Chapter Nineteen Ava #2
Griffin caught the back of his shirt without even looking.
“No,” Griffin said.
“But history happened.”
“History needs space.”
“I have a respectful comment.”
“You do not.”
“I could develop one.”
“From a distance.”
Beckett appeared on Ava’s other side, eyes wide. “I will simply say this. If that was not first kiss material, I fear for the structural integrity of the sequel.”
Ava pointed at him. “No commentary.”
“Understood. Emotionally screaming internally.”
Soren walked by and said, “Good station.”
Ava glared. “You gave us a nine.”
“Motivational.”
“You are back to Goalie.”
“Accepted.”
He kept walking.
Nate was quiet.
Too quiet.
Ava looked at him.
He was watching Trevor, who had turned back toward the sponsor table and was laughing with someone in a Hale Development polo like nothing had happened.
But Nate’s face was not angry.
It was focused.
Ava touched his arm before she thought better of it.
“No jaw crimes,” she said.
His eyes came back to hers.
And there it was.
The kiss in the air between them.
Still alive.
Still warm.
Still making every rule look extremely breakable.
Nate looked at her mouth again.
Ava stopped breathing.
He looked away first.
Barely.
“No jaw crimes,” he said.
His voice was rough enough to be its own violation.
Ava’s knees considered a formal complaint.
Karen reached them first.
Ava had prepared for many things.
A mother after a public kiss was not one of them.
Karen stopped in front of Ava, eyes bright, jaw tight.
For one horrible second, Ava thought she was going to be scolded.
Instead, her mother reached for her hand.
“Are you okay?”
Ava blinked.
Not what was that?
Not is this serious?
Not why didn’t you tell me?
Are you okay?
The question nearly undid her.
Ava nodded too fast. “Yes.”
Karen looked like she did not fully believe her, which was fair because mothers were professionally inconvenient.
Then Karen looked at Nate.
Nate straightened. “Mrs. Lane.”
“Thank you,” Karen said.
Nate seemed as caught off guard as Ava felt. “For what?”
Karen’s eyes moved briefly toward Trevor. “For not making her smaller in order to make yourself look bigger.”
Ava’s throat closed.
Nate’s face changed.
Softened.
Humbled, maybe.
“She doesn’t need me for that,” he said.
Karen smiled a little. “No. But some men don’t notice that.”
Ava could not look at either of them.
Ruthie appeared beside Karen like a lavender-clad consequence.
She looked at Ava.
Then Nate.
Then the platform.
“Nine was too low,” she said.
Ava made a strangled sound.
Nate coughed into his fist.
Ruthie continued, perfectly calm. “But Soren values discipline, and that kiss did not have much.”
“Grandma,” Ava said, voice breaking on horror.
“What? I am old, not blind.”
Nate turned away entirely.
His shoulders shook.
Ava pointed at him. “Do not laugh at my family trauma.”
“I am trying,” he said, not looking back.
Ruthie patted Ava’s arm. “Good. Let him try. Effort reveals character.”
Then she walked away with Karen like she had not just detonated Ava’s central nervous system.
Ava stared after them.
Nate finally turned back.
His eyes were bright with laughter and something else.
Something she was not ready to name.
“Your grandmother is terrifying,” he said.
“She is going to outlive us all through pure commentary.”
“I believe that.”
The relay ended ten minutes later with Team One winning overall bonus points by a margin Tyler described as romantically significant before Griffin made him carry folding chairs.
Ava tried to help at the drink station.
Ellie refused to let her near the cups.
“You just had a public first kiss,” Ellie whispered. “You are not allowed to touch lemonade until your aura stabilizes.”
“My aura is employed.”
“Your aura is making Nate Brennan forget how standing works.”
Ava looked across the lawn.
Nate stood near the challenge board with Soren and Griffin. He was listening to Paulson, but his gaze found Ava like it had developed a homing feature.
When their eyes met, his expression shifted.
Not a smile.
Something quieter.
Ava looked away first.
Coward.
Survivor.
Woman who had just kissed a hockey player in front of a lake community and received a technical critique from her grandmother.
All valid identities.
Her phone buzzed.
She already knew.
Trevor.
For one second, she considered not looking.
Then rule seven, or whichever number they were on now, knocked.
No secret Trevor texts.
She opened it.
**TREVOR: Nice. I almost believed you.**
Ava’s stomach dipped.
A second message appeared.
**TREVOR: Did he?**
Her hand tightened around the phone.
The words should have landed harder.
Yesterday, they would have.
Tonight, they hit a different place.
Not the bruise.
The anger.
Ava looked across the lawn at Nate.
He had already noticed her face change.
He started toward her.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
Steady.
Ava met him halfway because she was tired of standing still while someone else decided what her story meant.
She handed him the phone.
Nate read the texts.
His expression did not change much.
But his eyes did.
“He wants you to doubt it,” Ava said.
Nate looked up.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Do you?”
The question came out before she could stop it.
The lawn kept moving around them. People laughed. Kids ran. The band packed cables. Tyler tripped over a chair and blamed gravity.
Nate stood in front of her, holding her phone, and for once Ava did not want a joke.
Nate handed the phone back.
Then he stepped closer.
Not close enough to touch.
Close enough to make honesty impossible to avoid.
“No,” he said. “I don’t doubt it.”
Ava’s chest tightened.
“You don’t know what it was.”
“Neither do you.”
She blinked.
He was right.
She hated that he was right.
Nate’s voice lowered. “But I know it was not nothing.”
Ava could not breathe around that.
Not because it trapped her.
Because it opened something.
She looked down at her phone, then back up.
“Rule update,” she whispered.
His eyes held hers. “Okay.”
“No letting Trevor decide if something is real.”
Nate nodded once.
“Agreed.”
Ava should have stopped there.
She did not.
She had kissed him once because she was tired of forfeiting rooms.
Now she was standing in one she did not want to leave.
“And no pretending that kiss was only for points,” she said.
Nate went still.
The world narrowed to the space between them.
His voice came out low.
“Ava.”
Her name sounded like a warning.
A promise.
A question.
She lifted her chin because she was still herself, even when terrified.
“What?”
Nate looked at her mouth.
Then her eyes.
“That rule is going to cause problems.”
Ava’s pulse jumped.
Behind them, Tyler’s voice rang out from somewhere near the chairs.
“WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THEY’RE MAKING MORE RULES?”
Ava did not look away from Nate.
Neither did Nate.
And for the first time all summer, Ava wondered if maybe the problem was not that the rules kept breaking.
Maybe the problem was that she had written them before she knew what she actually wanted.