16. Adrian

Chapter 16

Adrian

T he downpour of rain I'd woken to at five in the morning did absolutely nothing to ease the sting of a cold, half-empty bed.

I'd made it almost two full days now without caving to my instincts with regard to her. The temptation was maddening, driving me to depravity every time I stepped into the shower, and this morning had been no different.

But as I relaxed on the sofa and watched her play a board game with my son, I couldn't help but feel bad for imagining her the way that I had after she'd nearly cried last night. A part of me, as basic and absurd as it was, had risen to that—I'd wanted to fix it. Whether that was making her forget about it for as long as I could, or talking to David to get him to get off her case a little, it didn't matter. I just wanted to make it better.

But more than anything, I just wanted to fucking cave .

Especially now. She was in her pajamas, her hair up, her attention focused wholly on Lucas. She was far better with him than I could have ever imagined, and my mind kept pointing out that she was exactly what I was looking for. She ticked the most important box.

"I'm sorry we can't go to the lighthouse today," Ava said quietly as she rolled the dice on the board. She moved her little figurine six paces forward. "Maybe another time?"

Another time.

"It's okay," Lucas shrugged. "This is fun, too. I like hanging out with you."

It was such a flippant sentence, but it felt like a fucking dagger to my chest.

————

With the cookies in the oven and Lucas practically coated in flour and sugar, the calm settled in again. I could get through today. We all could.

Even with the rain battering the house, Lucas found a way to have fun with it—he drew little stick figures in the pile of flour on the counter, coating his hands further, much to Mrs. Henderson's dismay as she tried to clean around him.

"Lucas," I said, trying not to crack a grin as he drew another little figure right in the spot she'd just wiped down. I made a mental note to make her tip this weekend heftier than usual. "Why don't you go take a shower, bud?"

"Okay!" He jumped down off the step stool, sending a cloud of flour dancing through the air.

"Oh my God, he's covered," Ava laughed.

I pushed off the counter I'd been leaning on and walked up to him. "Arms up, Luc."

He lifted his arms above his head. I tried to keep most of the flour contained in his shirt as I pulled it off of him, but it rained down through the neck hole and onto the top of his head.

"You're so lucky you're cute," Mrs. Henderson deadpanned.

"Just use the downstairs shower. Walk very carefully, and do not shake your head," I instructed.

He fucking nodded before taking off in the direction of the bathroom.

Ava and I helped with the cleanup—I couldn't bear to leave it entirely up to Mrs. Henderson. But the moment she'd left the kitchen to put Lucas's shirt in the wash, I couldn't help but bring myself closer to Ava, couldn't help but see her in that light again.

She'd done so much unnecessary work this weekend, so much that hadn't been expected of her. I'd hoped that this would at least give her a bit of a vacation, but with Grace unwell and the amount of work I had to do, parenting had somehow fallen on her.

"Hey," I said, slotting in beside her against the kitchen island.

"Hi," she replied. She lifted a brow at me.

I rolled my eyes at her questioning stare. "I'm sorry if this weekend hasn't gone how you were hoping."

The brow dropped, and instead, her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I wasn't expecting you to have to help me so much with Lucas, and I appreciate what you've done," I explained.

She let loose a breath. She… fuck, she thought I meant something else.

Does she want that? Still?

"Oh, don't worry about that. He's a good kid." The little smile she gave me didn't quite reach her eyes. "And the stain came out of my shirt, so he's done literally nothing wrong, apart from driving Mrs. Henderson insane."

I snorted. "Yeah, I'll tip her well for that. Don't worry."

Her gaze met mine and held.

"You're great with him," I said, and I didn't care how she took it. I wanted it known. "I know I insinuated that maybe Lucas wouldn't be okay with this back at David's, and I should have clarified sooner, but it's been eating me up all day. If it wasn't clear, I said that to try to get out of it. Not because of any preconceived notion I had that you two wouldn't get along for whatever reason."

Her chuckle and the genuine little smile that accompanied it made my chest ache, made my hands twitch in her direction. "I figured, but thank you for saying that."

The green of her eyes was dulled in the artificial light of the kitchen, but they captivated me nonetheless. Rain pelted like bullets against the glass sliding doors, and in that brief flicker of the time we had alone, all I wanted to do was take her outside with me. I wanted to feel the rain on my skin, wanted to live in the moment for a minute and think about nothing but her and the way it coated me like the never-ending downpour. I wanted to let it try to wash it all away and be okay with the realization that no amount of scrubbing would get her out of my skin.

I wanted to fucking kiss her.

"You're doing it again," she breathed.

"Doing what?"

"Looking at me like that." She swallowed, the sound almost audible. "One of them will be back any minute, Adrian."

The longer I watched, the more obvious it was that she was disappointed. I should have done it.

I shouldn't have backed down.

————

The rain didn't let up for a second for the rest of the day, and as Ava and I sat beside each other on the floor by the fireplace, the heat of it felt like a heaviness that I couldn't quite shake. She looked up at me, her hair a mess, covered in a thin, satin pajama set that I was positive didn't include a bra. My will was fucking breaking—I had no one to hide from with everyone in bed, nothing to hold me back except the glass of wine in my hand.

"The ideal first date you told Emily about," she said, breaking the beat of silence as she looked back down at her open binder. She sipped at her third glass of wine. It was the same wine I'd served her last night, and the same one I'd served her on the boat. "Do you want me to book your dates for that kind of thing? Art museum first, and then you can decide where it goes from there?"

"Fuck, no," I scoffed. It wasn't a lie—I didn't want that with someone else, and I'd been unable to avoid that realization all day. "Dinners are fine."

"But that's what you?—"

"I know what I answered before, Ava."

She looked at me, her gaze bouncing between my lips and my eyes, and temptation flared again.

"I don't want to do that with someone else," I said.

Okay, she mouthed. She wrote something beside my original answer, but her hand obscured it from sight. "If you could do anything else for work, what would you choose?"

"Travel photographer," I answered.

She hesitated again, but marked it down. "I know you said you don't care what profession she has," she said slowly, tapping her pen against the paper. "But in an ideal world, if you could choose…?"

I swallowed another hefty sip of wine. My inhibitions were on the fucking floor, and I wasn't going to try to hide that from her right now. I didn't want to. "I don't know, Ava. Aspiring art teacher. Matchmaker."

I set my glass down on the coffee table in front of us as she watched me, her mouth parted just a hair, her gaze locked on me. "You can't just say things like that to me."

"I can," I insisted. "I did."

The red on her cheeks spread, little blotches of pink sprouting across her neck, her jaw. "Please?—"

She stopped herself the moment my hand pressed into her cheek, the intense warmth of it heating my palm. I tucked a hanging lock of auburn hair behind her ear and her breathing quickened, her body frozen despite the heat of the fire that I could feel behind her.

Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine rapidly.

"Ask me who I'm looking for," I rasped, dragging my thumb across her bottom lip. So fucking soft. "Ask me what I want. The answer is the same."

She swallowed, and I could feel her throat move against my pink finger. God, I wanted to wrap my hand around it. "Who?—"

"You."

I leaned in closer, bridging the gap, giving myself the one thing I'd so desperately craved for days, for weeks .

But the heavy padding sound of footsteps stopped me just before I could reach her lips.

"Mr. Stone?"

If looks could kill, I was certainly trying as I turned to look to the entrance of the living room. Grace stood there in a nightgown that covered her from neck to toe, the color back in her face tenfold with a hefty painting of blush across her cheeks.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

It physically pained me to retreat from Ava. She hadn't looked away from me with her eyes as wide as saucers, but her mouth fell a little bit more open as I pulled back. My hand left her cheek. "It's fine," I said to Grace. "How are you feeling?"

She nodded. "Much better. I wanted to let you know that I should be good to go tomorrow morning if we're still planning on heading back to the city."

I swallowed. "Glad to hear it."