15. Ava

Chapter 15

Ava

M y reflection in the bathroom mirror stared back at me in fucking horror.

What the fuck are you doing here?

I spat out my toothpaste in the sink and tugged my cardigan closer around my body. It didn't matter that I was in the exact same set of pajamas I'd walked downstairs in at my dad's. We were in a completely different situation here. Sleeping in the same place as Adrian, two doors down from his son and at the other end of the hall from him , came with its own set of challenges.

I could get through this weekend without caving. I had to, for my sanity.

"Do you need anything for your room?"

The sound of his voice had me practically jumping out of my fucking skin.

"Shit, sorry," he sighed. "It's the fucking carpet up here. I always forget how quiet it is."

He stood in the doorway, his hands on either side of the frame, in a plain white T-shirt that clung to the muscles of his chest and flannel pajama pants. From the neckline of his shirt, a pair of rectangular glasses hung down—the ones he'd worn in the car and the living room downstairs while he worked, the ones he'd worn in bed on his sailboat when I'd climbed onto him completely fucking naked and begged him to stay.

God, I hated myself for that.

"Are you all right?" he asked. Shit. I haven't said anything.

"Yeah, I-I'm fine. Sorry. You just…you freaked me out." In truth, I'd been hoping to make it back to my room before he'd made it up the stairs so I wouldn't be tempted, but…here I fucking was.

He nodded. "If it's any consolation, I'm always on edge the first night whenever we come out here," he said, his jaw ticking as he forced himself to break eye contact. "Think it's because it's so quiet. Even up on my floor of the Blackwater building, I can still hear the faint sounds of traffic. But out here…just the ocean, if the wind is right."

I swallowed. "Yeah. That's probably it," I lied.

"I'm happy for you to blame it on that," he whispered, leaning a little bit further into the bathroom, "instead of me."

"It's not?—"

"I get it. You don't need to explain." He pushed off the door frame and took a step back into the dark, carpeted hallway.

His eyes met mine again, and I couldn't help myself from just taking him in, letting myself linger and absorb him in this overtly relaxed version. He looked so different than he had at the charity ball, my father's penthouse, his office, his sailboat. He looked different than he had when he was completely bare and holding me to him, or than when he'd dropped to his knees on that balcony in his stupid fucking three-piece suit and put his mouth on me.

He looked at home . He looked like a normal person—not an unattainable figure that felt out of reach.

And as he held my gaze in the overwhelming silence, my heart hammering in my chest from a mixture of anxiety and adrenaline, I couldn't decide if I wanted to run back to my room and scream into a pillow or do something I knew I'd regret.

But I was leaning toward the latter.

I took a step forward, but the moment he opened his mouth, I stopped.

"I'll see you in the morning," he said.

What? No ? —

"Good night, Ava."

————

Adrian: You up yet?

Adrian: Lucas and I are going down to the beach if you want to meet us down there. Mrs. Henderson left breakfast out for you.

I stared at my phone in the low light of the room, my vision barely adjusting to the brightness of my phone. The clock said it was half past ten in the morning, but the blackout curtains made it confusing, and it took me far too long to understand that it was actually incredibly bright outside and not pitch black like I'd assumed.

Slipping from the bed, I opened the curtains just in time to catch a glimpse of two heads of dark hair disappearing behind the sand dunes at the back of the property.

Me: Swimming or hanging out?

Adrian: It's cold outside. Do you genuinely think I'm that bad of a father that I'll willingly give my son pneumonia?

Adrian: We're looking for shark teeth. And maybe building sandcastles, we'll see.

A smaller, dark head of hair popped back up on the other side of the dunes, and just as I clocked him, Lucas waved wildly back toward the house. I chuckled.

Adrian: He's waving at you.

Adrian: Come on.

Adrian: Bring your bagel down.

Me: Okay, okay, I'm coming.

I grabbed the thickest sweater I'd packed out of my bag and slipped it over my head, not caring that I was still in my joggers from the night before.

Adrian: On second thought, eat your bagel first. Lucas might steal it.

————

The wind whipped as I crossed the dunes with my mug of coffee, one bagel fuller, and my hair up in a bun. Lucas clocked me almost immediately.

"Ava!" Lucas shouted, dropping his plastic mold and his pail and booking it across the soft sand. Adrian stayed put, in a black woolen jacket and his pajama bottoms from last night. "We found ten shark teeth! Come see. Dad has them."

He grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him. "I'm coming, I'm coming," I laughed, trying to keep my coffee somewhat stable so I didn't lose most of it.

"Dad thinks one of them is a great white tooth, but I don't think so," Lucas said.

"Really?"

Adrian sat up from his leaned-back position, wiping his sand-covered hand on his pajama bottoms before fishing through his pockets. "It's definitely a great white."

He pulled a tooth the size of my palm out from his pocket and held it out in my direction.

"Ava will know for sure," Lucas chirped, and God, he was so cute. Just because I knew what an osprey looked like didn't mean I had any clue about sharks or shark teeth, but he certainly thought I was some sort of expert.

I passed Adrian my mug of coffee in exchange for the tooth, sitting down beside him in the sand. I turned it over in my palm, inspecting it, uhm ing and ahh ing. Plucking Adrian's reading glasses from the neck of his shirt, I put them on, pretending as if they helped me see it better when, in reality, the just turned everything into a blur.

"I can confidently say, without a single doubt, and in my expert opinion…" I tried to keep a straight face as I said it, even as Lucas leaned in further and further with an adorable intrigue that made his face look almost identical to Adrian's. "…that I have no idea what this is, and you should trust your father."

Adrian's head tipped back as he laughed, the morning sun catching him at every good angle and casting shadows on the hollows under his cheekbones and jawline. It was almost infuriating how good he looked first thing in the morning, and I couldn't help but watch him, watch the way his chest rose and fell with every little sharp intake of breath between chuckles.

Until Lucas came up behind him and practically put Adrian in a headlock with his attempt at a wrestling hug. "Just google it, Dad," he bleated.

Adrian tipped forward as he held his son's forearms in place beneath his chin, lifting his feet off the ground behind him and taking his weight. "Nah, I think we should trust Ava's gut on this one."

————

Lucas raced ahead of us as we crossed the top of the dune, his short legs carrying him faster than I could even imagine in a beeline for the massive house. It left us alone for the second time, and as much as I felt the urge to cave to what I'd wanted last night, it was a little easier to fight it in the light of day when Lucas could turn around or watch us through the massive bay windows.

Adrian walked quietly to my left, watching as his son slid easily into the house. Even with the stress of his life, even with the current situation, he looked so… calm . It was as if being out here meant he could breathe easily for a little while.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked, tucking a loose strand of hair back into my bun to keep it from blowing in my face. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

His head turned to me, but his eyes lingered on the door of the house until it shut. "Of course."

"It's fairly obvious that the reason you're looking for a match is because you want a second parent for Lucas," I said. In the sliding glass door of the kitchen, Lucas cupped his hands and smushed his face up against the glass, watching us for a second before taking off somewhere else. "But wouldn't it be better for you to find someone that you want to love as well? I don't want to overstep a boundary here, and believe me, I understand that it's not at all my place to tell you what's good for your son…but wouldn't it be better for him to see a functional, happy relationship?"

Adrian's mouth formed a hard line and his feet halted, putting me a few paces ahead of him before I could react and bring myself to stop.

"I'm sorry?—"

"I know that would be better for him, Ava," he sighed. Behind him, a puffy, thick cloud slid along the blue of the sky, covering the sun. He took a deep breath in, letting it out slowly through his nose. "If I'm being completely honest, I would prefer that he saw a loving relationship. I'm not sure he even knows what one looks like at this point. Jan died when he was six, and we were on the rocks for a couple of years before that."

I didn't know what to say to that. He hadn't mentioned her to me up until now, and although I knew the small summary Dad had told me over dinner last month, I wasn't sure if I should make that known or keep my mouth shut. I wanted to offer my sympathies. But there wasn't a single part of me that knew if he would accept that with open arms.

His eyes met mine in a flash of blue as the wind battered us, sending his untamed hair flying. "I shouldn't, but can I vent to you for a moment?"

I blinked. I wasn't expecting that. "Of course."

"I don't know how much David told you or if he told you anything," he started, taking the smallest step toward me and bridging the gap. I still couldn't reach him if I wanted to, but it felt like an inkling of trust that neither of us should be giving each other. "But what happened with Jan…it wrecked me. I was blindsided by it completely. There were signs, of course, that she was cheating I mean, but I was so wrapped up in my work and Lucas that I didn't think anything of it. She had more rehearsals than normal, or so I was made to believe. But she was with someone else the whole time."

Rehearsals. Oh, fuck. Little tidbits of memories from when I was a teenager filtered in—going to a musical back in Boston with my parents and Adrian, getting to go on the stage after it was finished. That was why he had said no Broadway cast members . And I'd fought with him to try to get a reason out of him.

"I…I'm so sorry, I completely forgot she was an actress?—"

A breathy, half-hearted chuckle left his lips. "It's okay. You were, what, fifteen? I doubt you were even paying much attention to us back then. You had your own things going on."

I swallowed. I couldn't tell him how wrong he was, not if my fucking life depended on it. I'd take that stupid teenage obsession to my grave.

"My point is, I didn't expect any of it. So, when my phone rang at two in the morning on a Thursday night, I didn't even check the screen. I was expecting the sound of her voice on the other end, letting me know that the final show of that run had gone well and that their wrap-up party was over, that she'd be home soon. I wasn't expecting a fucking police officer to tell me she'd been in an accident."

His gaze drifted behind me briefly before snapping back to mine. A muscle ticked in his jaw, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the right words. It took everything in me to not just hug him, but if Lucas was somewhere at the windows behind me, I didn't want to add anything to the confusion that would already come from this trip.

"The man that was with her in the car was in the cast for the show, too, so I didn't think anything of it then. I was a fucking wreck, yes, but I didn't doubt her for a second," he explained. The warble in his voice cracked a fucking hole in my chest. "I was grieving. I was explaining to a six-year-old over and over that his mother wasn't coming home. It wasn't until days later, when the police finally handed over her phone and the rest of her belongings, that I put the pieces together. So, I had to grieve again —not just for the loss of my wife, but for the woman I thought she was, for the breakdown of a relationship that I didn't get an ounce of closure from."

He pushed his hair back with one hand, his gaze breaking from mine.

"It's not that I think Lucas wouldn't benefit from seeing me happy and in love," he rasped. "I don't think I'm able to anymore. And I need to be honest with myself about that, and honest with whoever I'm with about it. Lucas already knows. He understands, as much as an eight-year-old can. I genuinely hope that he can learn to navigate those waters on his own when he's older, but I just…I don't think I can give him that, as much as it kills me."

His words felt like cement in the pit of my stomach. I shouldn't have pressed him on this, shouldn't have judged him for it when he'd made it clear he was comfortable before. I felt like a fucking monster for pushing him to give me answers up on the forty-fourth floor of the Darkwater building. "I'm sorry," I offered again, glancing over my shoulder to check the windows for any sign of Lucas.

"You don't need to?—"

Closing the distance in two steps, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down into a hug. He froze. "I do," I insisted. "I shouldn't have pushed you on this. We'll find you someone, under your terms. No questions asked."

His reluctance to accept my hug shook me a little until his arms snaked around my back, pulling me in just a little too close, a little too intimately. His cold fingertips brushed against the sliver of exposed skin on my lower back, and I nearly lost my breath.

Calm the fuck down, Ava.

"Thank you."

"I will still need to ask you questions about other things," I clarified, loosening my arms as a signal that he could let me go. He didn't. "So maybe not, no questions asked. Some questions asked?"

He laughed against the shell of my ear, his arms squeezing me just a tad. "I can live with some questions asked. "

————

The early afternoon sun had heated the day enough that we could relax on the lawn without worrying about keeping warm. Grace was still unwell, and Adrian had given her the rest of the day off. Lucas drove around on the grass in his electric go-kart, leaving tire marks in a circle over and over as he did donuts. Adrian sat in the lounger beside me, one leg on either side of the long footrest and his laptop positioned between his thighs.

I tried to focus on the words in Jane Austen's Persuasion , tried to get the letters to make the right shapes in my mind so I could absorb it. But I found my mind drifting over and over again, off into daydreams or memories or the words Adrian had said to me earlier, and I had to keep rereading paragraphs or entire pages after realizing that I'd skimmed over the words without understanding them. I'd read one singular line over and over and over again, devouring it, savoring it. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. But it eluded me now, and it wasn't hitting like it used to.

The crunch of feet on the grass behind me easily pulled me back out of the book easily, and I looked over my shoulder in search of the sound. Mrs. Henderson approached with a platter of food in one hand, a bottle of wine and two glasses in her other, and a blanket tucked up under her arm.

She left us to it, and after a quick back and forth with Lucas to get him to abandon the go-kart for lunch, we settled quietly into an impromptu picnic.

"We could head over to the lighthouse in Montauk tomorrow," Adrian suggested, passing Lucas his plate of sliced meat and cheese and the cup of juice Mrs. Henderson had so easily balanced on the tray of food. There was even a backup ham and cheese sandwich for him.

"Yes! I can race Ava up the stairs," Lucas beamed.

Adrian poured out a glass of wine for me and handed it over, his face deadly serious. I didn't bother checking the label—I didn't want to know how much it cost this time. "He will absolutely beat you. It's not worth it."

I didn't doubt that for a second.

"Dad, don't tell her that," Lucas groaned, taking a bite of the backup sandwich before tucking into a slice of what looked like chorizo. "That ruins the fun."

"A lie is still a lie if it's by omission," Adrian said, barely containing his chuckle as he took a sip of wine. "Would you be up for heading over there and losing in a stair-climbing race, Ava?"

"You know what? I think I'd quite enjoy losing a race to him," I laughed, leaning over toward Lucas and ruffling his hair.

He leaned into it, his body swaying back and forth like a dog, in a fit of infectious giggles?—

And his juice spilled all over my top and lap.

"Shit—Wait, sorry, I shouldn't say that in front of you," I stammered, lifting myself up onto my knees and pressing a handful of napkins that Lucas handed me into my shirt. The red splotch spread across the white fabric, deepening, staining .

"Dad says shit all the time."

"Lucas," Adrian groaned. "You know better than to say that."

"There was an opportunity!"

Adrian rolled his eyes as he pushed himself to his feet, holding a hand out. "Come on. Let's see if Mrs. Henderson can get that stain out before it sets."

I took his hand, and he hoisted me up to my feet.

"Don't touch the wine, Lucas. And stay there."

————

"It should come out," Mrs. Henderson said, lifting and dunking the fabric into the deep basin in the laundry room.

"It's honestly fine if it won't," I insisted. With my arms wrapped around my mostly bare torso, I felt a little out of place in front of a woman I didn't know very well. But it was just the two of us in here, and I could live with her seeing me in my bra. "I thought you were a cook?"

She shrugged. "I do a bit of everything, too. But cooking is what I prefer to do." She lifted the shirt again, and the stain had paled significantly. "The only shirt I've got in here is Lucas' from last night. You might need to make a break for it back to your room."

For fucks sake.

I turned the handle on the door and slipped out into the little hallway that separated the laundry area from the kitchen. The house was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop, and I assumed my modesty was safe—until I turned the corner and nearly ran into the back of Adrian as he leaned against the kitchen counter, his gaze fixed on the window that looked out at Lucas.

"Shit," I breathed, slipping my body back behind the corner to cover myself.

Adrian turned, his eyes meeting mine. I covered the bit of me that he could potentially see from my position, my skin flaring with heat almost instantly. "Why are you?—"

"There weren't any other shirts in there," I hissed. "Can you go…"

My sentence trailed off as I realized what a horrible, catastrophically terrible idea it would be for him to get me a shirt out of my bag. Why the fuck did I bring my vibrator?

"…actually, scratch that, can you just get me a pillow or something from the couch?"

His eyes rolled dramatically. "A pillow ?"

"Please."

"Christ, Ava, just have mine." Before I could even protest, he was hauling the fabric up and over his head with one hand, baring his goddamn chest to me as if it was nothing. Every curve, every ripple of muscle that pulled at his skin drew my attention like a blazingly bright, neon exit sign.

He held the shirt out to me.

It took everything in me to grab it and look away.

————

The sound of the sliding glass door opening behind me cut through the crickets and the toads, and I didn't need to look to guess who it was.

"He was out the moment his head hit the pillow," Adrian said, appearing beside my rocking chair on the back porch with a glass of wine held out. I looked up at him, taking in the softness of his face now that his one worry was sleeping upstairs. "Have a drink with me, Ava."

Hesitantly, I took the glass from him and pulled my knees up to my chest. "Okay."

His jacket snugly around him, he sank into the rocking chair beside mine with a huff, his breath forming a little cloud of steam in the significantly colder air. He lifted his glass to his mouth, the deep red of the wine slipping past his lips, and God , all I could think of was how they'd tasted after he'd kissed me on the boat.

That hint of wine, but also the rest of him .

"Think it's your turn to open up," he said, breathing out a chuckle as he swirled the wine in its glass.

God fucking dammit. I should have expected this. "What do you mean?"

"Can I ask you some questions for once?" he asked, his gaze meeting mine as his lips tipped up in a smirk.

Reluctantly, I nodded and took a sip of my wine. It tasted suspiciously like the wine he'd given me on his boat, but I wasn't a connoisseur. It could have been anything.

"Why the alias and alter ego?"

I snorted. "Easy. Because I didn't want my dad to find out that I was going on dates with all types of different people. He wants me to end up with someone who can provide for me, but I think he forgets I'm the only person in his will."

His lips tightened. "Thought that might be why," he said. "Can't be easy growing up with a father like yours. I love the guy, don't get me wrong, but he's made some… questionable choices. And he's impossible to say no to."

"Yeah. I dated this guy in my junior year of high school, Henry—it was right after you and Jan moved to New York, and right before my dad followed you and moved his business," I explained, cringing at myself for even letting it slip that I remembered exactly when he'd left. "He was the first guy I ever slept with, and Dad found out. I thought he'd be mad at me, but instead, he hired a private fucking investigator to find out everything about the family. Income, address, degrees, the whole nine yards. He was proud when he realized that Henry was well off. I didn't even know it."

Adrian sucked in air through his teeth. "Why am I not surprised?"

I hugged my knees a little tighter, the relief of just talking about the stress my father added to my life helping me relax into whatever this conversation was. "I did get my masters in contemporary art, for the record. That wasn't a lie. But my dad fucking hated it. My BA in business wasn't enough, apparently."

"I'm sorry?—"

"And he won't stop badgering me to find someone," I continued, not even caring that I was steamrolling whatever he was saying. Adrian had opened a faucet in me that I didn't realize needed to be opened. "I'm twenty-fucking-five, for God's sake. And I know damn well that unless it's someone he deems appropriate, he'll tear the whole thing down. No one under a certain income bracket. No one unsuccessful , whatever that means. Preferably someone in finance, if he has a say in it."

"Damn, out of the running, then," Adrian joked. The stone in my gut that he was so aptly named after only sunk further.

"Honestly, Adrian, if you were anyone other than my father's friend, he'd probably celebrate that I found a decent guy to fuck me." My cheeks heated instantly as I realized what had slipped out of my mouth, but I couldn't take it back. I downed the rest of my glass of wine and avoided meeting his gaze at all costs. "He'd hound you to put a ring on my finger and knock me up. Probably force me into some gigantic puffy white dress and throw us an extravagant wedding, invite everyone he knows, and fill it with photographers to sell my image to the press, who couldn't give two shits about who I am."

"Aves—"

"What?" I laughed, forcing myself to stare out at the darkness of the dunes. "Doesn't sound good to you? I'm not surprised. I don't think there's a person on earth who could handle being with me when my father is the way he is."

The answering silence that hung around me was far too thick to breathe through. I set my glass down on the little table between our chairs, using both of my hands to pull my knees just that tiny bit closer to my chest.

"And without someone in my life that can handle him and satisfy what he wants out of a partner for me, my only other option to please him is this fucking business," I continued. My chest felt too tight, like I was breathing too little air, and for a horrible second, I wondered if I was going to pass out—at least I was already sitting down. "But if I can't even get this right for you, someone I know well, how the fuck am I supposed to do it for strangers? How am I supposed to do anything right when he's breathing down my neck?"

"I'm so sorry," Adrian said. His hand moved, and I watched from the corner of my eye as he carefully swapped my empty glass for his half-full one. "Maybe I can talk to him. Get him to calm down about it."

The backs of my eyes burned as I reached for the glass. I needed it. "I don't think he'd listen."

"Could be worth a shot, Aves."

I took a sip of the wine, holding it on my tongue and letting it linger for a little longer than I had before. That had to be the same wine. "I'll think about it," I sniffled, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my sweater.

I looked across at him finally, meeting his eyes around the curve of my wine glass. The way he watched me, the intensity of his stare, for once felt more like a thousand helium balloons tied to my body and lifting me up instead of cement blocks. The silence felt less heavy, the weight of the world falling off of my shoulders, the crinkles in the paper ironing out—if only a little.

But it was charged, too.

We hadn't outwardly spoken about what we'd done outside of that night at the charity ball, and even mentioning it out loud felt like a sin. But I felt lighter, too. Like whatever sense of calm he gained from being out here was infectious, oozing into me and claiming all of my problems for itself. The walls were down. The barriers were gone.

For both of us, it seemed, from the way his gaze dropped to my lips.

"Adrian," I breathed. "Don't."

He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing, and it looked as though it took everything in him to turn away from me. "I won't."