7. AVA
AVA
The Donovan Charm
I've decided I'm telling him today.
That's my plan as I drive to the hospital to see Kai again.
I rehearse the conversation fourteen times in my car before I kill the engine.
Fourteen versions of, Hey, so, funny story... you got me pregnant.
Every one of them makes me sound like a lunatic delivering a bomb to a man who can't remember lighting the fuse.
The hospital parking garage smells of concrete and exhaust, the same as last week.
I check my reflection in the rearview. My hair is in a loose knot. My eyes look more gold today.
You’re not going to stare at his mouth. You’re not going to think about the fact that his baby is currently the size of a raspberry inside your body. Ava, you’re going to be normal.
I grab the bag of takeout I brought because hospital cafeteria food is usually a human rights violation, and I head inside.
Luckily, Laura has cleared me for visits so going to Kai’s room is a breeze. The elevator ride takes forty-five seconds. I count.
His door is open. I stop in the frame.
The first thing I notice is the room's empty. No Laura hovering by the window. No Mira folded into the visitor chair with her cold coffee. No Charles filling the doorway like a load-bearing wall.
Just Kai, propped up against the pillows. He’s sitting up straighter than the last time, wearing a soft black shirt.
His color is better. The bruising around his temple has shifted from purple to a faded yellow that's almost gone. His dark hair is still messy, but it looks intentional now instead of neglected.
He's reading something on a tablet, his brow furrowed in concentration. The beard is trimmed closer. Someone helped him clean up or he did it himself, which means his coordination is improving.
He looks up.
Those brown eyes settle on me with an attention that makes my skin prickle.
"Brought you real food," I say, holding up the bag. "The nurses can fight me about it."
"That's the second time someone's said that in this room."
"Great minds work together." I drop into the visitor chair and start unpacking containers. Chicken, rice, roasted vegetables. Nothing fancy. "Where's your family?"
"Mom went home to shower. Dad's making calls. Mira has gone to work."
I smile.
The last time I came here, I had an audience. A buffer. Today it's the two of us, and my heart forgets its own rhythm.
He doesn't know you. That night didn't happen for him. You’re a woman who showed up with a plant.
"So I have you to myself."
The words leave my mouth before my brain approves them. His eyebrows lift.
"I mean, I can actually talk to you without an audience." I shove a container toward him. "Eat."
He opens it, inspects the contents, and picks up the fork. His grip is steady.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "Can I ask you something?"
He shrugs. “Go ahead.”
"So, the charity gala where we met. Is any of it coming back?” I keep it casual, the way you check a wound you don't want to reopen. “The lounge, the terrible champagne, me being the most memorable person in the room?"
"That's a leading question."
"It's an accurate question. What's the last event you remember before the accident?"
He chews slowly. "Some team thing in twenty twenty-two. The details are blurry."
"So you don't remember the lounge renovation at all? The leather couches they had before were criminal, like a dentist's waiting room crossed with a frat house."
"No."
"Your teammate Wyatt crashed our conversation that night. He asked me about the power play and you told him to leave."
His mouth twitches. "That sounds right. I wish I could remember it."
“Then what can you recall?”
He goes quiet for a while. His eyes come back to me, an apology in them.
"I remember everything since I woke up. The problem is what’s before."
My shoulders sag. Of course not.
I look at his hands on the container. Those hands held my face six weeks ago, pinned my hips to his mattress, laced through my fingers while he moved inside me.
He has no idea.
My chest tightens. My lips begin to form a small smile.
Do not. You did this once. You're eight weeks into what happens when you do this.
My hand drifts toward my stomach. I catch it, smooth my shirt.
Kai doesn't notice. Why would he? He knows nothing about the baby.
I could tell him about the baby right now. The words sit right there: There's a baby. It's yours. It happened the night you can't reach.
But I look at the IV line taped to the back of his hand. The way the black shirt hangs loose where muscle used to fill it. The slight tremor in his fingers when he reaches for the water cup.
This man is still learning how to eat solid food without exhaustion. He's missing four years of his life.
I can't hand him a pregnancy on top of that. Not yet. Not until he's strong enough to process it without it breaking something that's still mending.
Until then, I'll keep visiting him as a friend. Make sure he's okay. Wait until he's strong enough to hear the truth.
That's not cowardice.
It feels like cowardice anyway.
I wonder how strange this must be for Kai. He has no idea who I am. Will he think I’m overstepping by showing up again?
Kai reaches for the water cup. His fingers miss it by an inch.
"Can you..."
I lean forward and grab it for him. When I hold it out, his hand wraps around mine instead of the cup. His thumb settles in the curve between my thumb and forefinger, stroking once.
"Thanks," he says, not taking the cup. Not letting go.
"You have to actually take the water, Kai."
"I'm getting to it."
His thumb makes another pass. My breath stutters. He tugs my hand closer, bringing me with it until I'm half out of the chair, my face level with his on the pillow.
"Your hair's different today," he murmurs. His free hand comes up and tucks a loose strand behind my ear, fingertips dragging along the curve of it. "I like it down."
His touch trails from my ear along my jaw, featherlight. My skin burns everywhere his fingers pass.
I should pull back. I should sit in my chair and maintain the distance between us. Instead I stay perfectly still while his knuckles graze down my neck and rest against my collarbone.
My eyes glance at his lips, heart pounding.
"You should drink your water," I whisper.
"Probably." He doesn't move.
I retreat to my chair and sit down a little too fast.
"I think we should be friends," I blurt out.
He reaches for his water, taking an unhurried sip while watching me over the rim of the bottle.
"Friends," he repeats.
“Yes. Exactly.” I nod a little too enthusiastically for someone who feels anything but enthusiastic about this. “I happen to be an excellent friend.”
He sets the bottle aside and leans back against the pillows, studying me with an expression that's far too sharp for someone with a concussion.
"And what if I told you I want to be more than friends?"
My lungs forget how to work.
"Then I'd tell you..." I swallow. "Tough luck. Because friends are all you're getting."
"Huh." He doesn't look the least bit discouraged. If anything, he sounds amused.
"What is huh supposed to mean?"
"It means there's a woman who has driven here twice to visit a man who forgot her name. She keeps bringing me food. She laughs at my terrible jokes." His eyes drift to my mouth before finding mine again. "And she's trying very, very hard not to look at my lips."
My gaze immediately drops to his mouth.
Damn it.
I redirect to his forehead. That's a safe zone. Foreheads are not attractive.
The scar along his hairline from the surgery is somehow attractive. I'm losing my mind.
“Friends,” I repeat firmly.
“Fine. But I want it on record that you’re the one drawing that line, not me.”
“Fine,” I mutter.
“And when you change your mind…”
“Well, I won’t,” I shoot back.
His mouth curves. “Don’t be so sure. I haven’t even turned on the Donovan charm yet.”
He has no idea I know all about the Donovan charm.
“I know we don’t really know each other,” he continues, “but I’m a pretty good judge of character, and I like what I’ve seen so far. So when you’re ready, tell me. I’ll take you out.”
“Not when. If.”
“When.” He picks up his fork again. “This chicken is good.”
I stay for two hours. We talk about everything that doesn't matter.
His physical therapy schedule, which he's already pushing harder than his doctors want. My business, the projects I'm juggling, a client who wants me to turn a garage into a meditation studio.
He asks specific questions about my work, the kind that prove he's actually listening instead of waiting for his turn to talk.
He laughs three times. I count because I'm pathetic.
When I leave, his eyes follow me to the door.
"Tomorrow?" he asks.
"Tomorrow."
I come back the next day and the one after that.
Each visit, Kai is a little bit stronger than the day before.
The IV comes out a few days later. He starts walking the hallway, slow laps with a physical therapist trailing him like a shadow. Soon enough, he's doing them alone and the nurses have stopped hovering.
His body fills back out gradually. Shoulders broadening, arms thickening, jaw losing that hollow look that made me want to feed him every meal personally. He starts looking less like a patient and more like the crush I knew.
That's when the trouble starts.
Because friendship with Kai Donovan is a joke I'm telling myself with a straight face.
One day, he catches my wrist when I hand him a water cup. His thumb presses against my pulse point.
My heart starts pounding. I hope he can’t tell.
On another, I adjust the blinds because the afternoon sun is hitting his eyes. When I turn around, he's watching me with the kind of focused heat that makes my thighs clench.
"Stop looking at me like that," I say.
"Like what?"
"Like you're thinking about something that isn't friendship.”
"I'm always thinking about something that isn't friendship when it comes to you," he says in a sultry tone.
On one of my visits, I arrive to find him standing by the window in sweatpants and a t-shirt that fits properly for the first time. The fabric pulls across his chest and shoulders.