Chapter 39
Into Her Arms
I never expected my life to take another 180—this time in a garden full of strangers on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest—but here we are.
Marisol’s friends are a wild, wonderful bunch. One minute, I’m deep in conversation with Miranda Otto, Nicholas Galitzine, and Bradley James—all somehow even cooler in person than on screen. Five minutes later, I’m wedged between Ali Hazelwood and Abby Jimenez, holding my own in a hilarious debate about fictional boyfriends. Next, Marisol is introducing me to Samuel W. Gailey, whose feminist backlist once launched me into a full-blown BookTok spiral.
If I hadn’t just fallen head over heels for Gavin (a fact I still can’t say out loud without wanting to both cry and twirl), I’d be sorely tempted. Samuel is disarmingly handsome in a literary, brooding-but-kind-of-knows-it way. Think rumpled vintage blazer, black jeans, combat boots, and the kind of glasses that say I read French philosophy but also appreciate a good IPA.
I fangirl a little over his latest book, Come Away from Her, and he hands me his card and says I should call him for lunch so he can tell me, “all the real secrets.”
The party hums around me. Flowers hang artfully from the string of lights, and I catch a glimpse of the food table. Nasturtium-infused pidés topped with smoked eggplant, figs, and prosciutto are a full-blown hit. The editor from Bon Appétit is licking her fingers without a shred of shame, and Padma and her crew are going back in for thirds. I take that as permission to breathe.
The Dungeness crab salad is my favorite thing on the menu, not because it’s the prettiest—though it is, all pale microgreens, paper-thin daikon, and avocado fanned just so—but because it belongs to this place. Tide to table in the truest sense. I caught the crab myself, out on a boat with Brett at sunrise, hauling cages up from eighty feet of cold Pacific water. My arms were shaking. My shirt was soaked. But the payoff was this: sweet, clean meat, barely dressed, with just a drizzle of orange-miso-sesame aioli to let it shine. The effect was unexpected umami.
There’s something heady about feeding people this way, about knowing exactly where your food came from. The land. The sea. Me.
Marisol floats by in sapphire satin, every inch the woman who just scorched the earth of her past and made it look effortless. She pauses beside me, eyes sweeping the table.
“This,” she says, “is proof you’d make an amazing editor at Pulse if you ever want to come back.”
Her words land lightly—like an invitation—but I feel the weight of them. A few months ago, I would have reached for that offer like a lifeline.
Now?
I smile. “Thank you.”
It’s not a no.
But it’s not a yes either.
Across the garden, I spot Liam under the ginkgo tree, alone with a drink, and wander over.
“Ava, it’s been too long.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“What’s going on with you, besides throwing this spectacular party with my beautiful wife?”
I’m about to go with small talk when I see him. Gavin.
The air leaves my lungs. His tie is loosened, jacket slung over his shoulder, sleeves rolled. He looks like he walked out of a movie where he saved the world at the exact right moment. I didn’t think he’d make it tonight. Not with two delayed flights.
He’s scanning the crowd, and then he finds me. That grin, the one that makes my knees unsteady, spreads across his face.
“I’m in love with your son, Liam.”
“Oh, sweetheart. I know it’s been rough, but you’ve got to get over Jared.”
“Not that son, Liam.”
Liam looks to me, then to Gavin, whose gaze is riveted on me.
“I suppose that’s why I had two sons.” He puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me affectionately. “To make sure you got into this family one way or another.”
Patricia approaches. “It’s a great turnout, isn’t it?” she says. “I think we’ll get more work from this than we can handle.” She turns to Liam. “Maybe we can move out here earlier than we planned.”
“Sweetheart, Ava just informed me she’s in love with our Gavin.”
“Yes, I know she is dear.”
“You mean I’m the last to know?”
“I never told Patricia,” I say. “I haven’t even told Gavin. I only just figured it out.”
Patricia cups my face and kisses my forehead.
“So, do you two think I should tell him?” I ask.
They answer in stereo: “Definitely.”
Gavin walks up just then. “Mom. Dad. Why do you look like the cat that swallowed the canary?”
Liam pats his back. “Good to see you, son.”
“Hello, honey. Gotta go check on Isabel.”
They both make their exit far too casually. As if this isn’t the moment everything may tilt. Like I’m not standing on the edge of something irreversible.
Gavin turns to me. And everything else—conversation, music, ambient hum—fades. I want to touch him, but I restrain myself. He hates PDA; he used to roll his eyes when Jared kissed me in public. But now? He doesn’t hesitate. One second, I’m standing there, stunned stupid by the sight of him, and the next his hands are in my hair, and his mouth is on mine. It’s not a chaste, hey-good-to-see-you kiss. It’s a remember-this, rewrite-everything kiss. The kind that short-circuits thought and rewires memory. I forget the garden, the guest list, my own name. When he pulls back, just slightly, I forget to breathe until he presses his forehead to mine.
“Okay,” he says, voice low, a little hoarse. “Parents were being a little weird.”
I laugh. “You made it.”
Before I can assemble words, Kiki storms over, headset askew, eyes wide. “Please tell me the singer showed.”
“No singer,” I say, keeping my voice even.
“Marisol wanted live vibes. At least a five-song set, thirty minutes. This is bad,” Kiki says. “This is her redemption party, Ava. Her ‘I divorced the sockless fraud and now I’m thriving’ comeback.”
“Remote island thing. No plan B,” I shrug.
Kiki blinks, then actually sags, as if the air goes out of her. “But the editors of Goop and Poosh are here, judging us.”
Gavin doesn’t say a word. He absorbs it. His gaze skims the garden: the small stage we rigged for ambiance, the mic, the guitar case. Then he leaves us.
Kiki frowns. “Wait. Why is Gavin walking onto the stage?”
I do my best innocent shrug. “Maybe he’s trying to help?”
She narrows her eyes. “You’re smiling.”
“I always smile in a crisis,” I reply.
“No, you look like you’re about to get away with something.”
I flash her a grin. A grin that once got me out of calculus and into an advanced French pastry class.
Onstage, Gavin pulls the guitar out, recognition flashing across his face, then a tilt at the corner of his mouth, the kind of private expression a person has when they open a drawer and find a memory inside.
He looks for me. Finds me. The look he gives is not a smile so much as a secret—warm, complicit, a soft I see you from across the garden.
He strums one note. Then another. The hush comes slowly. First, the people closest to him, then a ripple across the crowd. By the time he starts to play, every head is turned toward him.
He sings Poison Cup by M. Ward. Slower, stripped. Tender. The audience bends toward him like flowers to the sun.
By the second song, True Love Will Find You in the End, people are swaying. Servers stop mid-step. Someone near the firepit whispers, “Is this guy famous?”
Tara says, “He should do this professionally.”
I don’t say anything. But I think: He did. Once.
He doesn’t say anything between songs. He just plays. Two originals, raw and gorgeous. Then Into My Arms by Nick Cave.
He sings about leaving someone untouched. About loving her as-is. About only asking the universe for one selfish thing: to direct her into his arms.
It’s the kind of song—and he’s the kind of performer—that grips your ribs from the inside.
This is where he belongs.
Not because the crowd is rapt, but because his whole body settles into the shape of music—shoulders loose, hands sure, breath steady. He gave this up once. For Patricia. For the family. For certainty. And here he is again, coming back to himself in front of almost a hundred people and me.
More reactions bloom around me.
Kiki has one hand on her headset and the other over her mouth, eyes glossy and disbelieving. She doesn’t even pretend to manage anymore; she just listens.
“This,” Marisol whispers, “is what a second act sounds like.”
Patricia presses her fingertips to her lips, not bothering to hide the happy tears. Liam stands tall beside her, pride so evident in the set of his shoulders you could hang a coat on it.
And me? My chest is a fuse. I feel the rightness of it like heat. I’m not just in love with him; I’m in love with this new version of him. The one who didn’t vanish when life got complicated. The one who could still be recovered.
Olivia arrives on the last verse.
She slips in at the far edge of the lawn, all smooth silk and sharpened cheekbones, and stops dead. Her eyes track the line from Gavin on stage to me and back again, reading the air like a lawyer reviewing evidence.
She would be a fool not to feel it—the current running between us. It’s not a look you can dismiss. It’s a frequency.
Gavin holds the song’s final note. Silence lands. Then the applause rises fast, full-bodied, and I can see he’s a little stunned.
He sets the guitar—his guitar—back in its case, and for a beat, he doesn’t move, letting the sound wash over him. Then he finds me in the crowd again, and things new and old pass between us: recognition, gratitude, want.
Under the soft spin of a Miel song, he meets me on the dance floor. He doesn’t make a show of it. He just offers his hand, and I take it, and we sway in our small circle.
His chest brushes mine, familiar and electrifying. He smells like cedar and some cologne I now associate exclusively with orgasms. I notice his tie—the lavender one. It’s knotted casually at his throat now, but I can feel it like a phantom touch. A reminder of everything his hands have done to me.
His mouth is near my temple as he whispers: “There never was another singer, was there?”
I tip my head up at him, a sheepish smile giving me away. “I didn’t lie,” I say. “Technically.”
A quiet laugh, close enough that I feel it. His thumb sketches a half-moon across my wrist.
“Mad?” I ask, barely above the music.
“Not even close.” He breathes out. “That’s the best I’ve felt in a long time.”
He doesn’t explain the rest, but he doesn’t have to.
“I have something I have to tell you,” I say.
He stops dancing. I don’t need to look behind me to know that Olivia has approached.
“Gavin, I need to talk,” she says.
“Now isn’t the time.”
“You haven’t answered my calls. We are still officially engaged.” Her words do not seem to be moving him in the slightest. She tries a different tactic. “If we’re going to end things, I should at least get a chance to explain my side.”
“We were supposed to be on the same side.”
“If you’d let me finish… I want to say that I’m sorry. It was a stupid mistake. We’ve been together for three years, Gavin. Don’t I at least get to say goodbye?”
Gavin turns to me. “Ava, do you mind if I speak to Olivia alone for a minute?”
I absolutely mind. A lot of things can happen in a minute. Every minute, there are 250 babies born. In one minute, lightning strikes the Earth 6,000 times. Oprah makes $523 in one minute. But I smile. “Of course not. I’ll check on the staff.”
I stand in a place where they cannot see me. They are in my garden in a dark corner, away from the throngs of people, heads huddled in intimate discussion. Olivia seems to be humbling herself. Gavin has his arms crossed, keeping his distance. Olivia’s head drops on her chest. She’s pulling out the crying card. Of course, she’s nowhere near me on the crying spectrum. No shoulder-shrugging-snot-dripping-swollen-eye-crying for her. No, of course, she looks ethereal when she cries. Like a sad angel sent from Heaven to grace us mere mortals with her presence. Gavin uncrosses his arms and puts his hands on Olivia’s shoulders. No. She looks up at him through those insanely thick eyelashes of hers. No! He says something, then she nods and leaves. And now Gavin is looking for me. Me. Not Olivia. Me.
He finds me beneath the tree again, hands in his pockets like they might keep him grounded.
“Hey.” His voice is low. Worn. “Olivia wants to try again. One more chance.”
A pause. Then: “I told her I love her. But—”
The word hits me like cold water. Love. Not loved. Not used to love. Love. Present tense.
Of course he loves her. Three years together. Engagement rings. Families. History.
“Let’s forget about Olivia. This is your night. What did you want to tell me when we were dancing?”
He says it too easily. Like the word love didn’t just happen. Like it’s something we can step around.
My throat tightens. “Gavin, what are we doing?”
“Ava—”
“What we had …” I shake my head, and force a shrug. “It was a moment. A good one. But that’s all.”
His brow furrows. “That’s not what it felt like.”
The last thing I want is to fall madly in love with another guy who isn’t sure what he wants. We may not be talking about something as insurmountable as being on opposite sides of the spectrum of sexual attraction here. Still, we are talking about the spectrum of Olivia; naturally gorgeous, voted “woman men most want to go to bed with,” perfectly-mannered, Hampton-bred vs. me, Ava, girl who lacks the accessorizing gene, homeless, soon-to-be unemployed, obsessed with food, cries at the drop of a hat, and has to have guys tie her up the first time they have sex with her just so that she can relax. Of course, he’s confused. I wouldn’t want to leap into my arms either. I decide I will make this easier on myself. Easier on Gavin.
“Gavin, you said you love her. What you and Olivia had is real. You sent save-the-date cards for god’s sake. What you and I had… well, chalk that up to Leonard Cohen, and rebound sex.”
“Is this what you were trying to tell me on the dance floor?”
“Yes,” I lie. “The sex didn’t mean anything.” It meant everything. “You were the closest thing I could have to Jared if I couldn’t have him.”
The words are knives. I know exactly how deep they’ll cut.
Part of me wants him to fight for me. If he really loved me, wouldn’t he?
“Ava.” His voice is ragged now. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you an out. If you and Olivia make sense, don’t throw that away for a two-night stand.”
“You’re not.”
“We’ll see Gavin. We’ll see.”
And that’s it.
I walk away.
Not because I want to.
But because I don’t believe I’m someone worth staying for.