Chapter 44 #2
Gavin stands in the doorway. He looks painfully himself, familiar enough to make my stomach drop. His gaze flicks to Samuel’s rolled sleeves, the tattoo, the calm confidence. Something sharp flashes across his face, and his jaw flexes like he’s bitten down on something bitter.
His eyes find mine.
“Ava,” he says.
It’s just my name, but he says it like it still belongs to him. My body agrees before my brain gets a vote.
Samuel straightens slightly, polite. “Gavin.”
They shake hands. Civil. Tight.
A woman enters the kitchen like the dramatic reveal in a prestige miniseries. Flawless, glossy, perfectly lit by accident on purpose.
“There you are,” she says, sliding a hand onto Gavin’s arm like she’s placing herself in the frame. Now, I feel something sharp.
Where is Olivia? It would be just like her to be too busy for a family event that doesn’t revolve around her. Or has this woman replaced her?
Her eyes land on Samuel, and her smile turns deliberate. She looks to Gavin for an introduction.
“Celia, Samuel Gailey.” It’s gruff at best.
“Samuel Gailey,” she says, like she’s tasted his name before. “I loved your latest book.”
Samuel’s expression remains pleasant, but it doesn’t open.
“That’s kind of you,” he says.
Celia tilts her head. “Are you here alone?” A flirtation disguised as curiosity. Or maybe the other way around.
Samuel doesn’t look at her first.
He looks at me.
Just a quick check-in, a question with no pressure: Do you want me to handle this? Do you want an out?
Gavin sees it too. His gaze sharpens.
My pulse skitters.
“I’m here with Ava,” he says simply.
Not possessive. Not loud.
Just true.
Celia’s smile wobbles, then resets. “Lucky Ava.”
Samuel’s mouth quirks. “She is, generally.”
The dodge is deliberate. The refusal is kind.
Gavin’s mouth tightens. “Can we talk?” He’s only looking at me.
Samuel shifts closer, not blocking me, just steady, and murmurs, “Take your time. I’ve got you.”
And, I know he does.
Gavin narrows his eyes and something in his face tightens again—not anger, exactly. Jealousy. The realization that someone else is being careful with me.
I nod, because if I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of the night feeling him like a bruise.
Gavin leads me down the hall to Liam’s study.
The door clicks shut behind us.
His eyes flick down to my mouth, then back up like he’s forcing himself to behave.
He opens his mouth, closes it.
“I thought—” he starts. Then stops. “You blocked my emails and my calls,” he says.
I flinch. Because he’s right.
Because I did.
Because I was too chicken to say the thing that has lived inside my chest like a second heartbeat.
“I don’t get you,” he says. “You show up with him, but you look at me like—”
“Like what?”
He rubs the back of his neck.
“Ava, we need to talk. The last time I saw you—”
“The last time we saw each other. You said you still loved Olivia.”
He looks frustrated and confused.
We hear Cari calling from down the hall. “Toast time!”
“I need to tell you—”
I don’t wait for him to finish before I escape into the hallway.
Because suddenly the room feels too small.
Because my pulse has climbed straight into my throat.
If I stay another second, he’ll see it—the way my breath keeps catching, the way some part of me still leans toward him.
And I refuse—absolutely refuse—to let Gavin Jones see that.
The party fills the house the way the tide fills a shoreline, gradual until it isn’t. Jackets pile up. Glasses clink. Laughter climbs the staircase and settles into the corners. Everyone looks sharpened for the occasion: men in dark suits and polished shoes, women in velvet and satin and sequins that catch the candlelight at every turn. Perfume and champagne and rosemary drift through the rooms in overlapping, invisible clouds.
I search for Samuel.
I find him in the living room, near the fireplace, a half circle of people around him. He’s smiling too brightly, leaning in a little too close. Someone laughs with their hand on his forearm. Someone else is asking a question with the intensity of a graduate seminar. Samuel is polite, attentive, giving them his best public version.
But his eyes aren’t on them.
His gaze lifts, finds me across the room, and steadies there—quiet, unshowy, like he’s checking that I’m still breathing.
Then he looks away, returns to the conversation, and lets the circle close back in.
And somehow that—the choice to keep watch without claiming—lands harder than any flirtation.
The room hushes as Liam raises a glass.
“There’s someone here who’s known Jared longer than almost anyone. Who’s stood by him through the best and worst, and tonight, gets to speak as his Maid of Honor, and as family. Ava.”
All eyes turn to me.
I feel Gavin’s gaze.
I do not look at him.
I focus on the rim of my champagne glass as I raise it, my hand suddenly unfamiliar.
“Hi,” I begin, and a little laugh ripples because I sound like I’m about to confess to a crime. “I’ve known Jared since we were nineteen, which means I’ve had the privilege of watching him evolve from a boy who thought a fedora counted as a personality—”
Jared groans. The room laughs.
“—into a man who is somehow still dramatic,” I continue, smiling at him, “but now he’s dramatic with purpose.”
More laughter, softer this time.
My eyes lift automatically, searching for something neutral to land on.
Instead, they find Gavin.
Of course they do.
Just for a second.
He narrows his eyes, like he knows what I’m up to.
My grip tightens on the stem of my glass.
“I met Jared when I thought I knew who I was,” I continue, letting the humor settle into something real, my voice only slightly thinner than it was a second ago. “He’s the person who showed me I was more than I had been led to believe. He’s been my first real home, my first heartbreak, my best friend, and my fiercest advocate.”
I pause, swallowing around the lump.
“When my own family was gone,” I say, finding Patricia and Liam, “he gave me this one. And when I forgot how to belong, he reminded me I never stopped.”
The room goes quiet in that way that feels like love holding its breath.
“And John,” I add, turning toward him, “you should know something: Jared doesn’t do anything halfway. Not love. Not loyalty. Not holidays. Especially not grudges.”
A few affectionate laughs.
“So the fact that you’re the first man he has ever loved like this—openly, honestly—” My voice tightens. “That matters.”
Jared’s eyes shine. John’s hand tightens around his.
“Because it isn’t always easy to be the first,” I say, voice steadying. “The first can be brave and terrifying and messy. The first asks you to step into a world that doesn’t always make space for you.”
I look at them, at the way they hold each other like it’s both a choice and a promise.
“But you did,” I say. “Both of you did.”
I breathe in.
“Jared is capable of so many kinds of love,” I continue. “And you both deserve all of them.” I smile through the burn behind my eyes. “John, you see all of him. You love all of him. And you make him steadier without dimming him.”
John puts his hand on his heart as he mouths “thank you.”
I lift my glass.
“To Jared and John,” I say. “May you keep choosing each other, loudly, softly, always.”
Applause breaks out. Warm. Real.
I step back, pulse roaring.
Samuel appears at my side like he’s been there the whole time.
“You were incredible,” he murmurs. No flirtation, just recognition and respect.
Then, softer, wry: “Also, this friend group is terrifyingly literary and functional.”
A shaky laugh escapes me.
His gaze flicks past me to Gavin, watching us from across the room like he’s holding himself together by force.
Samuel’s lips press together, almost imperceptibly.
And then he does something that lands in my body like a touch: he stays close anyway. Not claiming. Not crowding. Just… there. Choosing to stand beside me when he could step away.
I hand off my glass and move toward the foyer. I need air. I need cold. I need anything that isn’t Gavin’s eyes on my skin.
I almost make it to the door.
“Ava.”
His voice is behind me. Close.
“I can’t do this,” I say, reaching for my coat.
Gavin’s hand catches my wrist. His touch is gentle, familiar, devastating. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t be around you,” I whisper. “It hurts.”
His voice drops. “Why?”
“Because I’m not a one-night-or-two-night-stand kind of girl, Gavin. And thanks to you, I can’t even say that literally.”
Pain crosses his face. Real and immediate.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” I cut in. “That’s the worst part. You weren’t cruel. You were just… not brave.”
He shuts his eyes for a beat like he’s taking the hit.
Then he asks, voice stripped bare: “Are you in love?”
My lungs lock.
Because the truth is right there, pressing against my chest. The truth I sent him away for. The truth I’ve been too scared to name because naming it makes it real, and real things can leave.
I could tell him.
I could finally say it out loud.
That I never stopped loving him. That he’s still so present, I can’t seem to love anyone else, no matter how perfect they are.
But the foster kid in me—the girl that learned to survive by never putting all the pieces of her heart on the table—chooses the safer thing.
“I need to know, Ava. Are you in love?”
The thing that isn’t fully a lie; it’s just not about who he thinks it is about.
“Yes,” I say.
The word lands between us, heavy and final.
For a second, he just looks at me, like the world tilted and he’s still trying to find his footing.
I add, softer, not unkind, just done: “If you ever really cared about me, you’ll let me go.”
His gaze slides past me, toward the living room, toward Samuel, sleeves rolled, speaking quietly with Patricia, the kind of man who would hold a woman gently and never make her beg for clarity.
Gavin swallows.
His hand releases, and he steps back from me like he’s been hit.
And I walk out into the cold without looking back.
Not because I’m not tempted to stay.
But because if I do, I won’t want to leave.