“Don’t lose your shit,” he warns as I walk around the desk and pull out the drawers, emptying them into a cardboard box. “You have to be smart about this. You don’t have grounds to fire him.”
“The fuck I don’t.” My fist lands on the desktop with a splintering crunch.
“Damon!”
“What, Grayson?” I spin to face him. “What? He knew what he was doing. It wasn’t an accident…it wasn’t a mistake.”
“I know,” he sighs, sitting in one of the desk chairs.
“He hurt Ava.” I pick up one of the photos and throw it into the box. “If it were Fran?”
“I would kill him,” he says harshly. Standing, he picks up the other empty box and sweeps all the shit that’s left on the desk into it. “The best I can do is staff harassment. Ava’s assistant is willing to go with it.”
“Fine.” I go through all the cabinets around the room, emptying them of anything that’s not related to the company.
“Have you heard from her?” Grayson asks when I sit in the other desk chair, beside him.
“No.”
My already racing heart starts to thunder through my veins until I’m practically breathless, and all I can hear is the whooshing of my red-hot blood in my ears along with the echo of Lacie’s words—your pregnant girlfriend is falling to pieces.
This shouldn’t be happening. I should be with her. I should be making sure she’s all right.
I’m not ready. I’m scared. It’s all I’ve heard on repeat. All night. I’m scared too. I’m fucking afraid she won’t come back.
“She needs time,” Grayson offers. “She’s smart—she’ll see the position you’ve put yourself in for her.”
“It’s just money.”
“Yeah, but the lawsuit and now the share conversion…it’s a lot of money. More money than some will see in their lifetime.”
“Ava’s worth it.”
“You love her.” He chuckles, looking impressed with himself. “Fran said you would, and I laughed at her.”
The office door opens, and Dexter stands there looking between Grayson and me in our casual clothes. “What? Did I miss a memo or something? I’m pretty sure we don’t do dress-down Fridays.”
“It’s not Friday,” Grayson spits at him, pulling a letter-sized envelope from his back pocket. “Get your shit and get the fuck out.”
I can’t believe I ever called him a friend. That I trusted him to help me run my company.
What the fuck was I even thinking?
Dexter looks around the room, and I see it all dawn on his face.
“Really? You’re picking a two-bit fuc—” My fist slams to his mouth before he has a chance to finish, and because once wasn’t enough, I do it again, and again, until Grayson has me pinned to the wall.
Everything is so fucking blurry. It’s all a fucking red haze.
“You’re going to regret that,” Dexter spits at my feet. The bloody sight of it does nothing to calm my anger as I try to shove Grayson off me.
“Get the fuck out, Dex. You’re done here.” Grayson finally lets me go, following me as I step to Dexter.
“If you so much as yawn in your fucking dark hole, I’ll crush you. You will never see an office in this city again.”
Security shows up—I’m guessing Grayson must have called them. I don’t know. My fucking head is a mess, my hand is throbbing, and all I can think about is the fact I still haven’t heard anything from Ava.
“Right.” Grayson throws me his handkerchief. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You want to win Ava back, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I wrap the white cotton around my fist.
“What’re you waiting for, then?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AVA
Lacie stumbles in from work. I’ve managed to make dinner rather than driving myself insane reading all the notes Damon’s sent me the last week. Yesterday he told me about his day—it was just another way of telling me he misses me.
I miss him too.
But every time I think I’ve made sense of everything, that it’s not that bad…I remember that he had so many chances to tell me what he was doing. Yet he chose not to. He chose to deceive me, and then he was too much of a coward to face up to the consequences.
“This is crazy. My apartment is becoming a shrine to you.” Lacie drops another hatbox of bloodred, velvety roses on the kitchen counter.
“I’m sorry.” I grimace as I take the small envelope slotted in the arrangement.
“Are you going to forgive him yet?”
“It’s not about forgiveness.” I begin to pocket the card, but she grabs it off me, and before I can get it back, she’s opened it.
“He found your favorite nail polish.” She throws the card at me as she heads toward her room.
“So what?” My yell reverberates through the apartment.
“Many women have taken back bigger, badder bastards for a lot less.” Tears fill her eyes. “Do you even realize how lucky you are?”
“I thought you hated him?”
“I do! I hate him and I want to hurt him for all the shit he did.” She takes a long breath. “But, look around you. All of this is for you.”
Of course, I can’t hold up the floodgates. At this point I’m not sure if some of it is hormones or if I’m really just that pitiful.
“You have a man that’s desperately fighting for you. Don’t be too proud to concede.” Lacie disappears into her room.
I go through Damon’s notes as I wait for her to emerge. When she doesn’t, I go to her. She’s curled up on her bed, her phone in her hand.
When I sit beside her, she holds it to her chest.
“Look at the two of us,” she sobs. “I’m pining after a man I can’t have, and you’re pushing the one that cares away.”
When she puts it like that, it sounds tragic.
“Do you love Callum?” I hug her to me like she’s done to me so many times.
“God, Ava…” Her golden eyes hold mine. “I’m here, but my heart feels like it’s all the way across the country beating in someone else’s chest. Giving my love to another woman.”
“Lace…”
“I can’t even be angry because she’s his wife, and what we had—I should never have given in. Or let it happen…”
I brush her copper tresses from her face. “I know that feeling.”
“Damon’s many things, but you can’t deny he cares.”
“He bought Monroe behind my back.”
The roll of her eyes is sour. “He bought you a company your father was going to sell. Read into the situation however you want, but you were never going to get Monroe. Your father was never going to give it to you.”
“But…”
Lacie sits up, wiping her tears. “Get over it or be done. Don’t drag it out, okay? You might not want to believe it, but your father is no better than Damon. He’s only better at hiding it.”
“Why didn’t he tell me though? Why?”
“Because he knew you’d see the worst and run. And what’s more? He was right.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t. Lie. To. Yourself. It’s why you won’t let him see you. You won’t talk to him…because you know that if you really listen to him, you’ll want to take him back.” She lies back down.
I lie beside her. “I don’t want to be bought. I don’t want to be that woman. He bought Monroe, and now he’s buying me all these things…”
“He’s not buying those notes. He’s sending you a piece of him.”
“I know.” I turn to her. “It’s what makes it so difficult to keep him away.”
“Do you love him? Like really love him? To the point that you want to have that baby and watch him be a father to it every day for the rest of your life? Fuck Monroe. Fuck CPM. Fuck every other fucking excuse you can come up with. Do you love Damon?”
“My heart is somewhere in this city, beating in someone else’s chest,
and I don’t think he knows it.”
“Only you can fix that.”
“I know.”
“Good,” she sings nasally as she gets up from the bed. Her eyes are still red, but there’s a smile on her face. “What’re you waiting for?”
“What?” I sputter as she pulls me to my feet and starts pulling me along behind her.
“No time like the present, babe. Let’s get you to your baby daddy.”
“Do you want me out that bad?” I jerk out of her hold.
“Babe, I love ABBA as much as the next person, but you have taken it to another level. And if he’s going to send you a mixtape of the same couple of songs…he can put up with your ass.”
“I haven’t played it that much.”
“My head is so fucked with it, that I’m mixing the ABBA lyrics with Patti Smith’s. And also, FYI, did you know she’s got hairy armpits on the cover of the album?”
“Eww!”
“Exactly. Thanks to you and asshat, all I’m going to think about when I listen to the damn song is hairy armpits.” She’s about to walk us out of the door, when I pull back.
“Lace, I need to wash, and I need to sleep because I am exhausted. Not to mention I’m so hungry he’d probably freak out that I’m starving his child.”
She grins wide, pushing me back into her apartment. “I can’t believe you’re actually pregnant.”
“Yeah, me either.” I head into the kitchen with her. “Do you know what sucks?”
“We can’t drink anymore?”
Ugh, I’m beginning to understand Fran’s weird thing about sniffing alcohol. But… “No. Sore boobs. What if I have to go braless for like the next nine months. Because pregnancy actually lasts for ten months. Biggest fucking lie the world has ever told.”
“Babe, you got yourself a sugar daddy…he bought you a company, and he’s sending you two-hundred-dollar hatboxes of roses…”
“Aren’t sugar daddies old men?”
“Are they?”
We side-glance at each other. How do we not know this?
“Google?” we blurt at the same time, bursting into a fit of laughter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DAMON
William is standing at his desk with a weird-ass expression on his face. When I put his coffee down on his desk, he looks up at me with a nod of thanks.
“I need you to courier this to Ava this afternoon.” I put the package on his desk.
I’m hoping it doesn’t backfire, because I think Lacie might actually follow through on her promise to castrate me.
“Umm, Mr. Coldwell…”
My phone chirps with a message from Grayson just as I’m about to head into my office.
Gray: Complication. They’re taking the baby out.
My heart stops for a moment while I reread his message. Fran seemed fine last night.
Damon: Keep me updated.
“William, can you arrange for a driver to pick up my mom and bring her into the city, please?” I ask him as I walk into my office.
Now I’m fucking on edge. Or more on edge, especially given I haven’t seen Ava in almost two weeks. I’m not even meant to know she’s pregnant, but…fuck it.
Damon: Let me know you’re okay.
There’s a low trill, and as I look up from my phone, I swear I could cry.
“I’m okay,” she says with a long breath.
“You’re here.” I’m certain I sound like an idiot, but I’m in disbelief that she’s in my office. And she looks so fucking beautiful it’s a sin.
Her long, raven hair is tousled into relaxed waves, and a patterned scarf is tied around her head, keeping it all from her face. Her eyes are so blue and her lips so lusciously peachy that I have no idea how she’s real.
Standing from the chair in front of my desk, her short red dress falls to the middle of her thighs. With legs for days and supple glowing skin, I’m using every ounce of my control not to descend on her like the predator inside me is desperate to do.
“I wanted to give you this…in person.” She extends an envelope my way.
I recognize the damn thing, and I wish I’d burnt it the first time.
“I’m not letting you leave,” I tell her, taking the thing from her. I’m about to rip it when her hand holds mine. “Open it.”
“Only if you sit.”
Smiling, she sits back in her seat. I don’t bother rounding to my own chair; I perch myself on the desk, in front of her.
Her legs cross and her hands lace over her belly, and my heart starts beating so fast in my chest at the knowledge that there’s a piece of me growing inside her.
“I won’t accept it, so…I’m not letting you go.”
“Damon! Open the damn thing!”
“Fine.” I open the envelope and take out the letter.
Ava’s looking at me intently as I turn it in my hand. She seems as nervous as I am.
“Open it,” she whispers. Her voice is a little wet like she’s close to tears.
“Okay.”
I hold her stare for a second longer, wondering how the hell I’m meant to let her go, if that’s what she wants.
“Damon.”
I unfold it, turning the page over and over in my hand. “It’s blank.”
“It’s clean,” she corrects. “A clean page for a fresh start.”
Ava stands, taking the paper from me and putting it on the table.
“I don’t want Monroe.”
“Ava…”
“I want you and only you. None of the bullshit. None of the lies.” Hands falling to my knees, she steps between my thighs. “I want the ruthless man that will protect me and our family at any cost, but I want to be a part of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” My hands band her waist, and with a sigh, she comes closer, her front flush to mine as she takes one of my hands and brings it to her belly. “Good, because I have no idea how I’m going to do this mom thing.”
I’m not sure if she’s aware I know or whether she’s nervous to tell me. Regardless, it feels so surreal knowing that we’ve made something so monumental together. That beneath my hand, inside her belly, there’s a part of us that will forever be entwinned in one perfect being.
It’s fucking mind-blowing.
“We’ll figure it out.”
She pauses, looking up at me with big rounded eyes full of wariness. “You already know.”
“Lacie might have let it slip when she was threatening to cut my balls and feed them to me?”
“Oh God.” She cringes, pressing my hand a little tighter to her belly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well…I guess someone has to keep me in line.”
There’s a moment of silence where Ava just stares at me, like she’s trying to make sense of everything in her head. And it reminds me of Fran, the way she agonized over what to do and how to tell Grayson. How afraid she was of all the things that could go wrong, and now…
My phone becomes weightier in my pocket. Maybe I should’ve asked more questions? May I should’ve called her? But the logical part of me knows that they need to focus on whatever’s happening, not on my worry. Just as I know that Ava needs me to tell her that “Everything will okay. We’ll figure it all out.”
“Together?” Her question is tentative.
“Together,” I assure her. My hands sweep down to her hips as I stand and then perch her in my place.
“How are you so calm?” Nuzzling into my chest, she tucks her hands into the top of my slacks, at the top of my ass. “I’m freaking out.”
“Makes a change, huh?”
She peers up at me from my chest. “Seriously?”
“You’re here, Ava, that’s all that matters. You’re here and you’re mine.” Cupping her face, I thumb over her cheeks.
“I’m yours…” she murmurs. “Because…”
“Because.”
“Because.” Her full lips stretch into a teary smile. “I love you, Damon. Beyond reason and right or wrong. I
love every part of you, even the ones I hate. I think I might love those more…” She swallows and then adds, “Asshole.”
A chuckle vibrates through me, and for the first time since she left, my heart relaxes, skipping and stuttering over its slowing beats. And it’s all because of her. My beautiful Ava.
“You can’t call me that forever.” I tip her face up to mine, taking my fill of her. I’m completely lost in her silver-speckled cerulean eyes.
“Ass. Hole.” She cranes her neck, bringing her lips closer to mine.
“That sounds like an invitation.”
“God, just shut up and kiss me already.” Her mouth presses to mine with the plush lower lip pushing past the seam of my lips. Teeth grazing my flesh, she sighs in that way you do when you’re home after a shit day.
With her hands clambering up my chest, to my shoulders, she moans as I lick into her mouth, sating my overwhelming thirst for her.
“I love you, little mouse,” I murmur over her lips, pressing another kiss.
“Why do you call me that?”
“Sounds better than Reepicheep.” Tracing her jaw with the tip of my nose, I breathe her in. I fill my lungs with her scent like it’s the only thing I’ll ever need to keep me alive.
“What the hell is Reepicheep?”
“The mouse leader from Narnia. You know, passionate, gentle, fearless, and honorable.” Planting a kiss behind her ear, I suck at the sensitive spot, laving and nipping until she’s a trembling, breathless mess. “They’re all the things I love about you, little mouse.”
Her arms wrap around my neck, meshing her body to mine. “Take me home?”
“Every fucking day, baby.”
“Forever?” Her legs wrap around my hips, pulling herself up from my desk until she’s latched onto me completely.
“And ever.” I walk her to my open door, William is nowhere in sight. So, I take a moment to let my hands wander over the curve of her ass and her thighs. I take my time tracing the contours of her body pressed to mine.
Opening the door to the floor, I stand her on her feet. There’s a moment of bashfulness when she sees William’s assistant staring up at us. But before she can get weird about it, I walk her down the corridor.
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