Catching Pretty (Lovely Broken Doll #2)

26. Ava

AVA

P erhaps I was a coward. But I couldn’t tell Ty.

Mona’s letters lay hidden back where I’d found them, tucked into the secret drawer of the jewelry box.

I couldn’t bear to show him what I’d found. Couldn’t risk how it might unhinge him further. Couldn’t stomach the look that revelation might carve into his face.

Perhaps that made me selfish. Or perhaps it was self-preservation.

As the days blurred together, the guilt became easier to ignore until it sank under the surface.

Just like this house, I let Mona Donahue fade into the shadows, her pain sinking into the walls, her suffering becoming another ghost, because all I felt—all I could bear to feel—was my own.

Ty’s routines became my prison. He put me through daily workouts that left my muscles trembling, every inch of me aching and sore, reminding me I was alive only by the intensity of the pain .

And then there were the therapy sessions—those were worse, digging under my skin, peeling back layers I’d buried long ago. They shattered me, mind and soul, stripping me bare and leaving me raw.

Each day blurred into the next, a steady rhythm of agony, physical and emotional, until all I knew was pain.

Pain in every breath, every movement, and every memory I dared to unearth.

Yet somehow, the ache settled in, coiling around me until it was almost… normal. Predictable. Almost safe.

The irony wasn’t lost on me—that even in the hands of my captor, routine could become a lifeline. There was something about the predictability of it, the steady beat of exertion and exhaustion, that felt like a twisted kind of comfort.

I hated admitting it, but the rhythm grounded me, each day as familiar as the last.

A prisoner’s schedule, maybe, but it was something I could count on, a strange, bitter solace that held me steady in the storm.

And perhaps we might have kept going like that all summer, locked in that dark and painful familiarity, if it hadn’t been for what I remembered.

Training got harder as I got fitter.

Ty made me run with him side by side on the treadmills, him managing my speed and incline without input from me.

Whenever I put my hands on the armrests to jump off the racing belt, Ty would shove them away. His simple “No” was all it took for me to pound my feet faster even as the garden outside the barred windows of the ballroom flashed with bright-white lights .

Ty would spot me, his intense stare focused, as I lifted the weights he’d selected, always heavier than I thought I could lift. And I was always surprised that I could.

He pushed me until my muscles trembled—one more rep, just one more rep—until I could barely walk. Until I could barely lift my arms.

Then he’d be there, pulling me into his arms and lowering me into yet another warm Epsom salt bath after he’d stripped me of my sweaty clothes.

In the boxing ring, Ty would circle me wearing only his gray sweatpants and a set of boxing wraps as black as the ink that branded him, my heart thudding hard and not just from exertion.

Sweat poured from our bodies and when we grappled together, it took clawing with nails to hold on.

He’d force me into a corner and push against me till I couldn’t breathe, yanking on my braid till I was forced to turn my head and sink my teeth into his wrist.

He encouraged savagery and I liked pleasing him so I became savage.

Slowly, my body began to change. The soft lines becoming defined, muscles I didn’t know I had emerging.

My mind shifted, too, but more painfully.

At first, after each therapy session, I’d shatter into a million pieces, denying the memories that surfaced—denying the pain, the truth—and he’d have to scoop all my jagged pieces up and hold me in a broken pile until I could put myself back together again.

Then I stopped shattering and became angry .

Ty would hold up his palms, bracing for impact, and let me pummel them—pummel him —screaming until my raw knuckles split open and my throat burned.

His chest would bloom with bruises, black and blue, but he never flinched. He never stopped me. He never complained. He just stood there, took the rage I threw at him, swallowed it, and let me pour it all out until I was empty. Until he became the only safe place I had left.

Finally, my anger fizzled out from a wildfire to burning embers.

I tried to negotiate a way out—with myself, with him.

Maybe if I just went through the motions, if I let the memories stay buried where they belonged and just pretended to remember, I could still escape this nightmare.

But this never worked. My past was insidious, like a nightmare that never ended. Like a ghost that wouldn’t stay buried.

I pleaded with Ty. “Can’t I stop now? Isn’t it enough that I remember most of it now?”

I promised to be good, to follow the rules, if only I didn’t have to relive the past anymore.

I tried to convince him, and myself, that I didn’t need to remember. “You can help me in other ways,” I whispered, desperate to make it end without facing the whole truth.

But he would always say the same thing: “There’s no way out until you face it all.”

So I’d nod, defeated, and take the glass vial from him, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time would be the last.

As promised, Ty opened more of the house to me. More and more rooms were opened up, unlocked for me.

A library which used to be my favorite room in the house, with soaring ceilings and heavy oak shelves skirted by sliding ladders that housed every kind of book under the sun.

A sunroom, bathed in natural light, where I’d sit at the window boxes and stare out at the wind rushing through the leaves or where I’d take my books to read with the sun dappled across my legs, warming them.

A game room, where Ty would challenge me to games of chess after dinner. Games I always seemed to win, despite my being a complete beginner.

But my favorite was the piano room, centered around a stark white grand piano that gleamed beneath the soft glow of the iron chandelier. The room was circular, with a high-domed ceiling that turned even the softest notes into rich, resonant sounds.

I gasped when I saw the piano, and memories flooded back—of a younger Ty, playing while I lingered in the doorway.

Back then, he played the classics—Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy—pieces I could easily recognize, even if I wasn’t a musician.

But now, as he sat at the piano with me beside him at his insistence, his black sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms, he played melodies I’d never heard before.

Each note ached with haunting beauty, striking deep in my chest, stirring something raw inside me. Unshed tears burned at the backs of my eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, after he’d finished yet another piece I didn’t know.

His long fingers traced over the polished keys. “I called that one Hummingbird’s Hymn. ”

I blinked, his nickname for me pulling at my heartstrings. “Wait… You wrote them?”

He nodded, casually playing a few minor chords. “In prison, there wasn’t much to do.”

I frowned. “They had a piano in prison?”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “No.”

I stared at his profile, watching the way his hair fell into his face, the way he looked so focused, yet distant. “You wrote those songs in your head ?”

He shrugged as if it were nothing.

“This one,” he said, letting his fingers glide over the keys again, “I call Ava’s Lullaby .”

The music began to flow, softer now, intimate.

His forearm brushed mine as he played, and every touch sent shivers up my spine.

I closed my eyes, letting the melody wash over me, but my mind couldn’t help drifting. I pictured him alone in his cell, composing these songs, thinking of me while I was out there—free.

Free… and having forgotten him.

Guilt surged through me, sharp and biting. He had been rotting in prison, while I had pushed all my memories of him so deep, I’d nearly erased him from my life.

And now, he was here, playing lullabies for the girl who had moved on, while he had been trapped in a world that no longer remembered him and didn’t care.

My heart broke for him, and this time I let my tears fall freely, rolling down my cheeks, even after the last lingering note of the song had faded into silence.

I gasped when I felt his lips on my cheek, his warm breath, the softness of his tongue as he gently wiped away my tears. His tenderness caught me off guard, sending another wave of emotion through me.

“Don’t cry for me, hummingbird,” he murmured, his voice soft yet steady, a strange mixture of command and comfort.

I kept my eyes shut, unable to look at him. “But it’s so… sad .”

“Sadness… pain… they shape you,” he said, his voice deeper now, thoughtful.

I opened my eyes, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was distant, as if he was seeing something beyond the walls of this room, beyond the mansion.

“Like how the wind shapes the cliffs over time, wearing them down but also revealing their strength. Trauma can do that to you—carve you into something better, something unbreakable.”

His gaze flicked to mine, catching me in his stare. “The parts that hurt… they can become the most beautiful, if you let them.”

Pain could break you, yes. But it could also transform you. And maybe, just maybe, it was transforming us both in ways we couldn’t yet understand.

Sunday, I came to realize, was therapy day. I came to hate Sundays. No matter how many times it rolled around, I dreaded it, the feeling settling like a stone in my gut.

The paralysis drug usually crept in slowly, a dark cloud of foreboding that started at the base of my spine and crawled its way upward .

But tonight it wasn’t slow. It crawled up my back like a spider, skittering beneath my skin, fast and erratic.

Maybe, deep down, I already knew what was coming. I could feel the weight of it—darker than any memory I’d yet faced.

Heavier than last week’s revelation.

My stomach didn’t feel good.

I tried to take another sip of my hot chocolate, because the professor said good little girls show that they’re grateful by always finishing their sweet treats, but I gagged and spit it right back into the steaming mug.

There seemed to be too much saliva in my mouth and a strange heat churned in my belly.

Hot chocolate spilled over the wobbling edge of the mug when I set it down on the side table next to the red velvet couch.

I ran into the professor’s bathroom with my hand over my mouth. But I did not make it to toilet.

I threw up on the cold, gray marble floor. I coughed and heaved till the muscles in my stomach burned.

Tears fell straight from my eyes into my mess, the acrid smell of it nearly making me sick again.

“What’s going on in here? Ava?”

The professor’s voice cut through the air behind me, and I froze, a chill rushing down my spine as a wave of nausea twisted in my gut.

His tone was almost too calm, calculated—but there was something sharp beneath it.

I turned my head slowly, my stomach lurching as I faced him, trying to mask the dread clawing at me.

His eyes narrowed, his expression shifting as he registered my discomfort and the vomit on the tiles .

A flicker of alarm broke through his usual controlled demeanor.

“Ava,” he pressed, his voice lower now, “how long have you been feeling sick?”

On the red couch, it felt like dozens of unseen hands were pressing me down, clammy fingers digging into my burning flesh, suffocating me.

I gasped for air, tried to scream no! but my lungs wouldn’t expand, my limbs frozen against the velvet. Panic clawed at my chest.

For a moment, I saw Ty leaning over me, his eyes wide with fear, his lips moving to say something.

But then his face blurred and shifted, morphing into the professor’s cold, calculating stare.

“Ava… when was the last time you had your period?”

The paralytic felt like it flooded my veins, faster and stronger than ever before, a merciless tide I couldn’t hold back.

Panic jolted through me, fierce and helpless, as the drug latched on to my senses, drowning them in shadows.

No. I didn’t want to know what waited in that darkness. I wasn’t ready to know what came next, to watch the truth unspooling in vivid, brutal detail.

But I couldn’t scream, couldn’t claw my way out. I could only sink deeper, spiraling into the pitch-black depths that clawed back at me, closing in with a suffocating, inescapable grip.

The light above me was so white and so blinding that even when I squeezed my eyes shut, I could feel it stabbing like a knife straight into my burning brain.

But when I tried to shield myself with my forearms, I discovered that my wrists were bound to the cold metal table I’d been laid out on. Panic surged like a shot of adrenaline through my veins. It only got worse when I realized it wasn’t just my wrists, but my ankles, thighs, and chest.

I wasn’t on the couch this time. The pad underneath me was firm, cool against my skin.

Where was I?

I struggled to lift my head to see where I was, but it was so heavy I could barely move it. Spots appeared like cigarette burns in my already hazy vision.

All I’d managed to see was a sea of shapes moving slowly in the dark.

I must be in a hospital.

I’d tried to hide my sickness from the professor. But even the smell of food made me want to vomit and I couldn’t hide it.

He’d been so angry when he found out. So angry. And… afraid.

The clatter of medical tools on a metal tray beside me made me want to whimper and cry out, but I could no longer feel my lips. Somewhere, a door slammed, sounding very far away.

“How the fuck did this happen?” a gruffy older man’s voice said. “I thought she was given the implant.”

That voice. It was… familiar. But I couldn’t place it.

“I’m sorry, a Thiarna Ard .” High Lord. “I did not want to mar her lovely skin.”

I recognized this second voice as…the professor.

He continued, “I used a contraceptive mixture that I—”

“You and your little concoctions,” the first voice spat with disdain.

More harsh clattering of metal and cold hands propped my bare feet up in strange braces, causing my nightgown to slip down my legs.

I wanted to cover myself up, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even cry out.

“You make sure she never remembers this, do you hear me?”

A doctor wearing a surgical mask loomed over me and waved a light in my eyes, turning their features into a silhouette.

I tried to beg them to help me. But my voice box wouldn’t work. I just screamed inside and pleaded with my eyes.

But for a moment, they froze.

But then they were gone, taking my hope with them.

I could hear whispers, then voices rising.

A loud crash made me jolt, like someone had thrown something across the room.

“You dare second-guess me?” the first voice yelled. “You are my fucking Heir. You will do as I say. Now… take care of it .”

Tears streamed from the sides of my paralyzed eyes as grief tore through me, sharp and sudden, like a knife slicing through my chest.

The memory rising up from the darkest corner of my mind, its edges blurred and fragmented, but unmistakable.

I had been pregnant.

Then they forced an abortion on me.

My body had once carried life, and now, there was nothing. The weight of that realization crushed me.

How had I not known? How could I have forgotten something like that?

Ty must have sensed things hadn’t gone as usual. Because he hadn’t even stripped me this time.

We weren’t on the couch. We were in my bed as he held me to his body .

I dug my fingers into Ty’s chest, needing to ground myself against the overwhelming tide of emotions threatening to sweep me under, the ache inside me spreading like poison, making my limbs feel heavy, my stomach sick.

My body had been violated in more ways than one, manipulated and used without my consent, and now, this—this hollow grief for a life I never had a chance to know.

“Ava, what did you see?” Ty’s arms tightened around me, his steady heartbeat against my own, but it did little to soothe the turmoil inside.

The loss wasn’t just physical. It was deeper than that. It was the loss of control over my own body, my own life. The violation of something so intimate, so personal.

I felt robbed, stripped bare of something precious I hadn’t even known I possessed.

My body trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold. It was from the raw, aching pain that seemed to consume every part of me.

And in Ty’s arms, I was also grieving for myself—for the girl I had been, and for the woman who was now shattered beyond recognition.

“What did you remember?” he asked in a whisper.

“Leave me alone,” I choked out, feeling the weight of those words settle over me like a crushing burden.

I gripped my stomach tightly, the knowledge of what had been done to me stabbing me like a knife.

Ty’s fingers slid down my arm to rest over mine. They trembled slightly before slipping between mine to press against my belly.

He knew. He fucking knew and he forced me to remember, anyway .

I shoved his hands away, rage boiling up inside me, the grief I couldn’t process turning to something hotter, fiercer.

“I hate you!” I screamed, pounding my fists against his chest.

Each hit was weak, fueled by the overwhelming emotions clawing inside me, but Ty just sat there, taking it.

His arms closed around me, pulling me against him, crushing me in his grip like he was afraid to let go.

I kept hitting him, harder, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t react.

His silence only made the rage in me burn brighter, made the sobs twist deeper in my throat.

Slowly the strength ebbed from me, my fists falling limply against him as I collapsed, the anger bleeding out into deep, ugly howls.

I buried my face in his chest, crying until my throat felt raw, until the pain I couldn’t name consumed me.

And through the sounds of my broken sobs, I heard him murmur, his voice like a cracked whisper in the darkness.

“I hate me, too.”