom sounded like she cared because she should. She should care about the man who's making you happy."
I smiled up at him. "You. You make me happy."
His grin was smug, his hands proprietary as they cupped my bottom over the material of my dress. "Good."
"One drink?" I asked him with a scrunched-up nose.
"One drink and you come to me." He kissed me again, licking lightly at the seam of my lips until I opened for him. "Then I'll make you forget all about this day."
I snuggled back up to him. "Deal."
Chapter Sixteen
Matthew
While I waited for Ava to show up, I did my best to keep my mind off what had happened earlier in her office. I'd never imagined Ava could be so broken down by one interaction with her sister and one phone call with her mom.
Her tears felt as if someone had punched a ragged hole through my stomach and took all my air, leaving me feeling weak and out of control. That slight shake in her shoulder as she wept in my arms because her selfish mother had shown a modicum of interest in her life had me feeling a rage that I was wholly unaccustomed to.
Rage and a masochistic desire to self-reflect.
Look in a mirror I hadn't looked in for ten years.
I found the box I was looking for shoved into the back corner of my walk-in closet. Most of my college stuff had been unpacked. My jersey was framed, and my trophies and framed pictures were tucked neatly onto the shelves of my office. But one box I'd left untouched for years. Lugging it between homes, I had been unwilling to leave it with my mom, but unwilling to throw it away either.
Bracing my back against the wall, I yanked the box between my legs and pulled open the cardboard flaps. Right on top was a picture of Ashley and me before one of our winter homecomings. One of the last we attended together if I remembered right.
Looking at us together, I felt close to nothing. No painful pinch, no rock in my gut at the thought of her betrayal. But what I did was close my eyes to try to piece Ava into that memory.
She'd always been around. And if I remembered right, while her mom snapped pictures, Ava was watching through the glass of their massive front door. Ashley told her to quit skulking like a freak, and I'd chided her for that. Something I'd paid for later with her snotty silence.
What was clear to me now was that I couldn't conjure a neat definition for why I'd stayed with Ashley. Ava didn't have a choice. She was born into their nonsense, but I had a choice. And I chose wrong. I chose wrong when I bought a tiny speck of a diamond and slipped it onto Ashley's finger. I chose wrong by giving her all those years of my life. Neither of things could be taken back now or be changed into something more palatable.
The pride I'd felt then in having her by my side seemed childish and shallow now.
I flipped through the pictures, just a stack that had been held together by a rubber band, and found one I didn't remember. It must have been Thanksgiving, and Ava and I were sitting on the couch. She had her knees tucked up against her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, and she was smiling at me. Ashley was sitting on the floor, looking at a magazine. I was smiling too but not at either one of the sisters.
My thumb brushed over the image of a young Ava. Her hair was lighter then, her body thinner, but her smile was exactly the same. Very carefully, I turned the picture and folded a neat seam through the middle, pressing along the edge with the pad of my thumb until the line was crisp. When I looked at it again, it was just Ava and me. I closed my eyes and set the pictures back in the box.
Just as I was putting it back into its place, my phone rang. I almost dropped it in my haste to see if it was Ava, but my brother's name flashed instead.
"Hey, Mike," I said, finding my spot against the wall again.
"Holy shit, he actually answered."
I rolled my eyes. My younger brother had tried me once earlier in the week, the day we normally caught up, but I'd been in the shower with Ava.
"I was busy, asshole."
"Uh-huh. What's her name?"
I rubbed a hand wearily over my face. There was no point in denying it.
"Ava," I told him. A smile spread across my face just from saying her name, a telltale sign that I was in deep shit when it came to that woman.
"Ooh, I thought I'd have to work harder than that to get anything good out of you. Where'd you meet?"
In front of my very eyes, the veritable fork in the road appeared. Take the coward's way out and say that I met her at work, or lay out the entire messy truth for him.
I sighed, knowing that the second I said her name, I'd tell him the messy truth. Ava had people to talk to this about, Allie and her friend Paige, but I had no one.
"Well," I started slowly, knocking my head back against the wall just once before I launched my little tale. "That's sort of complicated."
By the time I finished, wrapping up with what had happened in her office only a few hours earlier, my little brother whistled under his breath.
"Damn, son."
I nodded. "I know."
In the background, I heard the rustle of papers, and I tried to imagine Mike leaning back in his desk chair. He was a college coach, having never made it into the pros himself but not ready to leave the world of football entirely. The Division II school had a solid record and one national championship under their belt since he took over. Suddenly, I wished I wasn’t so chained to my own schedule and had time to watch my brother coach.
"And she's ... uhh, I'm trying to figure out how to say this."
"Just say it, Mike."
He sucked in an audible breath. "She's nothing like her sister, right?"
"No. Not at all." I shook my head and laughed at how unlike her sister Ava was. "She's incredib
le, man. So damn smart. Beautiful. Funny as hell. And Mike, she'd keep you on your toes if you talked football with her. She ... she makes my head spin a little."
"And she's in a tight spot, being with you."
I didn't answer right away because we both knew it was true.
"What does she say about it?" he asked.
Shifting uncomfortably against the wall, I answered as honestly as I could. "Today was really the first we've talked about it. She, uh, she doesn't like talking about her family."
He hummed. "Guess I can't blame her, but ... it's something you'll have to deal with eventually, right?"
I dropped my head back with a thud. "Yeah."
"Have you tried talking to her about it?" he asked carefully.
"Sort of," I hedged.
"Sort of," Mike repeated slowly, then laughed under his breath. "And you're okay with that?"
No, I thought immediately.
"I trust Ava," I said instead, hearing my defensive tone. "When she's ready to talk about this, she will."
Mike was silent. The kind of silence that was loaded and heavy, but he didn't say anything else for a long moment.
"I'm happy for you, Matty. Even though it's a shitty situation."
At my nickname from when he was about two, I rolled my eyes again. "Thanks. It's not much in the way of advice, though."
"I'm the little brother. I wasn't aware it was my job to give you advice."
"Shut up," I said without any heat. "Come on, you and Beth have been married forever. I've got an ex-fiancée and an ex-wife, so clearly I need some advice when it comes to relationships." Now I sounded like I was on the wrong side of bitter. My voice had an edge to it that I didn't like, but I'd left both of those relationships behind me. The second they were done, I put my head down and got back to work. Got back to what I was good at.
Mike sighed. "I'm not in your position, though. Yeah, I'm married, but Beth isn't Ava. There's not much she doesn't want to discuss with me after so many years, but that took time, you know? I guess if she didn't want to figure out how to fix something that was facing us, I'd probably worry a little bit." He cleared his throat and rushed to add, "But again, that's Beth. I can't say the same for Ava."
"I know they're different. I just ... I wish she'd open up a little bit about that stuff. Right now, it feels like I'm a few steps ahead of her. I just want her to catch up." My brother was about the only person I'd admit this stuff to. My mom would have started planning a wedding and naming her future grandchildren, and my dad would try to convince me that Ava was lying about something and couldn't be trusted. I didn't need the emotional seesaw of their own issues being draped over my relationship.
"Brother, most relationships start with a little imbalance. It doesn't mean something's wrong. And I don't think you should loop that in with whatever is going on with her family."
"I'm not."
"Aren't you?" he asked easily. "Her family isn't the defining characteristic of what you two have."
"It feels like they are," I told him. Earlier that day, she and I were forced to have an honest conversation about the reality of what we were dealing with because of Ashley's visit and her mom's phone call. "It feels like we have to hide because dealing with them won't be easy. I hate that feeling."
"For right now, maybe you are hiding. But at the end of the day, what she's facing is the hard part, not what you're facing. Mom and Dad have their problems, but at least we've got each other, you know? No matter what happens, no matter how much they fight or bicker or make holidays shitty because they're arguing over who gets Christmas morning, you, me, and Tim have each other. She doesn't have that."
I closed my eyes and let that sink in.
On all counts, he was right. Ava wasn't vain and selfish like her sister. She wasn't trying to make me into something I wasn't like Lexi had. And the one place she should have a safety net—her family—was the one place she felt truly alone.
"You're really smart, you know that?"
He snorted. "Yup. That's why they pay me the big bucks, hotshot. How much was your contract for again?"
"Screw you."
While he was laughing, I heard the scrape of a key in the lock, and I bounded up. "Mike, I've gotta go."
"Love you, brother."
"You too."
I tossed my phone on the bed and turned the corner out of my bedroom just in time to see Ava close the door quietly behind her and flip the deadbolt, then taking a deep breath.
She wore the red dress.
The whole thing looked like small strips of fabric wrapped carefully around her body, keeping everything in place, until one of those strips arched up around her neck and held the whole thing up.
A Band-Aid dress? She'd called it something like that.
Whatever it was, my mouth watered the moment I saw her. She turned and leaned against the door when she heard me. There was a slight flush in her cheeks that told me she’d probably had more than one drink, but she was smiling, not crying, so I couldn't be upset in the slightest.
"You look beautiful," I told her quietly.
She smiled. "Will you take it off me?"
"Yes, ma'am." I strode toward her quickly, eager to touch her, hold her, kiss anything and everything.
"Good, because I haven't taken a full breath in three hours."
My hands froze just before I grabbed her hips, and I started laughing. I kissed her forehead and pulled her in for a hug. "That bad?"
"No, the dress is just that tight," she answered seriously. Then she looked away, almost guiltily.
"What is it?" I asked.
Ava licked her lips, holding my gaze as though she was about to make a big confession. I found myself holding my breath as she spoke. "It ... it wasn't horrible."
It took a second for the meaning to sink in, but then I smiled a little. "That's good, though, right?"
She shrugged miserably. "I don't know. I mean, it wasn't fun or anything ... but it wasn't horrible."
Keeping in mind what my brother said, I inhaled slowly. "I'm glad."
"Really?"
I cupped the back of her neck and used my thumb to tilt her stubborn little chin up toward me. "Really."
"Just one day I have to get through."
"Just one day," I agreed.
"Except I promised I'd meet her tomorrow to help with one little thing, then it's only one day," she said quickly. I couldn't help but laugh. She sounded like a kid, rushing through an admission of guilt.
"Do what you need to do, okay?"
Ava flung her arms around my neck, and I clutched her to me. When her lips touched mine, I felt the familiar buzz in my blood. Something she did that felt elemental and vital. Like I needed it to breathe.
Wasn't that what love was? I thought dazedly as my tongue swept against hers.
The presence of it in your life with the right person felt vital. If you didn't have it, your heart wouldn't beat properly, your blood wouldn't move the right way in your veins, and your bones would feel brittle and breakable.
Against her mouth, I felt like I'd explode if I didn't say the words, but I kissed her harder instead.
It was too soon.
Could I love her after only a couple of weeks?
My heart, my head, every part of me knew the answer to that question as I lifted her in my arms.
I did love her. And it clicked something into place, something that allowed me to breathe fully for the first time in thirty-five years.
"Where are we going?" she asked, her lips brushing mine.
"Bath."
"Oooh, we haven't tried that yet."
And tried the bath we did.
While the water was running, my big, clumsy fingers searched for the hook on the zipper of her dress so I could pull it down. Moving slowly, I unveiled one inch at a time of her smooth, tan skin.
I counted her ribs as I pulled the dress open. Underneath it, she was completely bare. The dress slid from her body as she yanked off my shirt and pushed d
own my shorts and boxer briefs.
Ava bent to test the temperature of the water, and I stood behind her, letting my hands wander over the smooth skin of her back and bottom. She held my hand as she stepped over the edge, settling between my legs once I joined her.
Soapy and slick with water, Ava languished over me, her hands driving me crazy and mine doing the same. She slid her fingertips over my chest, and I counted the bumps in her spine. When I cupped her breasts in my hands, working the suds away from her flawless skin with my fingers, she finally snapped. When she straddled my lap, a wave of water splashed over the edge onto the tile floor, but we ignored it.
I groaned my feelings into the skin of her shoulder as she moved over me with maddening slow circles of her slim hips, hips that I held tightly in my hands. No matter how I tried to increase the pace or mute my mounting feelings with rougher movements, rougher hands, and rougher words, Ava stayed sweet and slow and torturous.
It was a test of my resolve and my will to allow her to continue at that pace.
Give me more, I wanted to yell.
More.
Everything.
Let me fix what they broke.
Trust me with what was inside.
By the time she exploded around me, I had to bite down on her neck to keep from shouting that I loved her, that I wanted her with me forever, that she was it for me. I thrust up hard one last time, and she slumped happily against my chest, her heart hammering in her chest so hard that I could feel it.
She kissed along the edge of my jaw, then found my lips with hers, where we stayed until the water grew cold.
Much later, when she was tucked against me in bed, her breathing deep and even against my chest as she slept, I said the words quietly against the silk of her hair as it tickled my chin.
"I'm in love with you, Ava. But I don't think you're ready to hear it yet."
Only then could I relax enough to fall asleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Ava
The Ex Effect Page 14