Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
EMERSON
Adrenaline still pumped through my veins even as Ava walked down the stairs ahead of me.
There were times when my rage blinded me, but this time it scored me like a brand, shading my vision in splashes of crimson.
I wanted to dig her stepfather up and bring him back to life so I could torture him again.
I had suspected there was trauma behind her nightmares, but never had I considered it had been that.
While I was thankful she had fought back and the man hadn’t raped her, it did little to quell the ire in me for all the other things he had done.
He and her mother. Neglect, abuse, torture.
I wiped my hand down my face, focusing on her instead. My eyes slid to the sway of her hips. Her shorts emphasized her round ass, and each swish eased the tension in my body.
The instinct to shield her from her memories as she’d spoken about them had been overwhelming.
Before I could think, I had my hands around her, holding her like I did when she slept.
Everything with Ava defied who I was. She brought out a side in me I thought no longer existed.
A soft side that opposed the man I had built myself to be.
“Does this mean I have to climb all these steps to get back up?” she asked, her voice carried back to me on the breeze.
“Do you always state the obvious?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?” she shot back.
Laughter bubbled up, free and light. That’s what she did to me. She made me happy, and I hadn’t been happy for years. She was like a ray of sunshine in my overcast world.
Ava jumped the last two steps, her feet sinking into the sand.
She stared down at her toes as they wiggled.
Her smile was brilliant, lighting her eyes to a golden hue.
Face pointing to the sky, she closed them and breathed in.
The sight mesmerized me. I could have stood there all day and watched her.
She blinked a few times, then gave me a devious grin before she ran off toward the water.
Frozen in place, I soaked in the sight. The unhindered, carefree spirit she had.
After all she’d gone through, she embraced life like I never had.
With wide eyes and an open mind, savoring the small things I took for granted.
I had lived here for fifteen years, yet never had the view been anything more than a backdrop.
Now it was everything because Ava was there, chasing the waves as they hit the shore and laughing.
My chest tightened, an unfamiliar sensation seeping in, one I should have pushed away but couldn’t bring myself to. She circled around, then splashed her hands into the water.
“Should I get you a swimsuit so you can go in?” I asked, trying not to picture her in a bikini that emphasized the flow of her curves.
“Oh, I don’t know how to swim,” she said, drying her hands on her shorts and walking from the water.
“How do you not know how to swim?”
She put her hands on her hips and tipped her head to the side. “Really? Let me see. Grew up in a province where beaches are a thing of myth. Sheltered and—”
“Okay, okay.” I put my hands up in surrender as she sauntered closer to me. The sun lit the blonde in her hair, making the strands almost white. “I’ll teach you.” The words were out before I could stop myself.
Her mouth opened slightly, eyes scrunching. “I’m not sure we have time for that, Emerson.” The words were like lead weights collapsing my shoulders. The truth that tied us. This was temporary and soon she would be gone. The idea caused that sensation in my chest to turn violent.
“True,” I said, my vision slipping to the water.
“Why did you bring me down here?” she asked, bringing my attention back to her.
Why had I? An impulsive need, irrational and out of character. But then, those had been constant since the night I had met her.
“What is that?” Her sight slipped behind me to where I had tucked the things I’d asked Jill to buy for me on a whim yesterday.
“It’s…” Shit. What was I doing? A desire for self-preservation surfaced, screaming for me to stop this.
To force her back up the stairs and forget all of this.
Forget that her smile sent warmth to barren crevices.
That her spirit woke me, making me feel alive for the first time in over twenty years.
That I wanted to make her happy, to hear her laugh, to see her grin and have her babble to me.
Forget it all and return to who I had been before the night she crashed into my life.
She ran past me and over to the big tote of supplies for a day at the beach. A day I had planned for her and intended to spend with her. Canceling my meetings and setting aside my responsibilities and worries for just one day with her.
Dragging the bag to the middle of the beach, she spread the blanket out and dumped the contents onto it. Beach toys, sunscreen, a handful of books. I would never forget the excitement that lit her eyes when she lifted them to me.
“You planned a day at the beach with me?”
“I… You need some sun.” That urge for self-preservation returned, and the answer came out more terse than intended.
“Mmm. So you’re saying my skin is pasty? I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult, Mr. Tides.”
I cringed, hating that formal name, but noticing that the inflection she put on it made it something more than just my father’s name or my brother’s.
“Not pasty, but definitely pale,” I returned, heading back to the alcove where an umbrella and cooler sat. Jill had packed it when she had dropped the things off earlier in the morning. “I mean, you’re not quite vampire material, but close.”
She stuck her tongue out at me before picking a few beach toys out. Items in hand, she walked to a spot and sat in the sand. I set the umbrella up, trying not to dwell on how odd the action seemed to my everyday tasks. Picking up the sunscreen, I moved toward her.
“Put this on. I’m not pampering you if you get sunburned.”
Squinting up at me, she frowned. “Are you pampering me now?”
I stooped, throwing the sunscreen into her lap. “This is me pampering, wildcat.”
Her smile could have filled me more than the most expensive meal and left me sated for days. She obliged my request and put on the sunscreen before digging into the sand.
“So, Emerson Tides. How did you come up with Cade?” Her hands deftly shifted the sand into shapes.
Sitting across from her, I ignored the strange sensation of sitting on the sand in my slacks. Her eyes flitted to me, then back to the sand. “I needed an alias when I moved from Bridgeville. Cade was my middle name.”
“Emerson Cade Tides?”
“Emerson Cadon Tides. Like I said, my parents liked names that sounded like we were wealthy.”
“Were you?”
“Eh, middle class. We had enough to never go without. What about you?” I asked, wanting the attention off of me. “Ava Shelton. Any fancy middle names for you?”
Her hands stopped, and I worried I had brought her back to the nightmares, but she chuckled. “Avani Liliya.”
“Avani? That’s your first name?”
“It’s on my birth certificate,” she said with a shrug. “But I prefer Ava. No one but my stepfather called me Avani. If I could bring myself to change my name so I never have the reminder of him again, I would. But it’s the only piece of the sober side of my mother I have.”
I observed her. The strands of her hair had dried in the morning sun, and they slipped forward as she molded the shape of a dragon into the sand. Her brown eyes peeked up at me.
“Avani, huh?”
She gave me a nod.
“Maybe it’s time you take your power back, wildcat.”
Her inhale was beautiful, her eyes widening into chestnut orbs with hints of gold. She swallowed, and those irises held mine with an intensity that burned through me. “Maybe it’s time we both do, Emerson.”
The corner of my mouth twitched as I fought my smile and lost. “Maybe.”
She went back to making her sand dragon, and I sat there, content to watch her work.
Noting all the tiny mannerisms that made me adore her more—the way she bit her tongue between her teeth when she focused, the deft movements of her hands as they sculpted, how she itched her nose with the back of her wrist. All such miniscule things that I would never have bothered to care about, but with Ava, I wanted to store them all to memory.
For the first time in too many years, the stress of my present situation, the sins of my past, and the dangers of my future all faded into a silence Ava filled.
She chatted about her classes, her intentions when she earned her master’s, her love of all things art and the hours she used to spend in local museums that spurred her studies.
And with every passing minute in her light, my darkness dissipated, leaving space for the emotions I’d been shielding in it to grow.
At the thought, I should have walked away, left her there, left her to someone else to guard, and buried myself back in my work. But I couldn’t do it.
Ava was curled up on the couch, exhausted from the day on the beach. We had stayed out the entire day, mostly sitting under the umbrella and talking as if we were on a first date and our roles no longer existed. I didn't know what to make of it, but if I didn’t overthink it, I wanted more of it.
“Let her go where she wants in the house as long as she doesn’t leave,” I told Breaker.
His brow arched, and I knew what he was thinking. Like Pack, he’d been with me the longest. It was the reason I trusted him to guard her.
“Cut it out and go watch the front of the house. Get Vin on the deck so she doesn’t go back out.” I glanced at her one last time. “I’m going to shower.”