15. Ava
Ava
I wake with a start, my heart pounding as I quickly shake off sleep and look at my phone.
Six in the morning. Shutting my eyes, I listen to the trash trucks banging around outside.
Every night has been like this since Brooks’s latest attack.
Any noise snaps me out of sleep and I just lie there awake.
Six in the morning wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t just fallen asleep at four.
My brain won’t stop spinning. If Brooks wants to hurt me, there’s not a lot I can do about it. He’s proven as much. I couldn’t even get him suspended from our graduate program. All this adrenaline is just making me tired.
Some part of me wonders if it’s time to stand up to him in a different way.
But right now it’s time to lounge in bed for a while. It’s not like I have a job to go to anyway. I need to start looking, but I’m waiting until the ugly purple bruises on my neck fade. There’s only so much a girl can do with scarves.
My mind goes back to Connor. Not to the fight, but to the night in the park when he held me and we danced beneath the stars. In all the mafia discussions, have I’ve lost sight of the man I started to get to know?
Picking up my phone, I open a blank text message.
“I want to be with you too,” I write in the body.
I tap the “to” bar, and pull up Connor’s name, and stare at the message for a few minutes before deleting it.
I miss how safe I felt with his strong arms wrapped around me. I miss his smile and those dimples. I miss how he felt thrusting in and out of me, the sweaty heat of his body pressing against mine. Pressing my legs together, I moan.
Slowly I slide my hand down my body and close my eyes, imagining it’s him caressing me. I imagine him kissing my breasts as I slip my fingers under the band of my panties and groan out his name, remembering how good his mouth felt on my pussy.
And then I remember the look on his face when I told him to go, and it’s like someone throws a cold bucket of water on me. Pulling my hand away, I curl into a ball. My brain runs through the same arguments over and over again.
He’s involved with organized crime. Stories about the dealings of the Doyle family have been Boston legend for decades.
Rumor has it that they started their illicit dealings back during Prohibition, bootlegging liquor like dozens of other families, but they had staying power.
Only Murphy Doyle has ever been arrested, and based on the case filings I’d read, it seems like he’d been sold out by a rival family, the Carneys.
After that it seems like all of the family’s dealings had been above board, but who knows what was happening beneath the surface. They’re at least handling some things the way Connor handled that Stacy goon.
It’s all confusing. But for the first time, I’m ready to acknowledge that my desire for this man might be stronger than my attachment to the idea that everything is black and white.
Maybe I’m finally ready to admit that I’ve seen that justice isn’t linear; just as my experience in trying to get any justice for what Brooks did to me surely proved that to me.
And maybe, just maybe, I can accept the shades of gray and still pursue my dreams.
My throat constricts. Can I live with the ambiguity of what he does for a living? Or can I at least try living with the possibility that the good Connor brings into my life matters more?
It’s time to move beyond the fear and panic I’ve lived in with Brooks. Time to trust not just in Connor but in myself again. To open up and get to know myself again—and maybe really get to know Connor more deeply than I’ve had the chance to.
The men in my life before Connor had projected a squeaky clean veneer that covered real, terrible darkness. Connor never pretended to be anything he wasn’t, and asked for my consent every step of the way.
A sense of peace washes over me, and I drift back to sleep for a while, waking up just in time to get ready for the guest lecture happening at my afternoon class. Business case law. Not very exciting. But the purpose of going to class gets me out of bed and on my way. Focus on what I can control.
In an hour, I’ve made it to campus and I sit at the back of the lecture hall. Normally I’m a down-in-front kind of overachiever, but until my neck heals I’ll fly under the radar.
“May I sit here?”
My heart stutters at the sound of a familiar voice, and then I realize that something’s slightly different.
The tone, the cadence, the timbre. For a minute I think it’s Connor, but it’s his brother.
The one I’d seen in the hallway when I’d rushed out of Connor’s apartment.
That feels like a million years ago now.
Does he remember me?
“Of course,” I say, nodding at the empty seat beside me.
“I’m giving a lecture here today,” he says, as he sits and smooths out his Italian suit pants, which cost more than I’d make in a year, “so I’m trying to get the lay of the land.”
His eyes circle the lecture hall, taking in the concrete walls and going back to my face. It’s bullshit, but I don’t mind.
“Nice suit,” I say. “Too nice for this group.”
“My brothers always say I’m overdressed,” he shoots back with an easy shrug and grin that reminds me so much of Connor that it makes my heart ache. Blinking rapidly, I try to keep the tears at bay.
“Ava.” His voice is soft.
My head jerks up at my name.
“Yes, I remember you.” He meets my eyes, all business now. “I’m Seamus. I saw you’d be in this class.”
Starting to shake, I take a shuddering breath. But I’m steeling myself, unsure what he’s going to say.
“I also wondered if Brooks would be here?” He looks sideways at me, his voice rising on the question. “Has he bothered you at all?”
Shaking my head, I look around. “I don’t see him very much these days.”
“Good,” Seamus says with a nod. He’s quiet for a minute. All I can think of is Connor.
“I miss him.” It’s ripped out of me against my will. “I miss him so much. But I have questions.”
“There’s no rush, Ava,” Seamus says, his well-manicured hand touches mine ever so briefly. “But Connor is a good man. An honorable man. Don’t tell him I said that though. Why don’t you think about it while I deliver this boring lecture? You won’t miss anything, I promise.”
Smiling for the first time in days, I nod as he walks up to the front of the room.
He’s right. The lecture is terrible. Seamus is a dynamic speaker, but the content is dry and my heart’s just not in this today.
But the places that my thoughts go, decidedly not boring.
Once the talk ends, Seamus takes a few questions and leaves quickly, slipping a business card onto my desk as he passes.
Picking up the card, I finger the fancy paper it’s printed on before sliding it into my bag.
After class ends, I slowly walk to the domestic violence center and head straight into Ruth’s office.
She looks up at me, and when our eyes meet, I sag.
She stands up quickly and closes the door.
I pour out everything that’s happened – well, almost everything – with Brooks.
And I confess how poorly things have gone with the Stacys, with Brooks, with the police, and with getting anything handled at the school.
“What do you want to do, Ava?”
It’s the question we always ask. Empowering the survivor or the person seeking help to define what success looks like.
“I’m tired of being afraid, Ruth. I’m fucking tired of being terrified. I want to confront him. Stop hiding what happened. Get him out of this program and get some kind of justice,” as I say it, I realize how true it is.
Justice isn’t black and white. It’s not being handed to me. But I’m ready to demand it, claim it, fight for it. No matter what it takes.
Am I willing to demand, fight for, and claim something else? Something personal? A shot at a life with Connor.
After I leave Ruth’s office, having worked out a feasible action plan around Brooks with her, I walk over to Boston Common and get some air. My eyes linger on the expanse of green, people lounging and playing kickball. The normal scenes.
Sitting on a bench, I watch several fat squirrels chase each other around the trunk of an old elm tree.
Lost in my thoughts, I sense someone nearby and look up fast. The bench creaks as a large man sits next down next to me, carefully lowering his bulk.
“Don’t go,” Connor says. At the sound of his voice, my eyes snap up to his face and then back to the ground. I’m rooted to the spot.
“I’m sorry you got fired, Ava. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
His legs are inches from mine. My palm yearns to run along the steely muscles of his thighs. I look up at him, but he’s looking straight ahead. He’s wearing a wool pea coat and a soft-looking red scarf.
I shiver, more at his proximity than at the cold. He turns to me, his brow furrowing. Unwinding the scarf from around his neck, he drapes it gently over my shoulders. Unable to help myself, I pull it tightly around me and bury my nose in it, drinking in his scent. Tears already burn at my eyes.
“I love my family, Ava,” he says, staring straight ahead once again. His voice has a hard edge, but I can see that his fists are unclenching. This is a hard conversation to have. “They’re good people. But we don’t always do good things.”
He continues, “I should have owned up to that with you. Talked to you straight. I tried, but clearly I could have done better.”
“I want to be with you too, Connor.”
He freezes.
“I’m sorry, Connor. I was scared, confused and hurt. I didn’t think I’d love anyone again after what Brooks put me through. But you’ve always been honest with me.”
Connor winces at the mention of Brooks’s name.
I snuggle further into the scarf. It makes me feel brave. “Nobody’s perfect. I still admire the work my dad did, even though he left my mother and I. It’s inspired me to want to make the world a better place. People are complex.”
His eyes cut toward me, but he’s restraining himself. Waiting. My breath is constricting in my chest, hurting for this man and how I pushed him away. I’d do anything in this moment to cross that gulf, but the best that I can offer is the truth.
And hope it’s enough.
“I can’t promise to like everything you do or to understand it. But I can promise you that you will be the first person I ask—and that we can work through things together.”
Then I wait, one beat and then two, starved for the oxygen that only he can offer.
“Ava,” Again my name sounds like a prayer, like an exultation as it crosses his lips.
Finally, I give in to my desire and slide my hand up his thigh. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. I press closer to him. “I haven’t slept well since I saw you last, Connor. Can you take me back to your place? Where it’s safe?”
His eyes snap open and he leans over, kissing me fiercely. My arms wrap around him, sliding my fingers through his hair, moaning into his mouth. “Please?”