26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stephen
Up to this point, I’ve been keeping Ava at arm’s length.
It hasn’t made me happy. In fact, since the accident, I’ve been fucking miserable knowing I have zero right to take any shift at her bedside.
Gage took pity on me when it came to Landon, knowing we’d gotten close while I was on assignment with them.
But Ava? Sitting at her bedside said more than I’m worried about the kid.
So when they wheeled Landon in here earlier, I took the overnight shift with enthusiasm. Even if Ava didn’t wake up, I’d get to see her, examine her, reassure myself that she was in one piece. Alive. On the road to recovery.
And I promised myself I’d honor the doctor’s orders about keeping Ava calm. Waiting days to see her, speak to her, find out if there’s a chance Landon is mine, has been torture. Now, on the cusp of getting answers, my palms are sweaty, skin clammy.
Part of me isn’t sure I can trust her the way I once did—the unwavering belief she’d pick me over anyone and everyone else died that night in my apartment. Knowing she’s being honest with me relies on that connection, that sense that she’ll tell me the truth, even when the truth is ugly.
As I look down at her, I think it’s worth giving our old connection a shot of adrenaline with this late-night confessional, see if we can get the heart of us pumping once more.
Which might be really foolish if it turns out she did lie to me about Landon.
“You were mad at me for breaking things off,” I prompt.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” Ava says, and her voice is thick with tears again.
Before, she wasn’t a crier. She raged, swore, threw things—but tears?
Never. Her true emotions are closer to the surface than ever, and that realization brings forth my instinctual desire to protect her at all costs that’s been bubbling below the surface whenever anyone or anything threatens her.
I want to tell her I could never hate her, but if she kept Landon from me, lied to my face about him, I’m not sure I could forgive her either.
I draw the chair up to the edge of her bed, and I lace her hand with mine. “You give me all your truth, and then I’ll give you all mine.”
“I went out the night after you left, and I ran into Raul. My mother had been pressuring me to consider him as an option. She liked how he moved around Bellerive. Cut from the same cloth, you know?”
Never has Ava said something truer. Celia and Raul are very similar. They care primarily about themselves, and they treat most people they deal with like second-class citizens. Of course Celia would like him.
“And I was feeling reckless and…” She takes a deep breath. “Hurt. Angry. So many things.”
When she doesn’t continue, I add, “You fucked him.” Without that fact, it would make no sense for Landon to be Raul’s son.
“Why is that so hard to say?” But I have to admit, it stings a little, even for me to voice that core truth.
Maybe because, for the first time, there was no “us” afterward.
There was no erasure of that moment for either of us.
“You and I, we had pretty clear rules about unprotected sex with other people, Ava, and if you broke those—”
“I didn’t. I never did.” Her tone is sharp, glimmers of herself. “You were the only one. Raul and I used a condom.”
“What? He didn’t know how to use a condom properly?” My tone is mocking, and I close my eyes, trying to keep my bitterness in check. I need the truth, and I need to be able to trust her. If I make her feel shitty, she’s more likely to hedge or hesitate.
“You’d have no reason to know anything about this, but Cocksure Condoms manufactured a bunch of faulty ones. There was a civil lawsuit about it and everything.”
“Did you know that you’d used a faulty one when you found out you were pregnant?” I ask.
“No.” She bites her lip. “Why would I even consider that? It was just that once I told my mother, she asked if you were the only one who could be Landon’s father.”
Having been up close and personal with Celia’s decision tree, I could probably draw the sequence on the window. If this, then… Over and over until she got the result she wanted. “She told you to tell Raul.”
“Only after I said I was keeping the baby. That I wasn’t getting rid of him.”
“She wouldn’t have loved the optics of you having a baby alone.”
“Single mother. Father a former police officer who left the island without telling me where he was going. Like maybe being part of the Tucker family wasn’t so desirable after all.
” She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and takes a deep, obviously painful breath.
“You’re right, I might need a sedative after this. ”
“We don’t have to do this now,” I say, and I lean forward to run my thumb along her cheek again. She’s still so fucking pretty. Even exhausted. Even bruised and bandaged. Even full of anger and self-loathing. Watching her age, noting all the changes as they happened, would be a privilege.
“The drugs have helped.” She gives me a watery smile. “The bite of remembrance isn’t so sharp.”
“She didn’t want you to keep Landon, but you said you were. So that’s when she asked whether it was possible there could be another father?”
“Yes. She said I should tell Raul, and I…” She breathes out a sigh.
“I didn’t know what to do. It’s like all my fight left with you.
That’s the only way to explain it. She told Raul I might be pregnant with his child.
She arranged the DNA test. And when it came back that he was the father, I cried for weeks.
Locked myself in my house. Refused to see anyone.
Told my mom to have the test run again. By then, I was too far along.
I’d been so sure.” She looks at me with watery eyes.
“I really thought he was yours, and the idea of getting rid of any part of you—I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t do it, and then I was stuck. Somebody else’s baby, that I never would have had otherwise. ”
I draw her hand to my lips and press a kiss there, lingering.
That’s the closest she’s ever come to admitting her feelings might have run deep.
Even if Landon isn’t mine, it’s a balm to my soul to know the reason he exists is because she believed he was my son.
She didn’t have him because she wanted a baby with Raul. She wanted my baby.
“Mom organized the marriage contract that I signed. I just,” she makes a rolling motion with her hand, “went along for the ride.”
“Ava.” I bring her hand up and cover it with both of mine. “None of this sounds like you.”
“You know what’s funny? I don’t think I’ve felt like me since you left,” she says.
Her admission is a shot of pain and a wash of pleasure. The idea that our relationship was that ingrained in how she saw herself is thrilling, but it also goes against everything I left believing, and it’s hard to reconcile those realities.
I meant nothing.
I meant everything.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I admit, my voice gruff.
“Being along for the ride probably doesn’t make sense to you.
I thought I knew what I wanted, and then you left.
Turns out I had no idea. I was directionless and lost.” She lets out a little laugh.
“You were always there. For eight years, if I had a problem, you helped me solve it. My own little life navigation system.”
“Then Celia took over.”
Ava swallows and nods slowly. “Except when you were helping me solve my problems, it never felt like you were trying to control me. More like…” She stares across the room, clearly searching for the right words.
“Like you were standing behind me, ready to fuck anyone up that messed with me.” She lets out a watery laugh.
“I look at my life now, and I think my mom just fucked me up.”
“Do you want to know what I see when I look at you?” I ask gently.
“More than anything.”
“A great mother. Involved and loving. Interested in who her son is as a person. A kind, compassionate boss who tries to do right by her employees. A successful businesswoman. A faithful wife who tried her best to make a loveless marriage work.”
“Really?” she squeaks out.
“Really.” I kiss the back of her hand. “Truly.”
“You’re being awfully nice to me when I don’t think I deserve it.”
“That’s the drugs talking. Normally, you’d tell me you definitely deserve it.”
That earns me a little chuckle and then a wince. “Not enough drugs to laugh. Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”
“Maybe I am too,” I say. “When I left, I told myself I was running toward a new life, a different future. But it was never a future I wanted, not one I wholeheartedly embraced, not even one I’ve missed.
I’ve never missed any of it, but I missed you the minute my apartment door closed that night, and I’ve missed you every day since.
If you’d died and I hadn’t said that to you… I needed to say that to you.”
Tears tumble down her cheeks, and I sweep them off with my thumb. When they keep falling in silence, I cross the hospital room to grab the tissue box before setting it on the bed, passing her a few, and taking her hand again.
“I was careless with your heart and my words, and it changed both our lives forever. I’m so sorry.
So sorry. I fucked it all up. If I leave Raul, he’ll take my company, and he’ll take my son.
” Her words are thick with unshed tears.
“And if I start sobbing right now, they are definitely going to have to sedate me. But I want—”
“Mommy?” a small voice calls from the bed next to me. “Is that you, Mommy?”
She takes a long sniff and frantically wipes her eyes. “Landon, my love.” Her voice is thick, and I squeeze her hand in reassurance before she gathers herself enough to say, “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve missed you, Mommy. Can I have a cuddle?”
Ava’s eyes widen on me, clearly not sure how to respond.
“Just a second, buddy,” I say. At the door, I poke my head out to chat with the nurse on the night shift.
The last thing I want to do is reinjure either of them, but I also think they need what Landon’s asked for.
As a kid, whenever I hurt myself, only my mom could truly make it better, and Ava’s that kind of mom to Landon too.
Two nurses come in, and they very carefully shift Ava over to the side of her bed. Then they nod to me, and I lift Landon into a bridal carry, steering his IV fluids with my hand over to Ava’s bed. Gently, I lay Landon beside Ava.
“You have to be very careful, buddy,” I say. “Curl into your mom, but don’t press on her. She’s still recovering too.”
“He can’t sleep there,” the nurse says to me at the door. “But as long as you’re gentle and careful, what you’ve done is okay for short stints. I imagine it’s been a pretty scary time for both of them.”
Seeing them together, on the path to a full recovery, stitches something inside me that’s felt shredded and loose since I got the call from Owen, as though nothing would ever be the same again.
Maybe our lives won’t be, and I don’t think I want them to be, but I no longer believe our futures will be worse.
Hope begins to bud in me, and I really hope I’m right to water it.