Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Ava couldn’t help the sound that escaped her. “Oh, Jack.”
It was unfair.
Ava didn’t care who Jack had become, what he was now. This, this wasn’t fair. Loving someone so much you transformed a city park to show them and losing them before they ever knew.
“Jay was the first person I killed,” Jack said softly. “When I knew it was too late, that he was gone, that I had nothing left, I found the drunk driver. I planned. And then I carried it out, and it was so easy to do that it scared me.”
Ava’s hands were shaking when she wove her fingers through Jack’s. “You didn’t,” she said softly. “You didn’t kill Jay. If he was here, he’d tell you that.”
Jack nodded, but the look on his face said he wasn’t sure he could believe her. Not today, and maybe not ever, but Ava would keep telling him if she could.
“I—I take care of his mom,” Jack added. “She doesn’t want to see me. Never did, after Jay died, because I was a reminder of everything she’d lost. But I pay for her assisted living with . . . this. It’s the least I can do.”
Ava threw her arms around Jack, and he held her in return.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, not the hand Ari had been dealt or the hand Jack and Jay had been dealt. And despite it all, despite everything that had happened, Jack and Ava were still here. Messy and wrong and doing nothing they should do, she knew. But they were still here.
And that, Ava decided, was worth something.
They talked well into late morning. She told him about the silly inside joke she’d had with Ari about the endless garden center trips, and he told her how Jay sprawled across the whole bed and then dramatically claimed to only have a corner of the blanket.
Ava even told him about Ari’s infuriating insistence that she should let in every driver at the merge, even when all the drivers behind her were honking.
It was strange to remember the annoyance and foibles and negative things—and to love someone so much you ached.
To love two people now, though that was all still too confusing to parse out.
Finally, near lunchtime, Jack pushed a box toward her. “I forgot,” he said. “I did get you cinnamon buns. But the corner store was out of strawberries.”
Tears stung Ava’s eyes. “Before you got me cinnamon buns,” she told him through a mouthful, “the last one I had was one that Ari picked up for me. We got her diagnosis later that day.”
Jack looked stricken at the news, but he just leaned over and kissed Ava’s forehead, so gently it nearly made the tears spill.
“Watch it, O’Sullivan,” Ava said. “Or I’ll think my contract killer is going soft on me.”
“Maybe I am, Boss,” he said with a grin. “All right, after this I think I need to go and rent myself that suit—with cash—and you need to get yourself a dress. Also with cash.”
“How much cash do we have left?” Ava asked skeptically.
Jack paused for a long moment, his face dangerously unreadable again. Withdrawn. “I can get some more out today,” he said. “I try to be careful how much and how often I withdraw, but I’ve had enough time between transactions that it’s probably all right.”
“Good,” Ava said. “There’s a mall down the street and an ATM. I checked.”
Jack nodded. “I’ll reach out to a contact I have who can possibly help us get in as waitstaff. From there, we’ll change and hopefully be passable as party guests. You ready?”
“You just have a contact who can help with that?” Ava asked.
“Don’t you?”
“No, I was planning to fight my way in,” Ava said. “My knuckles have healed. See?”
“That was one of the first things I noticed about you,” Jack told her, grabbing her hand and pulling it to his mouth, where he kissed each knuckle, lingering on the ones with scars. “You had striking eyes and bloody knuckles and a pretty dress, and none of the puzzle pieces made sense.”
“Do they make sense now?” Ava asked as Jack shrugged on his hoodie and reached for his fake beard and new masks from the box. “All the puzzle pieces?”
“No.” Jack smiled at her as he handed her a mask. “Put this on. We don’t want bucko at the desk to get a good look at either of our faces.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Ava said as she snatched one of Jack’s hoodies and pulled it over her head.
“Not even a shirt underneath,” Jack muttered with a shake of his head. “Wild behavior, Boss.”
She stuffed one last cinnamon bun into her mouth as she followed Jack through the door. He reached back for her, as if instinctively, and took her hand.
“Aren’t you soft this morning?”
“I told you, Boss. Soft as a cinnamon bun.”
“You walk too fast,” Ava whined as she trailed behind Jack’s longer strides down the sidewalk. The little strip mall had looked like it was closer on Maps, but they’d already been walking forever.
Jack slowed his stride and offered her his free arm. He was wearing a small backpack, and he had at least one gun concealed in a holster on his back.
“Are you sure you should be offering me your weapon arm?” Ava asked as she took it, leaned heavily on him. “What if you need it for fighting?”
“I’m ambidextrous,” Jack told her as he helped her effortlessly over a low point in the sidewalk, where muddy water had pooled.
He laughed, and then silence lapsed between them for the remaining walk, as their footsteps took them toward the strip mall a few blocks away.
They reached the shop Jack had mentioned first—a small, well-lit shop with a variety of black and navy tuxedos hanging neatly in the window.
Jack held the door open for her, and when they entered, his free hand was firmly on the small of her back.
At what point had this shifted between them, that Jack walked beside her as if she was his to protect?
And at what point had things shifted for Ava that she wanted this?
They might be staying barely one step in front of the cops, they might be about to undertake the impossible, but Jack’s hand was broad and warm on her back.
“The dress shop is just around the corner,” Jack said. “If you want to get started looking at dresses?” His gaze raked up and down her body. “Be careful, okay?”
“You can trust me,” Ava said.
“I do.” His words were soft, and then he turned to the man at the front desk, who nodded a greeting at Jack.
“Hang on,” Ava said. “Let me grab my phone out of your bag?”
Jack nodded, shifting the pack to one shoulder so she could reach the side pocket where she’d shoved her phone—carrying things in her hands was annoying, she’d told Jack earlier, expecting him to give her a look or an exasperated Ava.
Instead, he’d taken her phone with a grin and zipped it into his bag.
Ava’s fingers found the smooth case of her phone, and she pulled it out, shoving it into the pocket of her sweatpants.
“Be safe,” Jack said softly.
“You too,” Ava said.
It was just around the corner. What the fuck could happen in the amount of time it took to—you know what, never mind. Vans could blow up. Kidnappers could grab her and drag her to a warehouse. Anything could happen when Ava Cavalcante was involved.
The dress shop was small, but dresses from three different designers hung in the windows.
When Ava entered, the shop had air-conditioning blasting, and the tall blond woman behind the desk arched her eyebrows and looked down at Ava with open judgment on her face.
“Do you need directions somewhere?” she asked, her eyes darting toward the phone behind the desk. “Goodwill, maybe? Our restrooms are for customer use only.”
If Jack were here, he’d be bracing for impact, just like he had when that front desk person had called her bucko.
“Yes,” Ava answered the woman, pushing her hoodie back dramatically and letting her hair cascade down her back.
“I need directions to someone who doesn’t wear last season’s off-brand at a store like this.
Because that would be the person who can help me replace the wardrobe the airline lost. But that clearly isn’t you.
What is that you’re wearing? Target brand? ”
Ava wrinkled her nose.
Of course, she had never worn designer in her life.
But fashion had been one of Ari’s special interests—despite the fact that she wore cargo pants and boots for work.
She knew trends, and brand names, and who made the fashion decisions that ruled the world.
And she loved to tell Ava all about it. So despite never having worn designer clothes a day in her life, Ava knew her brands.
More importantly, she knew how to out-bitch a bitch, but that was her own personal specialty and had nothing to do with Ari. The woman at the counter stared at Ava. “Are you fucking serious?” she asked. “This is obviously Gucci.”
“Sure, if Gucci was selling on Shein,” Ava said, waving her hand. “Now, am I going to walk out of here in a Versace, or are you going to keep driving away customers, sweetie?”
The woman gave Ava the thinnest smile she’d ever seen. “I’m Mikayla,” she said. “I’d be so happy to help you find the right dress for”—she waved a hand in Ava’s direction—“all that.”
“Oh, thank you,” Ava intoned with brittle enthusiasm.
Mikayla nodded tightly, grabbing a white dress from the rack labeled Versailles. “Let’s start with this one,” she said. “It looks the most in line with your budget.”
Ava followed Mikayla to the fitting rooms at the very far end of the store, relieved when the heavy curtain was pulled behind her.
Ava plopped down onto the bench, mindlessly entering her passcode, before she realized whose phone she had in her hand.
Instead of hers, with the bubblegum pink case and the spiraling crack from the top left-hand corner, she had Jack’s in her hand.
It was thin, sleek, black, a newer model than hers.
But her passcode had worked. Why the hell was Jack’s passcode AvaO?
She shook her head, clearing the cobwebs, and then a text message flashed across the bottom of the screen.
Updated timeline. She needs to be first. Confirmation requested.
Below that was a picture that was all too familiar now: the grainy CCTV screenshot of Ava in her distinctive red dress, fist raised above Cale Jacobson’s face.
Ava froze, her thumb hovering over the unlocked phone. Jack was around the corner, still getting fitted for his suit, probably, or maybe he was already on the way. She should assume he was on the way, because she should always assume she was in more danger than she knew.
Because . . . because Jack was still the danger to her.
There it was, plain as day. Jack’s client, the only number or text thread in the entire phone, asking him to kill her, too. And Jack saying yes, only a day after he’d saved her from Cale Jacobson’s team.
Ava was on her feet before she realized where she was going, her breath heaving. Her vision swam, and she staggered, bracing a hand against the wall for support.
She’d been so wrong about everything. She’d been so wrong to trust him at all, to feel safe with his hands on her, to love the way he’d kept her safe and alive and out of harm’s way.
She’d been wrong to let herself fall for him, for his lies—had the story about Jay been a lie, too?
Had her own grief kept her from seeing that Jack was lying to her?
That the shared grief she thought they had in common was just hers, after all?
She’d been wrong to hope he might feel something for her, too.
Jack O’Sullivan wasn’t falling for her.
He was plotting to kill her.