Chapter 76 Ava
Ava
Idon’t remember making it from the floor to the bed.
One second I’m in Ethan’s arms, folded into him like I don’t know where I end and he begins.
The next, I’m beneath soft gray blankets in the quiet safehouse room, staring at the ceiling while the last of the adrenaline burns through my veins in ugly, uneven waves.
Ethan is still here.
That matters more than anything.
The sound of running water comes from the bathroom. Cabinet doors open and shut. Something clinks against the counter. He’s probably looking for medical supplies because, for all his talk, I know he has not had his side properly checked.
Typical.
My throat hurts.
My side hurts.
Everything hurts.
But somehow the loudest thing in me is still the silence.
The absence.
No static.
No pulse.
No sense that someone is reaching into me from somewhere I can’t see.
Just this room.
This bed.
This terrifying, beautiful quiet.
I turn my head slightly and stare at the empty space beside me.
A memory blindsides me so hard my breath catches.
Cold concrete.
Steel restraints.
A thin blanket thrown over me like mercy.
I remember lying awake in rooms that looked almost nothing like this one and still feeling the same strange need for a hand reaching back into the dark.
Something human.
Something that wasn’t theirs.
Something that meant I hadn’t vanished.
My chest tightens.
The bathroom door opens.
Ethan steps out with a first aid kit in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
He’s stripped off his bloodied shirt.
The bandage the medic put on his side is half ruined, stained through where Hayes’s blade cut him. Bruises are already darkening across his ribs, and there’s a scrape along his shoulder I hadn’t noticed before.
He catches me looking.
His mouth softens a little. “Hey.”
That one word nearly undoes me.
“Hey,” I whisper back.
He sets the water on the nightstand, then comes to the bed and crouches beside it. “You need to drink.”
“I need you to sit down before you bleed on the carpet.”
That almost gets a smile out of him.
Almost.
He hands me the glass first. I push myself upright enough to take a sip, then another. My hands shake around it.
Ethan notices.
Of course, he notices. He notices everything.
He takes the glass before I can pretend it’s fine and sets it aside. Then he looks at me in that steady way of his. The kind that sees too much.
“You’re still shaking.”
“I know.”
“You cold?”
“No.”
He studies me a second longer. “Okay.”
No pressure.
No demand.
Just okay.
That should make it easier.
Instead, it makes my eyes burn.
He stands and disappears again for maybe ten seconds, then comes back with another blanket and drapes it around my shoulders before sitting on the edge of the bed.
The mattress dips under his weight.
My body reacts before my mind does, instinctively leaning toward his heat.
He opens the first aid kit. “I need to clean this before it gets worse.”
I glance at the wound at his side and wince. “That looks bad.”
“It looks annoying.”
“It looks like a knife.”
“Minor detail.”
I let out a small, tired breath that could have been a laugh in another life.
Then I reach for the antiseptic anyway.
He looks at my hand.
Then at me.
“Ava.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Get protective and stubborn and tell me to lie down while you act like you’re made of concrete.”
His brows lift a fraction. “I am fairly sure I’m made of rage and poor decisions.”
That one does make me laugh.
It hurts my throat.
Still worth it.
I hold out my hand more firmly. “Give it to me.”
For a second I think he’s going to argue.
Then something in my face must stop him, because he passes me the gauze and antiseptic without another word.
Good.
I shift closer, blanket wrapped around me, and peel back the ruined bandage at his side.
The cut isn’t deep, but it’s long. Angry. Still leaking sluggish blood.
My stomach twists.
“He could’ve killed you.”
Ethan’s voice is calm. “He didn’t.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters right now.”
I wet the gauze and start carefully cleaning the wound. He goes still beneath my hands.
Not tense.
Not flinching.
Just very, very still.
I glance up. “Am I hurting you?”
His eyes are already on me. “No.”
The way he says it changes the air in the room.
I look back down quickly, but my pulse has already jumped.
I clean the cut more gently.
My fingers brush the ridges of older scars across his ribs and stomach.
Knife wounds.
Bullet marks.
One long pale line I don’t know the story behind.
My chest tightens all over again.
“How many times?” I ask before I can stop myself.
He goes quiet.
I smooth a fresh strip of gauze over the cut. “How many times have you almost died and not told anyone?”
One corner of his mouth lifts without humor. “That’s not really a first-date question.”
I meet his eyes. “Good thing we’re past that.”
Something flashes there.
Warm.
Wrecked.
Then it fades into honesty. “Too many.”
I nod once.
Because I knew that would be the answer.
Then I tape the clean bandage in place and let my hand linger against his side for one extra second.
He doesn’t move away.
Neither do I.
The room gets very still.
Very quiet.
Too quiet maybe.
Because the moment my hands stop moving, my thoughts start.
The bunker.
The rooms.
The chair bolted to the floor.
The look on Hayes’s face when he saw me.
And beneath all of that—
the sickening, hollow realization that he was telling the truth.
Not about me.
About the others.
I pull my hand back too fast.
Ethan catches the shift instantly. “Talk to me.”
I stare at the bandage I just fixed. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Anywhere.”
I swallow. My throat feels scraped raw. “I thought I’d feel… lighter.”
His voice stays soft. “You do.”
“I do.” I nod faintly. “But I also feel…” My hand curls in the blanket. “I don’t know. Wrong.”
His expression changes. “Wrong how?”
I laugh once, brittle and ugly. “He’s dead, Ethan. I watched him die. Part of me is relieved, and part of me is…” I search for the word and hate it the second I find it. “Satisfied.”
He doesn’t look away.
Doesn’t judge.
Doesn’t rush to correct me.
That somehow makes it easier to say the next part.
“I wanted him to be afraid. I wanted him to know I wasn’t his anymore.” My voice shakes. “I wanted him to hit that edge and understand he lost.”
Ethan reaches for me slowly, like he’s approaching something breakable and not the woman who just helped kill the worst man either of us has ever known.
His hand closes over mine in the blanket.
“Ava.”
My eyes lift to his.
“There is nothing wrong with wanting your monster to know he lost.”
The words hit me so hard I stopped breathing for a second.
He keeps going.
“He tortured you. He stole from you. He put his hands on you and expected you to live in the ruins of that forever.” His voice stays low, deadly calm. “You don’t owe that man mercy in your own mind.”
The tightness in my chest cracks.
Not all the way.
Enough.
I blink hard. “You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not simple.” His thumb brushes over my knuckles. “It’s just true.”
I look at our hands.
His big and rough over mine.
Grounding.
Warm.
Real.
And suddenly there’s too much pressing at the inside of my ribs again.
“I remember pieces,” I whisper.
His fingers tighten slightly. “Of what?”
I stare at the far wall. “Everything.”
The word hangs there between us.
Heavy.
He says nothing.
Doesn’t ask.
Just waits.
So I keep going.
There are gaps. Whole stretches are gone or blurred.
But some things are back now. More than before.
” My mouth goes dry. “The chair in that lower lab. The injections. The way he’d talk while others did the worst of it.
” I force myself to breathe. “Like my fear was just weather. Like he was discussing numbers.”
Ethan’s entire body goes rigid.
I feel it beside me.
Still, he says nothing.
Still, he lets me choose the shape of it.
“There were days I thought if I stopped answering, if I stopped reacting, maybe I’d disappear enough for them to lose interest.” A tear slips out before I can stop it. “But he liked when I went quiet. Said it meant I was adapting.”
Ethan closes his eyes.
Just for a second.
When they open, they’re dark with something so violent it nearly scares me.
Not at me.
Never at me.
For me.
I wipe the tear away angrily. “I hate crying.”
“Cry anyway.”
I let out a breath that shakes. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
That almost makes me smile.
Almost.
I stare down at the blanket. “The worst part wasn’t always the pain.”
His jaw tightens.
“It was the doubt,” I whisper. “When I couldn’t tell anymore if a thought was mine. Or a memory. Or a reaction.” My fingers twist together. “There were times I’d hear your name in my head and think maybe I was making you up just to survive.”
His inhale is sharp.
I barely get the next words out. “I was terrified that if I ever saw you again, I wouldn’t know what was real.”
The bed shifts.
Then suddenly he’s closer.
One hand slides to the back of my neck. The other cups my jaw.
“Ava.”
I look at him.
His eyes are bright now too.
God.
I’ve done that.
“I’m real,” he says quietly. “And I’m here.”
The simplicity of it knocks straight through me.
My chin trembles.
I hate that he can see it. I hate being weak.
He brushes his thumb over my cheek. “You don’t have to sort through all of it tonight.”
“What if it never sorts out?”
“Then we build new memories strong enough to stand beside the old ones.”
A breath catches in my chest.
“New memories,” I repeat.
His forehead touches mine. “Yeah.”
My eyes close.
For one dangerous second I just sit there breathing him in.
Soap.
Clean cotton.
The faint metallic trace of blood no shower has fully erased yet.
Underneath all that, just Ethan.
Home and heartbreak and heat.
When I open my eyes again, he’s still right there.
Waiting.
Not pushing.
And because I’m tired enough and raw enough and wrecked enough to stop pretending with him, I whisper the thing I’ve been too afraid to say out loud.
“I don’t want to sleep alone.”
His whole face changes.
Not shock.
Something deeper.
Like I just handed him a piece of myself I’m not used to trusting anyone with.
“You won’t,” he says.
I search his eyes.
“Even if I wake up weird?”
A flicker of pain crosses his face. “Ava—”
“Even if I panic. Even if I say something awful. Even if I don’t know where I am for a second.” My voice goes rough. “Even if I’m not easy.”
He leans in closer until there’s barely air between us. “Especially then.”
That breaks something open in me.
My breath leaves in a rush.
Before I can second-guess it, I reach up and touch his face.
Just trace the line of his cheek, the bruise near his jaw, the roughness of stubble beneath my fingertips.
He goes utterly still again.
I should pull away.
I don’t.
“You’re hurt too,” I whisper.
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
His gaze locks on mine.
I let my hand slide to the back of his neck. “You looked at that place like you wanted to tear the walls down with your bare hands.”
His throat works once.
“I did.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
The honesty of it burns.
My fingers tighten against his skin. “That had to hurt.”
His eyes drop briefly, then come back to mine. “So did thinking I’d lose you again.”
My heart stumbles so hard it feels like a wound.
I move before I think better of it.
Lean in.
Press my mouth to his.
The kiss starts soft.
Tentative maybe.
Not because I don’t want more.
Because I do.
Because I want too much.
I want to feel something warm instead of cold.
Something chosen instead of forced.
Something that belongs only to us.
Ethan makes a low sound in his throat and one hand slides into my hair, holding me with unbearable gentleness as he kisses me back.
Not taking.
Not demanding.
Meeting me.
The difference nearly wrecks me.
I shift closer.
The blanket falls half off my shoulders.
His other hand slides around my waist, steadying me, careful of my wounds even now.
I kiss him deeper.
Needier.
My fingers tangle at the nape of his neck.
He pulls back first.
Barely.
Just enough to look at me.
His breathing is rough.
Mine too.
“Ava.”
I know that tone.
Question.
Warning.
Care.
All at once.
“I know I’m hurt,” I whisper.
His jaw tightens. “That’s not all I’m thinking about.”
I swallow. “I know.”
His thumb strokes once along my side, nowhere near the wound, and even that tiny touch sends heat unspooling through me so sharp it feels almost unfair.
“You’ve been through too much today.”
“I know.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“Yes.”
He searches my face like he’s trying to read every fracture line in me. “Then tell me what you need.”
That question.
That one simple question.
It goes so deep I almost cry again.
Instead I tell him the truth.
“You.”
The word comes out broken.
His eyes close for one second.
When they open, whatever he sees in my face must answer something for him.
Because he leans in and kisses me again.
This time slower.
Deeper.
His hand cradles the side of my neck like I’m precious.
Like I matter.
Like the point of touching me is not control but care.
The ache that runs through me is almost unbearable.
I shift, trying to get closer, and hiss when my side protests.
He breaks the kiss instantly. “Easy.”
I let out a shaky, half-laughing sound. “My body has terrible timing.”
His mouth brushes the corner of mine. “Your body’s been through war.”
The tenderness in his voice does something dangerous to me.
I rest my forehead against his. “I still want this.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His hand slides slowly down my back, warm and steady. “Yeah.”
I breathe him in again, trying to calm the wildness under my skin. “Then don’t back away.”
He goes still.
Very still.
Then he kisses my forehead.
My temple.
My cheek.
Each touch unhurried.
Reverent almost.
And somehow that is hotter than anything.
More intimate.
More devastating.
His lips brush mine once more before he murmurs, “I’m not backing away. I’m making sure I don’t take more than you can give tonight.”
The words settle right into the bruised center of me.
Not taking more.
God.
I press my face briefly into his shoulder because that one nearly destroys me.
When I lift my head again, my voice is small. “I don’t know what careful looks like anymore.”
His hand moves back to my hair. “Then let me show you.”