37. Ava
Chapter 37
Ava
I burst through the rear door of Rochwell house, using the key Magnus gave me. The one I’ve forgotten to mail back. Maybe I was subconsciously holding on to it, unable to let go of this house and what it’s brought to me. The people it brought to me.
“Jet?”
The heavy door swings closed behind me with an ominous thud. I stand still and listen.
Nothing.
I pull off my shoes and run barefoot across the cold stone floor, my heart in my throat. I’m so angry with him. So hurt and confused. But I’m determined to hear the truth from him.
I have to hear him say it.
I stop as I reach the bottom of the old staircase.
He’s sitting in his usual spot in a pair of workout shorts, his skipping rope coiled on the step beside him, his chest shining with perspiration. His head is hung as he stares at something he’s twirling between his fingers.
He looks exhausted.
“Jet?” I breathe.
He looks up, the hollowness in his eyes making me falter.
“You’re supposed to be resting, Ava.”
His deep voice sends a shiver through me. Even looking completely drained, the way he does, his voice always has that same steadiness about it. That same control.
“I’m fine. I just forgot to eat because I was worried about Gramps.” I hover at the base of the stairs and study him. “But you know that already. The nurse said you wouldn’t leave their desk until they told you how I was doing.”
He says nothing.
“And I’m not pregnant. They checked.”
His eyes pinch at the corners as his jaw tenses. I thought he’d look relieved, but torment clouds his features as he huffs out a heavy breath.
I force myself to sound calm, despite the banging inside my skull. “Tell me.”
There’s one swift shake of his head as he continues to spin the small object in his fingers, his attention fixed on it.
“I know it wasn’t you. My mum…” My voice cracks, and I force a swallow. “You knew it was her, didn’t you?”
He rolls his lips, still not meeting my eyes .
“Did you always know? That day I came to your office and you were on a video call? You acted like you knew something.”
“I didn’t.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “I’d finalized the deal with Callaghan, and he mentioned how pleased Ophelia was to be working with you. I thought you’d made the decision yourself.”
“I hadn’t,” I whisper.
His brows pull together. “I knew something was wrong the moment you mentioned your father.”
“You let me scream at you. The way you were speaking… I thought you’d given it to her.”
“I thought you were talking about something else. But the second I got off that call, I had my suspicions. I wanted to be wrong, Ava. I’ve never wanted to be so fucking wrong in my life. That son of a bitch, Mitch, told me it was just business when I figured it out,” Jet hisses, his shoulders rippling with tension. “He spun me my own fucking line.”
“But why did you tell me you did it? I flew all the way to New York, and you looked me in the eye and lied to my face.”
“I was so damn proud of you when I saw you walk into the hotel that day. You got on that plane by yourself.”
“Don’t avoid the question,” I say desperately holding a sob at bay. I knew he’d looked at me with pride in his eyes that day. And I hated him so much at that moment for what I thought he’d done.
Pain flashes over his face as he clenches his jaw .
“I lost my mother for good. You lost yours and got her back. I was given a choice…. For you to hate me but still have her. It’s what you dreamed of. You told me.”
“Jet—”
“It was only a matter of time before I had to let you go, anyway. I’d have stopped you spreading your wings. Stopped you from seeing the world. You’d have resented me for controlling you like that.”
My throat feels like it’s closing up, but I still manage to croak out the words, “But you love control.”
His eyes hold mine and I feel every word of his seep into the cells of my body and heat them.
“Only when it keeps you safe, Ava. When it makes you happy. Not when it means caging you like a bird.”
His gaze drops back to the tiny object in his hand.
“It’s a replica of her plane, isn’t it?”
He nods once before closing his fist around the tiny piece of blue metal, keeping it inside his palm.
“You need to see the world,” he rasps. “You fucking glow when you travel. You crave adventure. But at that runway show, you’d lost it. It crushed me to see you like that. You weren’t happy.”
“How would you know? You were busy with Fran,” I say, hating myself for being so childish. But it hurt to see him with her. To see him with anyone else.
His eyes flare with heat as he pins his blue gaze on me. “You know that’s not what it was like.”
I shiver at the way he looks at me, like he’d spank me given the chance for letting the flimsy accusation slip free. But I can’t help the twist of jealousy in my gut that makes me say it anyway. I’m being petty when I came here for much bigger things.
For the truth.
“I know when you’re happy, Ava. I could see it in New York. I could see it in Thailand. I could see it at Jay’s house. You have this light in your eyes. The day you crashed my meeting, it was gone. Seeing you at the runway show, it was gone. You’ve gone from living in one box to living in another.”
I want to tell him to go fuck himself because that stings.
But he’s right. I knew something was missing, too. But it’s not what he thinks.
“It’s because I was with you.”
His beautiful dark brows that I’ve learned give away so many of his emotions pull together, creating a crease down his forehead, marring his handsome face.
“No. You were being yourself. Who you’re supposed to be. All those times we were traveling, you were this bright—”
“Distraction?” I breathe.
He drops his head again, uncurling his fist and looking into his palm.
“Guiding light,” he murmurs so quietly I have to strain to hear him.
“What did you give Callaghan? If it wasn’t my story, then what was it?”
Silence .
“Jet, what—”
“Something that wasn’t mine to give.”
I slowly ascend a couple of steps so that I can see the tiny blue wing walker plane in his hand.
“You gave him your mum’s plane? June’s Blue?”
He winces. “I gave away her pride and joy. Dad’s memories of her with it. My memories. My fucking soul. I’m son of the year, just like you said.”
“ You’re her pride and joy. Look at everything you’ve achieved.”
He stares at the tiny plane, a grimace pulling on his lips.
“I’m an asshole.”
“You’re Jet Grant.”
He looks up into my eyes, the weight in them pulling me up two more steps toward him, like a magnet bound to him.
“One and the same, isn’t it?”
“Yesterday, I’d have said yes. But today…” I reply, stopping a few steps away from him. I want to run to him, wrap my arms around him. But the part of me that’s still angry at him—angry, hurt, and confused, with a whole ton of questions—stops me.
“Today?”
“Today you’re exactly who I’ve always known deep down you are.” I climb another step. “Welcome back.” I give him a small smile.
“Don’t, Ava.”
“Don’t what?”
“Just fucking don’t. ”
Something ignites in me. The anger of what he’s put me through, what he’s put himself through the past month reaches up and grips my windpipe, stealing my air.
“Is that too hard to hear? That you’re not the asshole you like to play?”
His eyes snap to mine, a hardness in them that I ignore.
“If you want to be that, then go ahead. I’ll walk out of here right now. You’ll never have to speak to me again. But you’ll not care, will you? Because you’re an asshole devoid of feelings.”
His nostrils flare as he takes in a measured breath.
“Yeah, didn’t think so.” I shake my head. “So let’s cut the bullshit. You don’t have this impenetrable stone heart.”
He stares at me, his eyes darkening as I push him. He looks like a man on the edge, brow set firm, sweat clinging to his recently pounded muscles. I bet he skipped a thousand times in a row trying to disperse the tension that’s commanding his body, holding him stiff and solid on the step.
Desperately trying to maintain a poker face, like it really is just a game.
“You’ve told me how you found out, before claiming it was you who took it. Now tell me why you did it.”
“I have,” he grits. “I wanted you to have that relationship with your mother you wanted, that—”
“That’s not why, Jet! Tell me why you wanted me to have it. Why you did something so… so self-fucking destructive in order for me to have that?”
Silence.
“Why?” I say again, my voice rising.
More silence.
“Why?” I shout, blood rushing in my ears, setting all efforts to be calm flying out of the window. “Why did you do that?”
He looks at me from underneath dark brows.
“You know why.”
I stomp higher, stopping two steps below him. “You need to do fucking better than that! I’ve spent weeks hating you! Questioning my judgment, my sanity… everything! I’ve hated myself for trusting you. Hated thinking of you every single day and asking myself why you would do this to me. And it wasn’t even you. You even said in New York that you’d make the same decision again. The same decision to fucking lie to me. The least you can do is tell me the truth about why you’d do that.”
“Ava, don’t.” He tips his head, making his neck crack. But he doesn’t look at me. His eyes are fixed on the tiny model plane in his hand, his face taut, the vein in his temple bulging like it might explode.
“Don’t what? Don’t ask questions? Don’t speak my own mind? Don’t fucking what?”
“Just don’t,” he hisses .
“Don’t keep pushing until you tell me the truth? Because guess what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Ava,” he growls.
“Don’t growl at me, Jet! I’m not leaving until you tell me the truth.”
He flies to his feet and launches the tiny model plane into the air with a booming, “Fuck!”
It smashes into the hallway wall and explodes, falling to the floor in pieces. He swipes up his skipping rope and spins, storming up the stairs.
I race after him. “Tell me why you did it!”
He continues striding away, and I grab his arm, curling my hand around it. His skin is on fire.
“Tell me!”
He grabs me so fast my head spins, and pushes me against the wall. One hand curls around my throat as the other slams against the wall in a fist, his skipping rope clenched between his fingers.
“You fucking know why!”
His eyes are like two blue flames, searing into mine. The sight makes energy dance in my veins. They aren’t hollow anymore. They’re bright and alive. He looks like Jet again. The Jet that I push to get a reaction from. The Jet whose heated looks make me weak at the knees. The Jet who held me when I stepped onto a plane again. The one who flew it home himself, so he could be in control and make me feel safe.
I inhale slowly, my windpipe meeting resistance against his palm. “Tell me. ”
He drags in splintered breaths, and for a crushing moment, I think he’s going to stay silent again. But instead, he bangs his fist against the wall, his eyes wild like a man possessed as he roars, “Because of the way I feel about you, Ava. The way I fucking feel !”
He traces the pad of his thumb up my neck and along my jaw until he reaches my bottom lip. He pushes the tip inside my mouth, swiping it over my tongue. He’s enthralled, his attention stolen by my mouth as he slides his thumb out and rubs my saliva over my lips.
“It’s the one thing I vowed never to do… It’s when I knew I had to let you go.”
I part my lips to speak, but he presses his thumb over them, sealing them shut.
“I chose for you to hate me, to lose me. Not her. I didn’t want you to lose your mother, Ava.”
My breath escapes me in a sob as I look into the tortured blue eyes of the boy in the photograph in Magnus’s office, still in so much pain over his grief, that he can’t allow himself to admit what he needs to say.
Not for me, but for him.
The thought of him living his life like this makes my heart feel like it’s being shredded.
I pull his hand away from my mouth. “You should have told me the truth when you knew it was her. Tell me why you didn’t.”
“And ruin your dream? Ruin the way your face lit up whenever you spoke about her? Wreck the one relationship you’ve been yearning after for the past ten years? ”
Hope starts to fade in my chest as he curves my question.
“I had a right to know. That was my story. No one else’s.”
“It still is. It will always belong to you.” He steps back from me in a rush. “You should go.”
“What?” I step closer to him, removing the gap he’s created. “That’s it?”
“Ava,” he hisses. “You. Should. Go.”
“Or what?” I’m toe-to-toe with him, challenging him. Trying everything to get a reaction from him. To get something.
“You shouldn’t be around me right now.” His voice has a dangerous edge to it, a darkness that sends an unexpected thrill skating up my spine.
I stare at his mouth. At the way his lips are curled down, a muscle clenched tight in his cheek.
“You think you’ll hurt me?” I push, flicking my eyes back up to his heated ones.
“No, but I might ruin you,” he grits, his voice rough like sandpaper.
I drop my gaze to his hands. He’s coiled his skipping rope around one hand, his fingers turning red with how tight he’s pulling on it.
Maybe this is what he needs. A way to break through his barriers so he’ll finally be honest with me. He’s always communicated better with me when we’re being physical. He opens up more when he feels in control. When he’s giving me pleasure .
“Do it,” I whisper, the same way I did in the alleyway the first time he ever touched me. The first time I made him snap.
“No.” He grinds his teeth so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t have to spit out dust. Then he curses and strides away.
“You don’t get to walk away from this!”
I rush after him, following him into his bedroom. Everything logical tells me to leave, to do as he’s asking and let him cool down. But pushing him feels like the most natural thing in the world to me. It’s the language we both understand.
I want to tear the truth from him. But as he stops in front of the bed and turns, I see the wild, trapped gleam taking over his eyes, and everything stops.
The sight rips my heart out.
“You’re scared? Scared telling the truth is a gamble that you can’t control.”
Beads of sweat gathered in his chest hair glint in the light as his entire body goes solid. His eyes burn into mine, heating every drop of blood in my body until they feel like they could combust. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
He tightens the skipping rope around his palm. My eyes drop to it, and he curses as he sees me looking at it.
“You need to feel in control right now, I get it. You keep telling me you know me better than I know myself. Well, I know you, too,” I breathe. “So take control.”
“No,” he hisses .
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“Don’t be a brat, Ava.”
“Don’t be an asshole and I won’t have to be!”
“Fuck!”
He roars as he closes the gap between us in a flash, another guttural curse leaving his chest as he lifts me and throws me down onto the bed on my back. He crawls up over me, his eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them as he grabs both of my wrists. My breasts tremble with my shaky breaths as he brings them together above my head.
“You want this?” he spits.
“I want the truth!”
Thick nylon drags against my skin as he binds my wrists together with the skipping rope. Every muscle in his body is tense, rippling with each move he makes.
“You want to be tied up for me, is that it?” He checks the knot, giving it a tug that makes me gasp as my body jerks beneath him. “You want to give up all your control to me? Why?”
“Because you need it.”
His eyes blaze into mine. “You’re telling me the what. Now tell me the why.” He repeats my words back to me in a deep rasp.
“The same reason you lied to me. The same reason you can’t say out loud.”
His jaw tightens and he yanks the neckline of my top down roughly, rushing to cover my nipple with his hot mouth like he can’t do it fast enough. He groans like an animal that’s been starved as he sucks hard.
I writhe, my back arching off the bed as he switches to biting the side of my breast hard enough to leave marks.
“Admit it. Tell me why you did it,” I plead.
He attacks my other breast in the same way.
“You know why.” He shoves one hand up my skirt and grabs my panties, twisting the central scrap of material between my legs inside his palm and tearing them down my thighs in a rush.
I can’t do anything with my hands tied. I’m completely at his mercy as he spears me with two fingers, screwing his face up like he’s in pain.
“Fuck, you’re soaking. You like fighting with me, huh? Is knowing you’ve fucking ruined me made you this wet?”
He spins me hard before I can answer, dragging me up to my knees, leaving my face pressing into the sheets. I turn to the side, crying out as his palm lands across my ass.
“You like the way I’m a wreck for you, don’t you? The way I can’t fucking think straight without you?”
There’s a whoosh of air as he moves his hand fast and pulls his hard, angry-looking dick out of his pants. I shiver in anticipation, my face heating.
But nothing happens.
I crane to see better. He’s staring between my legs, one hand fisting his cock so hard that the glistening ropes of pre-cum on the end fly off, landing across my stinging skin.
“Now you tell me something,” he hisses. “Tell me why you’re being a brat? Tell me why you’re here when you should be living your life.”
“I’m here because you lied to me. And I want to know why.”
He strikes me again, making me cry out and fall forward. Then he flattens his palm over my burning skin and massages.
“Is that all?”
“Jet,” I murmur as I push back against his palm.
The next strike steals my air, making my eyes water. I scrunch the sheets and whimper.
“Or maybe you’re really here to finish the job? Make sure I never recover. Never get over you.”
“You know that’s bullshit. Now tell me,” I bite back.
He grabs both of my hips at the same time as he pushes his cock into me. He works me back onto him with a rough curse. “You came here with your cunt dripping for me. Needing me to fill it in the way only I can. You knew I’d never be able to resist you, Ava. I’ve managed a whole month, letting you live your life. Doing the right thing. And you’ve turned up and got my cock inside you, putting us both back to square fucking one.”
My moans are muffled against the sheets as he pounds into me, wet slapping sounds from our bodies ringing in my ears.
“You want to know why I did it? ”
Thrust.
“Yes,” I cry out, my core coiling tight as he circles inside me, stretching me wider so he’s able to fuck me harder.
“You want the truth? That I’ve never met anyone like you who tests me every fucking day?”
Thrust.
I whimper as he leans over me, grabbing a fistful of my hair and pulling me up so my back is flush to his chest. He licks up the side of my neck, his voice a rough rasp against my ear.
“You want to know how ever since that day in the kitchen when I saw you drinking out of that carton, that I’ve not been able to get you off my mind? That I imagined how you’d taste and how you’d feel in my arms? That I imagined what you’d look like with my ring on your finger?”
I gasp as he pistons his hips, creating a delicious angle that hits a spot inside me that only he’s ever found.
“That I’d fucking picture how beautiful you’d look when I put a baby inside you?”
I gasp and he buries his face against my neck.
“You want to know why?”
“Yes,” I whimper.
He pumps his hips, fucking me hard. My breasts bounce where he’s pulled my top down and he grabs them in his hands, tugging on my nipples. My bound hands press into my stomach .
“Because it’s you, Ava. It’ll only ever be you,” he chokes out.
He drives up into me extra hard and then pulls out, throwing me onto my back. He grabs my wrists, pushing them above my head, then thrusts back inside me.
“Only fucking you.”
He kisses me for the first time, and I lift up, desperately chasing more. Needing to taste him, to remember the way his kisses always took control of me and left my head spinning. He groans, his hips thrusting into me at a determined pace. I start to shake, and he pauses to look into my eyes.
Wild, glittering blue assaults me, swimming with moisture.
“You, Ava,” he rasps.
He thrusts deep and I come hard around him, my body clamping down onto him like it’s scared to let go.
“Fuck, the way you look coming on my cock.”
His words and deep thrusts pull another orgasm from me, and my vision blurs as I stare up at him.
“Tell me,” I choke.
He thrusts harder, his body tensing, sweat dripping off him and onto me.
“Ava,” he warns.
“Tell me!” I clench around him, feeling the way his cock swells inside me. “This isn’t just fucking, is it?”
“It’s never been just anything with you.”
“So tell me the truth,” I cry as he thrusts deep .
“Goddamn, Ava.” He holds my eyes as he starts coming. His chin jerks up and he groans as liquid heat fills me. Every muscle in his body tightens as he thrusts every drop inside me, pushing it deep.
“Jet,” I breathe.
He pushes and curses until he’s given me everything. I wrap my legs around his waist and grip him tight. Jet stops and holds himself wedged deep inside me, his chest shaking.
“I love you, Ava,” he chokes, the tears brimming in his eyes finally spilling free and falling onto my parted lips. “ I fell in fucking love with you .” He drops his forehead to mine as he whispers, “Game over.”