Chapter 20
Avery
As soon as I picked up the other line, I could tell something was very wrong.
Hell, I could tell that by how late I was receiving this phone call and with no warning text to let me know she’d be calling ahead of time. Carrie wasn’t one for idle chitchat and the humdrum of keeping up with the daily lives of those she knew.
Me, being her ex, even less so.
So when I heard that small sniffle on the other end of the line, I prepared myself for the worse. “Hey, what’s going on?”
She let out a short sigh, but it didn’t at all sound like she was frustrated or tired. It was the kind of sound that you’d make when trying to calm down before an absolute breakdown hit. “I’m sorry... I didn’t know who else to call.”
Immediately, that put me on edge. “Everything okay?”
“Ryan’s out of town for the week on some business thing and I can’t get a hold of him and his parents aren’t answering either—”
“Carrie.” My voice held firm. Her spiraling wasn’t helping anyone, least of all me when she’d clearly called me for a reason. “Tell me what happened.”
“Eva’s sick. I had to bring her to the hospital because her fever wasn’t going down. They admitted her and now no one’s telling me anything. I heard one of the nurses talking about an infection in her brain and now I’m freaking out—”
“I’ll be right there,” came my instant response.
No way was I going to leave her to deal with all of that by herself. She may be my ex-wife but that didn’t diminish the care that I still held for her. And for Eva.
Ryan could get over himself if this ended up pissing him off. If I were in his shoes, I’d be grateful to have someone keeping my fiancée company while their daughter was laid up in a hospital bed, most likely unconscious and hooked up to a bunch of machines.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.”
“Don’t be. It’ll take me about an hour to get into the city. Text me what hospital you’re at, okay?”
She let out a relieved breath, sounding a little more settled than when I’d first picked up her call. Her voice was still small as she spoke, but no longer had that tiny tremor to it. “Thank you, Avery. I’ll see you soon.”
“Of course.”
Ending the call, I flipped over to my text thread with her and waited for her pinned location to pop up. The skin around my knuckles was tight for some reason, causing me to glance over at my hand—
Fuck. Brandon.
Whipping around, I yanked the driver’s side door open to peer into the cab.
He was already sitting up with his chair upright, cleaned up and tucked back into his pants like the last fifteen minutes had never happened.
His hair was combed back from his face, looking artfully messy like it always did.
The only remnants of what we’d done was now crusting over on my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
He was already shaking his head, though, reaching for the seat belt to pull it across his body. “Don’t be. You can drop me off at the shop since it’s closer. I have some paperwork to get through anyway.”
I tightened my hand around my phone hard enough that it was going to leave an impression against my palm. It vibrated twice with Carrie’s incoming text.
Fuck, this was not how I wanted any of this to end. Blowing him off like this after we just...
I swallowed. “Bran.”
“We’re all good, Avery. Emergencies happen.” But he wasn’t even looking at me while he was saying it, doing everything in his power to avoid making eye contact with me while fiddling with his belt and then the strap that went across his chest.
“Yeah.”
I was so fucking torn.
Carrie needed me. She wouldn’t have called otherwise if I wasn’t a last resort.
If there was going to be bad news delivered to her about Eva, she needed someone there.
And I wanted to be there for it, too. Eva wasn’t my kid but I still loved her.
She was a sweet little girl and would always, in a weird way, be like my baby niece.
She was the reason I even came to the conclusion that having a family one day would be something I looked forward to and wasn’t some far off obligation that I was staving off.
The worst part about all of this was that I was leaving Brandon behind once again to run back to my other life. Back to my other obligations and responsibilities that would eventually force us to part ways in the end.
I could stay, tell Carrie that something came up. The only downside was that the guilt would eat me alive.
“We should get going.” His voice was soft as he spoke.
My heart lurched in my chest.
Sliding back into my seat, I slotted my phone back into the compartment, the screen automatically connecting to my car’s console and pulling up Carrie’s location.
Brandon said nothing while I got buckled in, nor when I pulled back out onto the main street and headed back toward his house instead of the shop like he’d requested.
I doubted he actually had anything to get done at the shop—he was simply trying to make himself as non-inconvenient as possible, despite it being me who was the one bailing on us tonight.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the way his fingers twisted together in his lap while he stared out the passenger window.
There was so much I wanted to say, to explain, but nothing was coming out. No matter how hard I was trying to force my mouth to work out some kind of sentence to apologize again.
What could I even say to make any of this not awkward as hell, though?
I’d felt kind of lost and confused when he’d left me last night after blowing me and now here I was returning the favor.
I’d tried not to read too much into him leaving as anything other than a spontaneous response to what the hell we’d gotten up to.
The tentative approach to seeking him out at the shop to test the waters again, to see if he was going to avoid me at all costs or if he’d just been surprised by the turn of events, had been nerve wracking.
Finding out it was the latter was more of a fucking relief than getting that phone call about my father’s death.
And now I was fucking it all up.
When I pulled up to his house, he barely let me put the car in park before he was unhooking himself out of his seat and popping the door open.
My knee-jerk reaction was to snatch his arm and yank him back into his seat so that we could talk but again, what could I say?
He paused, grabbing the side of my door before shutting it, ducking down to look at me to say, “I hope, um... whatever’s going on turns out okay.”
My smile was tense. “Thank you. I’ll call you?”
His expression faltered—flickering between uncertain and pained. “Yeah. Sure.”
When he slammed the door shut, the entire car rattled from the force. His steps were quick going up to his front door, unlocking it and disappearing inside without a wave or anything to say goodbye.
I slammed my head back against my seat, groaning.
I’d make it up to him later.
Somehow.
As much as I hated to ruin our plans like this, for now I needed to be there for Carrie and Eva.