42. Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Two
Stephen
Imeet her plane on the tarmac.
After Ava called me, sobbing, barely able to catch her breath, I took Landon to Gage’s house to spend tonight with his cousins. Ava wasn’t able to get anything coherent out. Through tears, she kept repeating she was trapped, and everything was her fault.
We might be in a tight spot, but I refuse to believe we’ve got no way out. There are options, however unsavory or dangerous they might be.
As soon as the plane’s stairs are lowered, I go up them two at a time instead of waiting for her to come down.
We meet at the top, and the relief and longing that mingle in her expression makes me want to wage every war in her honor.
Everything in me expands as though I’m one more blow away from becoming the Hulk.
Fuck anyone who makes her feel like this.
Especially Raul, who definitely caused her tears.
I wipe away the ones that fall down her cheeks, and then I kiss her temple and her forehead.
“We’ll figure it out,” I murmur.
Then I scoop her into my arms, her dress fluttering in the breeze as I carry her down to the waiting car.
I could have gotten us a driver, but she’s still skittish about being driven by anyone but herself or me. She’s in no state to drive, and I don’t know what kind of shape I’ll be in once she’s able to tell me what happened.
A murderous one, I suspect.
If he’d died, everything would have worked out perfectly. Of course, if the accident had been worse, I might have a strong connection to the Hulk for a different reason. As it was, Ava and Landon were almost killed.
I set her in the back seat of the car, and instead of getting into the front, I slide into the back with her. While I hold her, she cries and cries, clinging to my shirt. Unsure of what to say, how to ease her pain, I just hold her.
Inside, I brace myself to hear that the price Raul intends to exact is too high, that she can’t leave him, that what we have together can’t counter what she’ll lose. Men like Raul don’t like to be defeated, and they have no problem breaking or bending anything in their way.
Her tears begin to subside, and in a shaky voice, she tells me what Raul said—her company, her son.
“If it was just the company,” she says, “I’d give that up for you.” Her chin trembles, and when she tries to suck in a breath, another sob cracks. “But Landon…? Raul isn’t even a good father. If Landon is actually yours, they can’t take him, can they?”
I sit back in the seat, and I draw her close to me again, running my hand down her back as more sobs wrack her frame.
Somehow, I need to wrangle my rage and fear.
Getting sucked into her emotions isn’t going to solve the problem before us.
There are moves I can make, but they’ll be the riskiest I’ve ever made.
So I have to know whether I’m a fool to even consider it.
“Tell me,” I say, my voice rough with emotion, “tell me exactly what you’d want if you could have it all tomorrow.”
She pulls away from me, sweeping her tears off her cheeks, and she searches my face. “I’d divorce Raul. I’d be with you. You and I and Landon would be a family. Like we have been. Like we could be.” Her voice hitches. “But any time I think about that—you know what I really wish?”
I shake my head.
“I wish I could rewind time. I’d get my own DNA test, and I’d never trust my mother.
Then I’d blackmail Owen into telling me where he sent you.
And I’d find you. I’d kick down your door, and I’d never let you leave me again.
” She collapses against me. “Or when I really, really think about it,” her voice wobbles again with her temple pressed to my chest, “I’d go back to your old apartment, and I’d tell you that of course I’d marry you—today, tomorrow, any day you want—because I’ll never love another man the way I love you. ”
She sniffs, clearly holding back more tears, but god, are her words ever filling up all the empty spaces that have lived inside me like potholes since that night.
“And then when I found out I was pregnant, Landon would have been a joy, a life to celebrate, a gift.”
“I would have loved either of those versions,” I say, pressing my lips against the top of her head.
“But I was too afraid to claim that life the first time. Or maybe I couldn’t see it, didn’t know how to picture anything other than what we already had.
We were so dysfunctional, but we’re not anymore.
We’re ready for each other, and I…” Her voice grows thick again.
“I want the future I could have with you.”
“What does that look like?” A life with her is something I’ve wanted for so long, but I’m not sure I could ever clearly picture it either. We led such separate lives.
“We’d buy a house together, but not some giant, hollow mansion. A real home. Not too big because I want to see and know the people who live with me.”
“By the ocean.”
“On a cliff, like Gage and Ember or Nathaniel and Hollyn. With a pool, and you can teach the kids to swim while I read my books. And a big kitchen—big enough for you to teach Landon how to cook whatever he wants to try making.”
“And a games room,” I chime in. “Maybe with a pool table, air hockey or ping pong or foosball.” I shouldn’t feed into the fantasy, as much as I want it.
Getting her out of her marriage might prove easy, but keeping myself out of jail might be too high a bar.
The thought of being the cause of her pain makes me briefly nauseous, but I don’t know if I can give her both—a release from her marriage and a life with me.
At least if she’s out of her marriage, she doesn’t have to bow to whatever he intends to force on her.
That matters more than anything else. It has to.
“All of it,” she agrees, straddling me and pushing her hair back behind her ears. “Landon will get to live in a house with love, real love.”
I thread my hands through her dark hair, and I bring her forehead to mine, overcome with how much I want that future too, how clearly I can see what she’s just described.
Other than the location, isn’t that what we have been living the last few weeks?
Everything I never knew to want, never dreamed possible.
“I can see it,” I admit, voice thick.
“No matter what we have to do,” she says, grinding against me, “we’re going to get it.
” She kisses me, and then she angles her head, deepening the kiss.
The kisses go on and on, both a comfort and an escalation.
It’s not long before she leans back and undoes the buckle of my belt, hitching her skirt up. “I need you. God, I need you so bad.”
Tugging her panties to the side, I draw her down on me, and she lets out a satisfied moan. I never get tired of watching her expression when I’m all the way inside her, like she’s never felt anything better, more fulfilling. That I make her feel that way is thrilling.
“Like this?” I ask, bringing her down as I thrust up.
“Yes, god. Yes. Like that. Don’t stop.”
But I let her set the pace because I can tell that’s what she needs. When the rest of her life spins out of control, Ava craves this pocket of certainty. Speed, depth, motion—it’s all her. Every inch of me is hers to command, hers to use as she needs.
Instead of trying to steer her, I dig my hands into her hair, and I keep kissing her, keep clinging to the stubborn notion that we will be okay. That even if Raul and Celia have won in the past, they won’t win this time.
There’s no more talk of being trapped, unable to escape.
We’ll get our happy ending.
As she drives us both closer to the edge, I refuse to let my mind drift from the moment, from the feel of her all around me.
Maybe this is the beginning for us, or maybe it’s the beginning of the end, but either way, I want to be in this moment, to feel it, remember it.
Because if there’s one thing I know, life is fleeting, precious, and no matter what happens, I’ll love Ava until my last breath on this earth.
“Stephen,” she gasps, trembling, head thrown back. “Oh, Stephen.” She’s breathless.
“That’s it, baby,” I murmur. “You make yourself feel good, and I’ll be right there with you.”
She slows to almost microscopic movements, and I grit my teeth, determined to hold on. But the press and rock of our bodies is an exquisite painful pleasure.
“Ava.” Her name is almost a guttural groan.
“I’m so close,” she says, hands on my chest as she leans back, angling more.
I flatten my hands along her back, and I try not to urge her to move faster, but fuck, it’s hard. Everything in me wants to flip her onto her back and finish us both in a blaze of quick, furious thrusts. She could come like that, I know she could.
But I can’t.
She gets the control.
“Oh,” she says, her breath hitching, and then she’s coming hard around me, crying out my name as her movements become more erratic.
I grip her hips, and I take over, seeking my own release, thrusting up hard and fast as she digs her nails into the back of my neck.
“Yes,” she urges me on. “Please.”
And then I’m spilling into her, moaning out her name as she kisses me over and over.
“Promise me,” she says. “Promise me that we’ll do anything to stay like this forever.”
“Anything?” I coax.
“They aren’t going to play fair,” she says, “and we shouldn’t either.”
“You’re sure?” I ask again, because I already know what I’ll have to do, the lengths I’ll need to go to. There are no guarantees, but I can try.
“We make a plan,” she says, “and we trap them before they can tighten the noose around my neck.”
The imagery makes me shiver.
I just wish we could be sure that whatever plan we make will turn out exactly as we want. “We’ll make a plan,” I agree.
But I don’t tell her that part of me is afraid we can’t win. Shoving that thought to the back of my mind, I kiss her like we’re already the victors and the life she showed me, well, it’s ours for the taking.