46. Ava
AVA
I ’m in a hospital. I can tell because of the smell. That sterile, chemical stench that clings to everything. It smells like Pleasant Oaks, and I hate it.
There are voices around me and the steady, mechanical whir of machines that beep like a countdown. My head is pounding, like someone’s taking a hammer to the inside of my skull, again and again. I want to cry out, to scream, but my mouth won’t move.
God, why won’t they shut up?
“I told you to protect her,” a voice growls, sharp and livid. “No matter the cost. She was fucking shot.”
Shot. The word rattles through me. I was shot?
Oddly enough, I don’t feel a thing.
“What the fuck do you think I was doing?”
That voice—rough and ragged. Familiar.
Levi.
My heart jerks toward him like a tether pulled tight, but my body stays frozen, limp beneath the weight of the drugs or trauma—or both. The voices blur, dipping in and out of clarity, like I’m bobbing under dark water, surfacing just long enough to breathe before I’m dragged back down again.
“You let her out of your sight. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I fucking love her,” Levi snarls. His voice cracks, barely contained emotion slipping through the edges. “Or did you forget that they planned to use her to draw you out from the beginning because of your stupid fucking ‘mistake’?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If it has to do with her, it always matters .”
“You want to blame me,” the man scoffs. “It was your own selfish desires that almost got her killed.”
That other man—who is he? The anger in his voice is volcanic, but it’s not impersonal. It’s tight with something deeper. Guilt maybe.
“You think I wanted to do that?” Levi growls, pain threaded through every word. “I played your game, Marks, and it almost cost me everything.”
“I told you we had no leads on who Wright’s son was. He was right under your nose and yet you missed him. Mendez is still fucking breathing. And my daughter is bleeding out in a hospital bed because you let him slip past you.”
“She’s alive,” Levi grits.
“Barely,” the man bites back. “She’s in a fucking hospital bed and it’s your fucking fault.”
. . . Please don’t blame him . . .
I want to tell my father not to blame Levi. That he was only trying to save me.
He was trying to save me . . .
“I know,” Levi says, voice low and hollow now. Defeated.
There’s a beat of silence. It’s loud with pain.
“Enough,” a third voice cuts through the tension. Christian. He sounds like hell—like gravel and smoke and a week without sleep. “You two want to do this, go outside. Not here.”
“She’s stirring,” another voice adds gently, and I know it’s Mila. I’d know that softness anywhere.
I try to wake up. I really do. I claw toward the surface, toward the light, toward the voices that matter.
I feel air shift beside me—a subtle breeze brushing my skin—and I know it’s him. I know it’s him.
“Baby,” Levi whispers, his voice resolute. “Wake up.”
I can’t. I can’t move. I can’t speak.
It’s like my body’s buried in snow—paralyzed under a sheet of ice, my nerves frozen, my voice lost in the cold.
But I know that smell.
His scent wraps around me like a blanket—familiar and warm, and so him it makes something in my chest crack wide open.
We’re alive . . . At least I think so.
I push against the weight pinning me down. I just want to see him. Just one look. Just one glance to prove he’s real, and okay. But my eyes stay closed, and the voices begin to drift, like I’m being pulled away again.
No—wait—please . . .
My consciousness frays at the edges, slipping from my grasp like sand through trembling fingers. And in the final moment, when everything else fades, a calloused hand closes gently over mine, and a rough voice breaks in my ear.
A single word. Cracked. Desperate.
“Please.”
A while later, I jerk from sleep, the nightmare still hanging on the far reaches of my mind.
“You’re safe.”
My heart jumps in my chest, hammering when I spot the dark figure in the chair beside my bed.
Levi’s watching me, his shoulders slumped and his eyes distant. He looks . . . broken. A man robbed of life.
Neither of us moves for a long time. Somehow, I know he’s been by my side the entire time I’ve been unconscious. Silently watching over me like he has so many times before.
The swell in my chest steals my breath away. A mixture of agony, love, and desperation that feels too good to be healthy.
He loves me. I love him.
—But we are going to destroy each other.
“How long have I been asleep?” I ask, my voice gravely with sleep.
Levi hands me a glass of water that sits on the hospital tray beside him.
“Twenty-two hours,” Levi says emotionlessly, as if he’s been counting down the exact time.
I swallow down the water, grateful as it wets my dry mouth. Looking around the room, there are flowers, cards, and stuffed animals, but not another soul in sight.
“It’s late,” Levi says, glancing at the flowers beside him. “I sent everyone home.”
“Who are these from?” I ask, confused. I’m not sure I even know this many people.
“Your family,” he answers finally, his expression dark. Troubled.
“You mean your family,” I say, halfheartedly. There’s no use trying to lighten the mood, but that doesn’t stop me.
A hush falls over the room, the only sound the whir of machines and the distant hum of someone else’s television.
“So . . . what happened to Donovan?”
Levi lets out a deep sigh, rubbing a hand over his eyes. I can see he’s tired, like he hasn’t slept in weeks.
“No one knows.”
“And . . . Alex?”
“Alive. For now.”
I shake my head, lying back in the bed. I feel like someone put me in a washing machine on the bulky setting. Everything hurts.
“Guess you were right,” I say after a long time. “Alex was dangerous.”
Levi looks like he might break something.
“I should have known, Ava. I should have seen the signs. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head.
“The money from the contract . . . it was my father’s, wasn’t it?”
He clears his throat, his voice husky and thick. “All except for one dollar.”
I don’t know why I’m relieved, but I am. In some cruel twist of fate, I realize he’d done this solely to protect me. Not for money.
So why do I still feel like the line between us has been severed?
The weight of reality crashes down on me like a ton of bricks. I can’t do anything but stare at the wall in front of me and hope I’ll wake up back in his cabin and this will all have been a bad dream.
Who am I kidding?
I could never get that lucky.
“Why . . .” I can’t finish that sentence. The why doesn’t matter. Just that he didn’t tell me.
“He asked me not to.”
My heart cracks a little bit at that statement.
I want to snap back at him and ask why Nolan Marks deserves loyalty, and I don’t, but I keep my mouth shut. Arguing about it won’t do any good.
The damage is done.
I shake my head, ignoring the sting of tears in my eyes.
“Was . . . anything the truth?”
Levi looks as broken as I feel. Like he wants to reach for me, but he’s holding himself back. Paulina’s words come to mind, and my chest aches, wishing I could wrap myself around him and forget any of this happened.
Start again from the beginning.
“Every time I touched you,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “That was real.” My heart quivers, and my eyes fill with tears that sting in my eyes. “Every time I held you . . . that was real. Everything I said or couldn’t say about how I felt? That was real, too.”
“You hid things from me. Big things, Levi.” I shrug, sadly. “I don’t know if I can trust you again.”
“I’m not sorry for what I did,” he says finally, his voice rough like sandpaper. “I’m only sorry . . . that I didn’t tell you that I’m in love with you sooner.”
I don’t like this side of him. How sad he is. I want to erase his pain. Swallow it all myself so he doesn’t have to feel it anymore, but I know that’s not possible. I’m hurting too, and for the first time in my life, I’m realizing that’s okay.
“Why the contract?”
He finally meets my gaze head-on, those icy blue eyes boring into my soul.
“Because I knew there was no way you’d let me love you if you knew who I really was.”
“You’re a good person, Levi. One who had horrible things happen to him.
I’ll never fault you for the things you did to protect your family.
I wasn’t lying when I said I fell for you.
Hard.” I shrug, giving him the most unhappy half-smile to ever exist. “I still am.” I shake my head. “Even if I know I shouldn’t be.”
“Ava—”
Levi is cut off by the shuffling of feet when Nolan Marks steps into the room, his eyes raking over me in the bed.
My heart catches in my throat at the little stuffed dog in his hand. Like I’m a child. I suppose, in his eyes, I still am. When he left, I was only four years old.
“You’re awake,” he says distantly, and my throat swells. I’m not sure if it’s from being asleep so long or the pain radiating through my chest.
“You’re my father,” I say quietly.
He looks both guilty and ashamed. I don’t understand. Why leave if you’re going to feel bad about it?
“I am.”
“Why are you here?”
Surprise crosses his face before he accepts what I’ve said.
It’s funny . . . his eyes. They’re nearly the same shade of green as mine. That’s the only similarity that I can see, and yet, looking at him, I know.
“I shouldn’t be,” he admits finally.
“But . . .” I finish for him.
“But I am still your father. By blood. There was a time when that wouldn’t mean much to me, but now . . .”
“Why did you leave?”
He winces, refusing to meet my eyes.