Chapter 3
Dane
“True or false,” the voice coming from the speaker said. “In a sentence with both a conjugated and an infinitive verb, the reflexive pronoun is placed after the infinitive.”
“False,” I said. I turned up the speed on the treadmill I was on and increased the incline. “The reflexive pronoun is placed before the infinitive. Example: Je vais me laver.”
“Correct,” came the response. “Example verified. Ten marks awarded. You’ve improved by thirty-five percent since the last module, so the next lesson plan will modify accordingly. This module is now complete.”
Still running, I tapped the screen in front of me, scrolling through the modules. They looked pretty good: Anyone wanting to learn French without a human teacher would be able to do it with my interactive program, which learned as it went. The questions you got wrong, it taught again in a different way. The things you found hardest to learn, it spent more time on. It was artificial intelligence—rudimentary, maybe, but there. And it worked. Even the testing seemed to be successful, after months of working out the bugs. “Finally,” I said as sweat rolled down my temples. “It took long enough.”
The voice came from the speaker again. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that input.”
“Disregard,” I told it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that input.”
I changed my command. “Go fuck yourself.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that input.”
I was about to curse it again—more creatively this time—when a video call came through on the screen. It was the security desk downstairs. I answered it. “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Scotland,” said the security guard. “I have a visitor here who says she’s authorized, but she isn’t on the list.”
That was easy: Except for me and my three partners, no one was authorized to be let upstairs to my penthouse. Whoever it was would have to go away. But then I realized what he’d said.
“She?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Her name is Miss Ava Winters.”
My fist came down on the Stop button on the treadmill, and everything went silent. There was just me, panting and sweating, staring at the video screen. “Ava Winters is downstairs?”
“Yes, sir. Should I send her up?”
For a second I couldn’t say anything. It had been seven years since I’d seen Ava in person. I’d heard updates about her through her brother and the other partners, and she’d probably heard updates about me. But since the last time I’d seen her before she left for New York—that awful fucking day—we hadn’t been face to face.
This was Aidan’s doing. After I’d hung up on him the last time—I was pretty sure I’d told him to go fuck himself, because he really needed to go fuck himself—he’d sent me a single text afterward. It had said: Fine, I’ll send Ava.
I hadn’t thought much of it. Aidan wanted to clean me up for the meeting with Kaito Okada, and it wasn’t going to happen. I’d shut it down. The threat to send Ava wasn’t a literal one, I’d thought. Aidan might convince her to pick out a couple of suits and send them to me, but that was all it would be. There was nothing in the world that would convince Ava to come here in person. To be anywhere around me.
“Sir?” said the security guard, still waiting for an answer.
Damn it. Aidan had found a way to send his sister. She was here now, when I wasn’t expecting her. I had just finished a workout and I looked like shit. For a second I considered panicking, and then I remembered that it didn’t matter what I looked like, because Ava probably hated me anyway.
“Send her up,” I said. I grabbed a towel and mopped my face, my neck. I wouldn’t have time to change, but I did a quick scan of the penthouse to look for anything embarrassing: dirty underwear, balled-up socks, dirty dishes. Except for a pair of boxer shorts on the floor, it wasn’t too bad. If Ava used my bathroom, she’d just have to deal with the beard hairs in the sink. There was nothing I could do about those now.
I heard the chime of the elevator, and a second later there was a knock on the door. I slung the towel around my neck and answered it, hoping I didn’t look like I’d rather do anything, be anywhere than where I was right now.
I opened the door and she was really there—Ava Winters, the girl I’d known since I was fifteen and she was eleven. My best friend’s little sister, who had spent countless nights in the apartment I shared with her brother and our two other friends. The girl who had come to us when she wanted to get away from home, who had watched TV with us and slept on our sofa when she didn’t want to be home with her mother. The girl we had all looked out for and taken care of like one of our own.
When I’d last seen her seven years ago, she’d had chestnut-brown hair grown past her shoulders and a face that had still had some innocence to it at twenty-three. The woman who stood before me now was ten pounds lighter and had bleached-blonde hair. She wore expert makeup—a lot of it—and strappy heels, a designer handbag over her shoulder, but she was still Ava. It was in those big, brown eyes, the curve of her lip. The determined set of her jaw. She was fucking gorgeous, and when she looked at me her eyes went wide.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
I knew I looked different. I’d spent most of my life as a nerd, and a few years ago I’d gotten sick of it. I had laser eye surgery and ditched my glasses. I hired a personal trainer to work me out three times a week for a year, and even though it was agony—expensive agony—it was worth every penny and every wince of pain. I now had muscles in places I’d never known existed. I’d also grown my hair long, which wasn’t a fashion choice as much as pure neglect. I hated getting a haircut, so I rarely did it. Right now my hair was pulled back and tied with an elastic, which was how I usually wore it. I also had a beard, which I hadn’t had seven years ago. Laziness again. The beard probably needed a trim, but I didn’t care.
“Ava,” I said.
Her eyes traveled down over my sweaty T-shirt, my basketball shorts, and up again. “What the hell happened to you?” she said.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I guess I look different, right?” She touched her hair, as if remembering the brown it used to be. “Are you going to let me in?”
Like an idiot, I was still standing in the doorway. I stepped aside and Ava walked past me, balancing like an expert in those heels. I’d never paid much attention to high heels before, but when Ava walked, I couldn’t help but notice how they made her ass move under her skirt. I jerked my gaze away.
“Nice place,” Ava said, dropping her handbag on the sofa. She looked around at my penthouse—one of the largest, most luxurious penthouses in all of Chicago—and shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I see you cleaned up for me,” she said.
This was the Ava I knew. She was caustic, sarcastic, especially around me. She had a tough shell, born of her not-so-great childhood, and she knew how to throw an insult. She threw most of them at me, or at least she used to.
Even after everything we’d been through. Especially after everything we’d been through.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said.
Ava blinked, and for a second I saw hurt in her eyes before she brushed it away. “Aidan didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“I’m not really taking his calls,” I said. “He texted me something about sending you. I didn’t take it seriously.”
She nodded. “I agree, it’s odd that I would spend my precious time and expertise on you. I must have been feeling charitable.”
“Ava,” I said.
“What’s this about a nerd meeting?” she said. “A Japanese bigwig wants to meet with you, I hear, and Aidan doesn’t want you to wear the Space Invaders shirt you had when you were eighteen.”
“That was a nice shirt,” I said.
“For dorks,” Ava corrected me. “It was a nice shirt for dorks.”
“Yeah, well.” I walked to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. “I’m not wearing white jeans to this meeting, so you can forget it.”
Her dark-lashed eyes went wide with what I could have sworn was pleasure. “Dane Scotland, you read my blog. And I was exactly on point that day. White jeans are in.”
“Once,” I clarified. “I read it once. Never again. And Kaito Okada is a software guy, like me. He’d probably actually like the Space Invaders shirt. He won’t care what I wear.”
“Huh.” Ava crossed her arms over her chest. I very much was not looking at how her dress fit over her breasts, the way the fabric hugged them. No, I wasn’t. “Well, I don’t care what you wear either, but Aidan does. So here I am.”
“Reluctantly,” I added.
The tip of her tongue appeared and she licked her glossed lip. “Reluctantly,” she agreed after a minute. “Though I’m no more reluctant than you, I guess.”
I shrugged.
She glanced away, then back at me. “Aidan doesn’t know about us. So I guess you never told him.”
“Of course not. You think I’d actually tell him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never told him, either.” She ran a hand through her blonde hair. “It should be so easy to say, right? Oh, by the way, big brother, your best friend and I had sex a bunch of times behind your back?—”
“Ava,” I cut her off.
“Why didn’t we tell him?” She stepped toward me, and suddenly she was close enough that I could catch a whiff of her scent, something with vanilla in it. The scent surprised me; if I had to guess, I’d have expected her to wear an expensive designer perfume. “In all these years, Dane, why didn’t we tell Aidan? Or the others? Why didn’t we just admit what happened between us?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “Do you want me to say I’m ashamed of it? Because I won’t. I’m not.”
Suddenly, I got it. That was what she’d thought. I could see it in her eyes. She’d thought I hadn’t come clean because I was embarrassed. So she hadn’t come clean either, because she hadn’t wanted to embarrass me.
And I’d had no idea. All this time.
I told her the truth. “I didn’t tell Aidan because it’s none of his fucking business,” I said. “He’s your brother, not the owner of your life. The others, too. As far as I’m concerned, they can all butt out of what’s between you and me.”
She was quiet for a second, looking at me. Her lashes were thick, her makeup expertly done, her hair blonde. But she was still Ava.
To me, she was always Ava.
Finally, she sighed. “You need a haircut, Dane,” she said, a smile touching the corner of her mouth. “I guess we should get started.”