Chapter Twenty-Two
Ava didn’t think she’d been the same since Jack had looked at her out of those intense dark eyes and said I don’t want you to get hurt.
Or maybe she hadn’t been the same since he came for her at the motel, at the warehouse before that.
In the alley. It wasn’t like he cared about her, not really. He couldn’t.
Could he?
But the very next morning, he was up well before dawn and returned as she woke with an iced flat white, strawberries, and cinnamon buns.
She met him in the small kitchen, a room with blue-checkered wallpaper and a round dining table with two chairs.
“How did you know?” Ava asked him, as she stretched and realized her ribs were still sore, but not nearly as bad as they’d been when she’d fled the city with Jack. “That this is my favorite breakfast in all of existence?”
Jack avoided her look. “There isn’t a good way to say this,” he said. “But when I first was . . . thwarted by you, I looked you up. All your social medias are public, and you have a whole post on Instagram dedicated to a flat white, strawberries, and a cinnamon bun.”
Ava froze.
She knew the post.
It was the last time she’d been happy. Maybe in forever. The next day they’d gotten Ari’s diagnosis, and then—then it was over quickly after that.
Jack could sense, maybe better than most people in her life, the shift in her mood. Generally, people didn’t see past the bubbly exterior, the refusal to be serious. Silliness was a good mask, but it never seemed to work for long on Jack.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m good,” Ava said. “Groovy. Peachy. Perkalicious.”
“That last one is a made-up word,” Jack said. “Did I make you sad?”
It was unexpectedly thoughtful, again, for a man who was really only interested in fucking her hard, keeping her from ruining his hit, and killing people for money.
“I’m always a little bit sad,” Ava said. “Isn’t everyone?”
Jack pulled one of the chairs away from the small table, turned it around backward, and straddled it, his eyes intent on hers. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” Ava said. She turned away from him, taking a large bite of the cinnamon bun so that he wouldn’t see her expression.
But the cinnamon bun tasted just like a sunlit day in the small Iowa backyard she had shared with Ari, like the first truly warm day of spring, like little sprouts in their garden bed and the sun on her, warm as Ari’s hands, which had not yet begun to tremble.
“Oh, well, we can pretend I was joking.”
But her eyes were misted over, and her throat was rapidly shutting.
Jack scooted the chair closer, his eyes unreadable. “I won’t,” he said. “You can, if you want. But I won’t.”
It was strangely comforting, though it shouldn’t be.
“That’s because you’re an asshole,” Ava said through a bite of cinnamon bun and maybe a few tears.
Jack shrugged one shoulder and then settled in, leaning his forearms on the back of the chair.
“Are you just going to watch me eat?”
He shrugged his shoulder again. “Do you want me to stop?”
It was always an effective method to interrupt Ava’s fussing. He was asking, directly, for her preference. Which was annoying of him. “No,” Ava said. “But I don’t understand why it’s so interesting.”
“Has nobody ever told you how interesting you are, Boss?” Jack cracked a smile now. “Because you might be the most interesting person I have ever met.”
He’d had a series of nicknames for her. Sunshine. Firecracker. Flight Risk.
She liked Boss best so far.
“Thanks, O’Sullivan,” Ava said. “Good to know I haven’t bored you yet.”
“Has anyone, though?” Jack pressed as Ava devoured a handful of strawberries in one go.
“What?”
“Told you that you’re interesting.”
Not since Ari. And only ever Ari.
Ava hadn’t been good at friends. She’d moved too many times as a kid, was too addicted to being the comic relief so that nobody would ever really know her, and unfortunately the result of that was that nobody had ever really known her. Fucked how things worked that way.
Ari had seen straight through the bullshit, though, and loved Ava anyway. More than Ava ever deserved. That kind of love was once in a lifetime, and Ava had gone and lost it already.
“Yeah,” Ava said softly. “Yeah, once.”
“Good.” Jack nodded. “Now, today’s lesson is on weaponry. There are some important rules about guns, but first I want to know what you know.”
“Thank you for acknowledging both my expertise and my role as boss of this duo,” Ava said. “But, unfortunately, I know nothing about guns. Is that treason in America? I feel like it must be.”
“I’ll save you from the treason charges,” Jack said, so seriously Ava choked on her next bite.
“There’s a range just outside of town. I drove past it this morning.
We’ll pay in cash, and the guy who owns it will fuck off, so we can practice in peace.
I grabbed a few boxes of ammo, and we’ll head over there when you’re done with breakfast.”
“Is that why you’re watching me so intently?” Ava asked, polishing off her cinnamon bun and licking her fingers. Maybe with a little more tongue than anyone really needed.
Jack responded to the tongue—and the eye contact—as the invitation it was. He stood, shoving the chair out of the way, and pulled her abruptly to her feet. “What do you want right now, Ava?” he asked, those dark eyes of his sparking dangerously.
They hadn’t fucked, not since that whirlwind night in the motel. That particular day was blurry, faded at the edges from how exhausted and adrenalized she’d been. But the memory of his hands on her—she had that in vivid fucking detail.
“I want—” Ava began, a blush heating her face. Did she have to spell it out for him? “You?” She said it like a question.
“Hmm.” Jack shook his head. “No, that’s not good enough. I’ll make you come if you want, Ava. But you have to tell me, in exact detail, what you want. Maybe you’ll decide to do that later, but I guess now we’re going to the gun range.”
He was walking out the front door, shoving the ammo boxes in his pocket as he went. He didn’t look back, either, just walked straight to the minivan as if he expected her to follow.
“You’re an asshole,” Ava yelled after him. “And insufferable. And I hate you.”
She pulled on some pants—this time a pair of yoga pants with Wine not?
bedazzled across the ass—and pulled on one of Jack’s tank tops, a ribbed white one that was soft to the touch.
And also, coincidentally, made of a clingy fabric that would accentuate her nipples.
Which Jack deserved to see and not touch for being the most insufferable man in the history of the universe.
Jack was waiting in the minivan, his left hand on the center of the steering wheel, his right arm slung over the back of her seat. “You ready, Boss?”
“Yes, O’Sullivan,” Ava told him. “Though you’re in trouble.”
Jack met her gaze evenly. “Yeah? Because you didn’t want to say what you wanted?”
“It’s embarrassing,” Ava retorted. “Have you ever had to admit that you wanted to be . . . choked and tied up and bossed around?”
“Yes, actually,” Jack said easily. “But of course you don’t have to. But if you did tell me exactly what you want right now, I would fuck you right now. Right here in this car. Right here on the side of the road. You could already be feeling—this.”
With his free hand, he pressed two fingers lightly against her clit, through her yoga pants.
She gasped at the contact, and then nearly growled when he withdrew his hand. “Keep touching me, you fucker.”
Jack grinned at her. “Ask nicely, then.”
Ava considered headbutting him but decided a car wreck before they completed their murder plan would only derail things further. She flipped him the middle finger instead as the minivan accelerated onto the highway.
They reached the shooting range about fifteen minutes later.
It was outdoors at the end of a dirt road, nothing more than a little clearing in the woods.
There was a padlocked gate—Jack got out and opened it—and beyond it, six stations were set up, six targets several yards downrange, and a steep hill backing up the targets.
Any stray bullets would hit nothing but dirt.
Which was a good thing, because Ava was uncertain she should be trusted with a gun. “Can I call it a pew-pew?”
Jack laid three handguns out on the table in front of them, neatly placing a box of ammunition behind each of them. “You may not.”
“Can I use can instead of may or will you correct my grammar like an uptight English professor?”
“We can do a professor roleplay if you want,” Jack said. “You would have to tell me what we would do, though. Boss.”
Before she could respond, Jack stepped up to the edge of the stone platform they were standing on, lifted one of the handguns, and aimed at the target.
One. Two. Three shots.
And then there were three even holes in the target in front of them.
“That’s hot,” Ava said.
Jack shot again, three more times. Three more perfect holes in the target downrange of them.
“That’s six,” Ava said, but she avoided looking at his hands when she did. “Is that an empty magazine?” Focus, Ava, she wanted to shout at herself. On the guns. Not on Jack’s hands.
“For this one,” Jack answered. “Other guns might have more in a magazine. This one has six.”
He showed her how to reload the weapon, where the safety was. Where the trigger was, too, though that part seemed apparent.
“Let’s talk about weapon safety,” Jack said, with the same sober aplomb as the head librarian who used to start staff trainings by droning on in a complete monotone about policies and procedures.
“I mean, that’s pretty obvious,” Ava told him. “Don’t point it at stuff unless you want that stuff to have a hole in it.”
Jack nodded. “Yes, keep your muzzle down and your finger off the trigger until you intend to fire.”
“No fingering the gun? Is that what you’re saying?”