21. AVA
AVA
Stick With Me
“So it’s not okay to tell me why you won’t be my girlfriend, but it’s okay for you to kiss me whenever you want.”
The words make me freeze.
My hand is still on his jaw, my lips still warm from kissing him. But the air between us has suddenly become tighter.
I pull my hand back like his skin burned me. My hand goes to the door handle.
"We're not done, Ava."
"I can’t do this tonight," I say.
"I've been giving you tonight after tonight for months."
I grab the bag of figurines and shove the car door open. The night air hits my face.
I make it four steps before I hear his car door slam.
I walk fast enough that my ankles wobble on the uneven concrete. And I'm furious at myself for wearing heels, furious at the tremor in my hands that's making the key miss the lock.
Furious at the man whose footsteps I can hear behind me, steady and unhurried, like he's got nowhere to be except right where I don't want him.
"Ava."
The key slides in. I open my door.
Biscuit rushes me, tail going, nose jabbing at my thigh. I step inside, and before I can turn around, Kai is in the doorway. He steps inside and closes the door behind him.
I want to tell him to leave but don’t.
He leans on the door. “Why do you keep running from this?"
How he delivers those words without raising his voice, I can’t tell. Yelling I can match. This steady attitude of his is the thing I have no defense against.
I drop my bag on the kitchen counter. The figurines rattle inside the paper sack.
"What do you want from me? A signed contract? A blood oath? You want me to stand here and recite my feelings so you can file them away?"
He comes closer. I walk behind the kitchen counter to create some distance between us.
He sighs, wiping his face with his hand. “Why didn’t you answer me at dinner?"
"I answered you."
"You told me not to ask. That's a locked door not an answer."
"Maybe it's a locked door for a reason, Kai."
"Maybe. But I'm sitting on the other side of it and I'm done with all that."
"Go home, Kai."
"No. I've been patient for months. I've asked you to be my girlfriend and you've dodged it every single time, and I've let you because I figured you'd tell me yes or no soon enough. But you never get to it."
I yank open the cabinet and pull out a mug. Slam it on the counter. Grab the kettle, fill it, bang it onto the burner.
"You said you were mine, Ava. Those were your words in my bed, with your eyes open, your body wrapped around mine." His voice is low and bitter. "So you want to keep fucking me but you don’t want to be my woman?"
I spin around. “That’s not what this is about?”
“Then what’s it about? Why can’t you answer a simple question?”
"It is not a simple question. Being someone's girlfriend means something to me, Kai. It means I'm all in. It means I don't get to keep one foot near the exit. It means if you decide to… to…”
My voice is too loud.
But the whistle of the boiling kettle is louder. I turn off the burner and wrap my arm around me.
Biscuit has retreated to her bed in the corner, tail tucked, ears flat.
Kai steps closer.
“If I decide to do what?” he asks gently.
“If you decide to walk out that door, I’m the one left standing here with nothing. I've seen what 'all in' looks like when the other person leaves. It's the ugliest thing ever."
I make my tea. Maybe it will steady me and stop these tears sliding down my cheeks.
Kai comes around the counter and wraps his arms around me. I lean on him, my back on his chest.
“Who did that to you?” he asks.
“My father,” I whisper.
“You can tell me about it.”
I don’t want to tell him. But his chest is so comforting and the sense of safety I feel opens my mouth.
"My father left. Over and over. He didn't leave once and disappear.
That would have been easier. He left and came back several times until leaving was just another thing he did, like brushing his teeth or picking up milk.
He made kissing his daughters' foreheads and saying 'I'll make it up to you' while his car keys were already in his hand look like child’s play. "
My throat burns. I shudder.
Kai’s hand grips mine.
"You want to know what it did to my mother? She's the strongest woman I know, yet every single time he left, she went quieter and smaller. And I couldn’t do anything about it."
I'm shaking. I can feel it in my hands and my voice and the backs of my knees.
"So don't stand in my kitchen and tell me this is simple. Saying yes means becoming her. I swore to myself when I became old enough that I’d never give a man the power to switch me off."
The kitchen goes quiet except for my ragged breathing and Biscuit's anxious whimpering from her corner.
"Now you’ve showed up, and you're good to me in ways I can't even process." My voice breaks. "It’s made me want to believe you in a way that terrifies me more than my father ever did. Which means if I let you in and you leave, the fall will be so much further than anything Mom survived.”
I wipe my face with the heel of my palm. Angry at the fact that I just handed him every weapon he'd need to annihilate me.
He doesn't speak for a long time.
Then he turns me around and takes my face in his hands. His thumbs wipe the tears that keep running down my face.
The tenderness of the gesture hits my bone marrow.
I break.
Not the pretty kind of crying.
The ugly, heaving kind that comes from deep in my heart. I fist his shirt in both hands, press my face into his shoulder and cry for every time I watched my father's headlights disappear, breaking my heart.
He holds me through all of it, solid and warm and immovable. His chin rests on the top of my head.
By the time the crying has ended, my whole body feels hollowed out, scraped raw from the inside. I tilt my face up.
The look in his eyes is so nakedly tender, I want to start crying all over again.
"I'm not a man who makes promises, Ava. I never have been. I make decisions, act on them, and don't reverse them when things get hard. Everything I've done since I met you is evidence of that."
His thumb traces my left cheek.
"I decided to rebuild my career, and I'm doing it. I decided you were worth more than a fake arrangement, and I took you on a real date and told you I wanted all of it. Losing everything showed me what actually matters."
"You can't know you won't change your mind."
"I know that no part of my recovered memory contradicts who I am with you. The man you're afraid I'll become is not me."
A sound escapes me. Half laugh, half sob.
"I'm so scared of you," I whisper. "You're the scariest thing that's ever happened to me.
"I know."
"If I say yes and you leave, it will break me in a way I can't come back from."
"I hear you."
I stare at him through wet eyes.
His face is close. His hands are warm on my jaw. His brown eyes hold mine with immovable certainty.
A terrified voice in my head lists every reason this will end in devastation. Catalogs every way this man could break me if I hand him the last piece of myself I've been holding back.
But there's another voice now.
Quieter. Steadier.
Saying something I haven't let myself hear in years.
What if he stays?
"Okay," I whisper.
"Okay what?"
"Okay, I'll be your girlfriend.” My voice shakes. Every cell in my body vibrates with terror. “And if you ever make me regret this, I’ll burn your life to the ground."
His lips stretch into a wide smile. "I believe you."
I glare. "I mean it."
He presses his forehead against mine. Breathes. His hands slide from my jaw to the back of my neck and hold me there.
“Thanks, Ava.”
“What if I’d said no?”
“I’d have respected your choice. It’s keeping the relationship in limbo that was killing me.”
I grab his face with both hands and pull his mouth down to mine, needing desperate proof that he's real. That the man I just handed every fragile piece of myself to isn't going to dissolve the second I stop gripping.
His hands slide into my hair, tilting my head. His tongue strokes mine, slow and deep, tasting my lips.
I pull him closer. My fingers caress his jaw, his neck, the muscles along his shoulders.
The hard length of him presses against my hip through his jeans. The contact sends a bolt of heat through my core.
"Let’s go to the bedroom," I say against his mouth.
"You don't have to."
"I need you, Kai."
His hands tighten in my hair and his kiss turns urgent, bruising, his teeth catching my lower lip.
He lifts me. My legs lock around his waist and I bury my face in his neck, breathing him in, my arms cinched tight.
His hands grip the backs of my thighs as he carries me through the living room. His mouth is on my neck, his teeth scraping the tendon below my ear.
Biscuit trots behind us for a few steps then veers toward her water bowl and stays there.
He enters the bedroom and lays me on the bed. I don't let go. My arms stay locked behind his neck, pulling him down with me, refusing to allow even a second of separation.
He braces above me on one arm, his free hand finding the buttons of my blouse. My fingers tear at his shirt, yanking it over his head, needing his bare skin against mine.
He pulls my blouse open and his hands slide beneath me, unclasping my bra. The moment it's gone, I press my bare breasts against the warm planes of his chest.
The skin-to-skin contact sends a shudder through me so deep my teeth chatter.
His mouth moves down my throat. When his lips reach my breast, he traces my nipple with his tongue, slow and circling.
The sensitivity that pregnancy has given me turns the sensation into something so intense my back bows off the mattress.
"Gentle," I gasp. "Be gentle there."
He adjusts immediately. His tongue feathers across the peaked skin with the lightest possible pressure.
Somehow that's worse. No, better. The delicacy of it makes me writhe against him, my hips grinding upward, searching for the hardness of his cock.
His hands start sliding down from my breast and I freeze.
If he goes further in this position, he’ll find the swell I've been hiding under loose tops, and I can't explain it tonight.