Chapter 30
AVA
It’s still dark when I wake up, the sun still an hour or two from rising.
I feel Anderson’s arm slung over my waist, his chest against my back.
We didn’t have sex—we didn’t do anything more after that kiss.
We just climbed into bed together and fell asleep.
And somehow that felt more intimate.
Being in Anderson’s arms, I realize this is the first time, in all the nights we’ve spent together over the past months, that I’ve ever woken up like this. I look for the urge to run, to sneak out of this bed and put some separation between us.
But there’s nothing.
And that terrifies me.
Marrying Anderson is supposed to be nothing but helping me appear steadier on paper—two adults, a home, a partner to prove I’m not doing this alone—and CPS will see stability, not all the messy reasons behind it.
He’s not going to adopt Georgie, and he doesn’t have to stay; once it’s all said and done, I’ll still be her only parent, and that’s safer, simpler.
We’ll get married; we’ll get CPS off our backs. We’ll divorce.
Georgie and I will move out, and I’ll be all on my own.
Again.
This marriage is just logistics, just strategy.
It has nothing to do with the way my chest tightens when he gives me that easy smile; nothing to do with the way he seems to know exactly what it feels like to have the people you love depending on you; nothing to do with the fact that the words “husband” and “wife” are supposed to mean nothing.
And yet somehow the thought of us getting divorced after all this makes it feel like they do.
I swallow, my thoughts racing faster than I can fully register them, and the anxiety in my chest begins to build. My fingers begin to prickle at the tips, goosebumps rising on my skin as a feverish heat settles over me.
I squint my eyes shut, my entire body tense as my breath becomes shallow.
The need to count them becomes overpowering, and I can’t think of anything else.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
“Ava?” The voice sounds like it’s far away, like it’s underwater, like it’s coming from somewhere deep in my head.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
“Ava?” I hear again, but it’s a little louder, a little clearer.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
“Answer me, love.” The voice is pleading, the arm around my waist tightening
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
When I get to seventeen, it’s like my lungs can finally expand again. I’m not rushing to get the breaths out just so I can count them and get to my number faster.
I hate this.
I hate feeling so controlled by my own brain, convincing me that something will happen if I don’t count, if I don’t check and recheck, if I don’t have everything “just right”.
I’m not that meek, scared version of myself anymore, the one that Jett wanted me to be. The person he perfectly molded me into—an extension of him.
He used to control me.
Now, I’m being controlled by these compulsions.
“Ava?” Anderson whispers against my bare shoulder. I feel his heartbeat against my back, and I count the beats until they begin to slow.
That’s when I finally answer, “I have OCD.”
He doesn’t say anything, just holds me closer. It grounds me in a way I haven’t felt in so long. Like there’s something holding me together—allowing me to rest and let myself fall apart.
“Thank you for telling me,” Anderson whispers, but he doesn’t ask me to say more or need me to explain.
And I think that’s what has me opening up.
“I was in an emotionally abusive relationship a couple of years ago,” I say softly.
The room is quiet, aside from the soft humming of the air conditioning.
I don’t even know what time it is, but the darkness feels like some sort of shield, urging me to go on.
“I left him, but it’s like my brain didn’t get the message that I was safe. ”
When I left Jett, I thought it would make it all better—that I would feel like myself again.
Once I was out, I’d be able to breathe again.
But it didn’t work out that way.
Once I left him, it was like my mind still thought there was danger to prepare for—it didn’t know I was safe.
I sigh, voicing thoughts I’ve never said to anyone other than my therapist. “That’s when the compulsions got really bad.”
Before, the little habits I had were quirks that I didn’t think much about.
I had never been so obsessive before. Checking locks.
Counting. Rearranging things until they felt ‘right.’ Like if I could control every tiny detail, nothing could ever trap me or hurt me like that again. Like control could save me.
I think when you live in chaos long enough, your brain starts confusing familiarity with safety.
Those months when I started managing Hey Honey’s, helping Rumi with Evee, trying to hold it all together—I was suffering in silence to the point that any moment I wasn’t concerning myself with someone else, I was drowning in my compulsions.
“I’ve noticed you count,” he says. “Is that part of the OCD?”
I nod my head, even though he can’t see me. I fight past the shame and embarrassment deep in my bones that always comes with talking about my counting and the number seventeen and how everything always needs to be “just right”—whatever the fuck that actually means to someone other than me.
“When I was six, I found my mom unconscious,” I begin, telling Anderson a story I haven’t even told my therapist. “Just like Georgie did.” My voice cracks, but I keep going.
“But I didn’t have an older sister to call.
At the time, it was just me and my mom, and I remember learning in Kindergarten that when there was an emergency, you called 911. ”
The memories come flooding back, the ones I’ve tried so hard to forget.
The fear, the anger, the intense, overwhelming sadness that I didn’t realize a six-year-old was capable of feeling.
I know why I count to seventeen. I’ve always known.
But when I was a kid, it was a pattern I liked to follow. When I was a teenager, I just thought it was because it was my favorite. As an adult, after Jett and the fire, it became my lifeline.
“Once I told her that my mom wasn’t waking up, and I gave her my name and address, she told me she was sending people who would help to our house.
” I feel my eyes prickle, but I don’t blink them away.
Maybe because I feel safe in the darkness, or maybe because I just want to feel the relief of letting them fall.
“She told me to focus on my breathing, so I did. Every time I inhaled and exhaled, she counted. It took seventeen breaths before I heard the police sirens and the ambulance.”
Anderson is quiet for a moment, but his hold on me never loosens. “I’m so sorry, love. I wish—” he stops, his forehead coming to my shoulder. “I wish I knew what to say.” His voice cracks.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I tell him, rolling over so I’m facing him. His brown waves dip onto his forehead, his bare chest warm against my palms as I snake my hands up and find his jaw, holding his face between my hands.
“I know it’s stupid, but I want to know if there’s anything I can do? Anything to help or, I don’t know, makes things easier for you.”
My heart clenches at the longing in the way his caramel eyes shine, even in the darkness of the hotel room. “I’m in therapy, I have been since things got really bad.”
“I’m in therapy too,” he says, and it further breaks down walls I’m too tired to keep intact anymore. “And I know everyone’s comfort level with therapy is different, but if you ever wanted to share that part of your OCD with me, I’m here. I’m always here.”
I raise a brow. With our eyes adjusting to the darkness, he must be able to see it. “Like come with me?”
Anderson nods. “If that’s okay.”
“I’ll think about it,” I answer, more so because I’m so caught off-guard by the question, his willingness to learn more rather than write me off as some crazy person.
“When did things get bad?” Anderson asks after a moment.
“The night of the fire, when Rumi—” I can’t even say the words. Thinking about that night, how I could’ve been there, could’ve prevented it, could’ve stopped it.
Anderson’s hand finds the back of my head, pulling me into his chest. “I know, love,” he whispers. “I know what happened that night.”
Shaking my head, I feel a tear run down my cheek. “It was my fault.”
“What?” Anderson says, pulling me even closer. “No, it wasn’t. It was that jackass who came after Rumi. And there’s nothing you could have done to have prevented it. I know. I was there. I saw how he got in and how the fire started.”
I lean back, and he lets me. “It was my fault he got into the house in the first place. Rumi and I got into a fight that day because I was going to see Jett. I think Emerson realized that little detail tonight when Jett came up, and thankfully she didn’t say anything.
” I roll my lips together, my nose prickling.
“I went to see him a few weeks after our date at the drive-in.”
I feel Anderson’s body tense, but he doesn’t say anything.
I exhale, not sure if it’s a good idea to admit what I’ve been holding in for almost a year, especially because it only has the ability to complicate this mess even more.
But now that I know what it feels like to lessen some of this weight on my shoulders, how it feels to let Anderson hold some of it for me—even if it’s just in this moment—I don’t want to stop.
“Our date that night… it was supposed to just be a fun, “no-strings-attached” sort of thing. At least that’s what I told myself. But when you told me you wanted to settle down, there was a moment when I thought that’s what I wanted too. And that scared me.”
Anderson’s lips part, his brows lifting, but he lets me continue.
“So I went back to Jett. Sort of. I drove to his place with every intention of seeing him. But I couldn’t go through with it.”
Jett was an awful nightmare, but one that was recurring. With him, at least I knew how he worked, how to survive him. The same way I knew how to survive not only by taking care of my sisters, but also the person who was supposed to be protecting us.
He was like a familiar pain—safer than risking everything for the possibility of something good.
There’s a slight shakiness to my voice as I continue, pushing out the words like they’re poison, needing to rid them from my body. “Rumi thought it was me coming into the house when her ex attacked her.” Saying the words is like a blow to the chest, winding me, knocking all the air from my lungs.
Because I was busy choosing the devil I knew when my best friend needed me.
I wasn’t there.
A few moments pass, the silence stretching, but Anderson doesn’t rush me.
He waits until I’m ready. “And ever since then,” I continue.
“It’s like my OCD has taken on a mind of its own.
I think that day was like proof that my brain was right all along.
That it wasn’t just a compulsion, it was something that kept me and everyone I loved safe.
Because if I had made one different choice that day, Rumi and Evee wouldn’t have almost gotten killed. ”
There it is.
Out in the open.
My OCD feels so out of control. Like it’s punishing me, not trying to protect me. Not anymore.
It’s like my mind thinks if I don’t do everything exactly right, someone else is going to get hurt—and it’ll be my fault.
And I don’t want to live like this anymore.