17. AVA
AVA
Seven Stray Cats
Kai is holding a dress against my body in the middle of a boutique on Melrose, his head tilted, studying me with the quiet intensity he usually reserves for game film.
"Too long," he says.
"It's a midi. The entire point is the length."
"The point is your legs. The dress is in the way."
I snatch it from him and hang it back.
"You told me to wear something that makes me feel good. That requires me choosing it. Not you standing here eliminating options like you're running a defensive scheme."
He ignores me, pulls out an emerald green silk with a neckline that would sit just below my collarbones.
He holds it up. Looks at me with those warm brown eyes, and my traitorous stomach does a full somersault.
Don't let a man with a broken nose and zero fashion credentials pick your outfit, Ava. That's a slippery slope that ends with matching bathrobes and a joint Instagram account.
"Try it on," he says.
I try it on.
It fits like it was cut for my body.
The silk skims the new fullness of my breasts without clinging, falls past the slight curve of my stomach in a way that conceals instead of announces.
I stare at my reflection. The green pulls the gold from my eyes and makes my skin glow.
Damn it.
I step out of the fitting room. Kai's leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed. His gaze travels from my face down to somewhere around my hips before coming back up.
A warmth I can't afford blooms behind my ribs.
"That one," he says, voice rougher than before.
“You’re going to be insufferable about this, aren’t you? Knowing you picked the dress I’m wearing on our first date.”
“Our first real date.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “And absolutely.”
He pays before I can argue about it. I argue all the way to the car anyway.
The restaurant is small. Italian. The kind where bread arrives warm and the waiter knows which table gets the good olive oil.
Kai pulls my chair out. I sit before he can change his mind, because arguing would only delay dinner—and tonight, I’m choosing carbs over pride.
Besides, the baby is making me ravenous. Ever since the nausea finally settled, it feels like my appetite has no bottom.
The candle between us flickers when he sits down. The warm light catches the angles of his face, the dark stubble along his jaw, the permanent crook in his nose.
He's wearing a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms on the table, tattoos visible in the low light.
Something warm and reckless pools in my chest.
"Tell me about your business," he says after we order.
"What about it?"
"How it started. Before the gala clients and the teal obsessions."
I lean back and consider him. Most people ask about interior design like it's a hobby. Something cute. A thing women do between brunch and yoga.
Kai is asking the way he'd ask a teammate about their conditioning routine. Like the answer will inform his next decision.
"I started with a studio apartment and zero clients. I cold-emailed every real estate developer in LA for three months before someone responded. He gave me a bathroom renovation as a trial. I cried when I got the contract and then I panicked because I'd never tiled anything in my life."
"What happened?"
"I taught myself to tile by watching videos until my eyes crossed. I practiced on plywood in my living room, then did the job and never looked back. He gave me a kitchen next, then a full remodel. Months later, he referred me to someone bigger."
Kai listens without interrupting. His brown eyes track my face with a focus that makes me want to fidget.
A feeling of warmth starts unfurling inside me. That terrifies me because I've never had a man pay this kind of attention to the parts of me that have nothing to do with how I look.
"What do you love about it?" he asks.
The question catches me off guard. People ask what I do, how I got into it, whether I've done any celebrity homes. Nobody asks what I love about it.
"The moment before the client sees it," I say, twisting the stem of my water glass. "When the room is done and I'm standing alone in the doorway. For about thirty seconds, everything is exactly what I imagined. Then the client walks in and asks if the curtains come in taupe."
His laugh is low, rolling through his chest. The candlelight catches his eyes.
My heart starts beating a bit too fast.
"Tell me about growing up. You and your twin sister."
“My twin sister?” I ask. I’ve never told Kai about Lucy.
“I saw her photo in your house. Unless you replicated yourself and stood beside an angrier version of you in that pic, she’s your twin.”
"Her name is Lucy. We were attached at the hip until we were teens. Then she became the structured one and I became the one who brought home stray cats."
"How many?"
"Seven total. Mom drew the line at four simultaneous cats, which in retrospect was generous."
"And your mom?"
"She's the best person I know. She made us feel safe without ever raising her voice. She raised two feral daughters on her own and somehow produced functioning adults."
His eyes narrow slightly. "On her own?"
You’ve slipped up, Ava.
I reach for my water but say nothing.
"How about your dad?" he asks.
My fingers tighten on the glass. "Not much to tell. He's around sometimes."
He watches me for a beat. Then he reaches across the table and steals a bite of my risotto.
"Hey," I say, grateful for the redirect. "Get your own risotto."
"Yours is better."
"You haven't tasted yours yet."
"I tasted yours. I'm content."
I retaliate by stabbing a piece of his chicken off his plate.
"That's theft," he says.
"You started it."
"I took a small taste."
"There's no such thing as a small taste from my plate, Kai. You either have your own food or you have a problem."
We eat. The risotto really is absurdly good.
As we talk, Kai keeps threading quiet observations into the conversation.
“Your shampoo has been in my shower for two weeks.” This, while I’m telling him about a client who wanted floor-to-ceiling marble in a closet-sized bathroom.
“Biscuit knows where I keep her treats.” Said as I’m laughing over Lucy’s latest text.
“Your desk calendar system is the only reason I make my appointments.” Delivered while he refills my water, his eyes fixed on me over the glass.
Each detail is a brick. He’s laying them one by one, building a case with systematic patience.
“Move in with me,” he says.
The words land between us like a puck dropped at center ice. I stop chewing.
"What?"
"You heard me."
My eyebrows arch. "I'm giving you a chance to say something less insane."
"You're at my apartment most days. Your dog has claimed my couch. Stop pretending you live somewhere else."
“So you want me to move in with you because you care if I pretend or not?”
His eyes fill with desire. “You know exactly what I’m saying.”
I look away. "I live somewhere else. And I’ve made a down payment."
"Bring Biscuit. Bring the seven stray cats."
"There are no current cats."
He leans forward."Move in with me, Ava. As my girlfriend. Not fake."
I set my fork down.
"I'll think about it," I manage.
He nods.
And for one suspended, dangerous moment, I let myself see it.
Kai in the mornings, barefoot, coffee in hand, watching me get ready for work with that steady attention that makes me feel like the center of something permanent. His hand on my growing stomach.
He'd be the kind of father who shows up every time. The kind who reads bedtime stories in that low, steady voice until the baby falls asleep.
A man completely undone by me.
A man I could ruin with my vulnerability, and who'd let me.
The vision is so vivid it steals my breath.
Then the other version arrives.
Kai’s memories will come back. Four years flooding into a brain that's been filling with me.
He'll remember the man he was before the accident. The one-night stands. The women who came and went. He'll look at me and see the hookup from the gala.
He won’t leave the way my father did, with car keys and a grin and promises he'd forget before he reached the highway. He’ll leave the way a man leaves when he realizes he's been playing house with someone who was only ever supposed to be temporary.
And I’ll become the very thing I swore I’d never be: my mother, standing at the kitchen table with folded hands and empty eyes, waiting for a man who’s already gone.
My throat constricts. My skin goes hot, then cold, and something sharp and uncontrollable surges through my bloodstream.
"You can't ask me to blow up my life like that." My voice has turned hard. “How easy do you think moving to your place will be?”
His brow furrows. "Ava..."
"No, you don't get to sit across from me looking like that and offering me a life you might not even want six months from now."
"Why would I not want it?"
"Because you don't know everything, Kai. You don't know who you were before me. When you remember, you'll realize this is just gratitude dressed up as something real."
His jaw tightens. "That's not what this is."
"How do you know? You're missing four years of being a man I never met. What if that man comes back and decides the woman who reorganized his closet isn't worth keeping around?"
The words are acid leaving my mouth.
I hate them. I hate that they carry the particular venom of a fear I've been swallowing for months.
But I can’t stop myself. I’ve been getting more tired later, eating uncontrollably and getting fatter.
I can’t even tell the father of the baby about his child because I’m scared he’ll cut ties and the fake relationship we have will be gone.
"You're asking me to trust that you'll stay, and I don't know how to do that." The words come out raw. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I blink them back violently. "Take me home, please."
“Who left?” he asks gently—so gently my stomach tightens.
"Everyone who promised they wouldn't."
It's vague enough to be safe and specific enough to burn. The tears I've been fighting spill over. Two of them, hot and fast, track down my cheeks.
I push back from the table. "Can we go, please?"