27. AVA
AVA
Overprotective Defense
Four days without his voice and I've been bathing in the silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that hums behind my teeth when I wake up reaching for a phone that has nothing on it. The kind that fills the space between my ribs when Biscuit presses her nose into my palm and I realize I've been staring at the same spot on the ceiling for a while.
I said fine, Ava. Click.
That click plays on a loop now and makes my hands shake when I brush my teeth.
But I'm handling it.
The night he hangs up, I end up on my bathroom floor, tile cold through my shorts, knees pulled to my chest, the seam of the bathmat pressing a line into my ankle.
Biscuit wedges herself between my hip and the tub, her floppy ear draped over my knee. Every few seconds she pushes her nose into my wrist and whines in a soft, broken pitch.
Lucy opens the door, takes one look at my face, and drops to the floor beside me, her arms going around my shoulders.
"What happened?"
I try to answer.
What comes out instead is a sound I haven't made since Dad drove away the third time, the ugly, hiccupping kind that strips your throat raw and leaves your ribs sore afterward.
Lucy holds me tighter, her chin on top of my head, her fingers gripping the back of my shirt.
When the shaking stops, she pulls me to my feet, walks me to my room, pulls back the covers, and tucks them around me.
Biscuit jumps up and curls against my stomach. Lucy sits on the edge of the mattress and rubs my back in slow circles until my breathing evens out.
“He... he hung up on me.”
She stills then continues rubbing my back.
“Things will be fine. What do you want to do about it?”
I shake my head. "I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it."
"Okay," she says softly.
She stays with me until my eyes grow heavy and I'm hovering somewhere between awake and asleep.
"I'm in the guest room if you need me."
A moment later, the hallway light clicks off.
I reach under my pillow and pull out Kai's hoodie. The cedar scent has faded, but it's still there when I press my nose into the collar and breathe deep enough.
I bunch it against my chest and close my eyes, like a child with a stuffed animal she's too old for but can't give up.
My face is swollen. My pulse is still too fast. My throat feels like I swallowed sandpaper.
But I'm handling it.
***
The next morning, I eat half a banana on the counter while Lucy pours coffee. Her hazel eyes scan my face.
"You look awful."
"Inspiring. Thank you. That's exactly the energy I needed at seven-thirty."
She doesn't laugh. I take the coffee, drink it standing, and check my phone.
Nothing from Kai.
He'll text today. He was angry. People say things when they're angry. He'll cool off and reach out because that's who he is.
I put the phone in my back pocket and drive to the studio.
The studio Kai bought with honey oak floors he had refinished before he handed me the key on its leather tag while watching my face like my reaction mattered more to him than the gift.
I set my iPad on the drafting table and pull up Laura's renovation file.
The kitchen layout needs refining. I sketch sightline options for the island placement, adjusting angles to give Laura the view of the living room she wants. Pendant heights. Counter depths. The workflow triangle between stove, sink, and fridge.
My stylus moves clean and certain. My lines are precise.
My phone sits face-up on the drafting table beside my elbow, the screen still dark.
By noon I've finished the kitchen plan, started the guest room ceiling proposal, and picked up my phone eleven times. Not that I’m counting.
My thumb hits the power button before I even register the impulse, like a reflex that skips my brain entirely.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Fine! He's at practice. He's busy.
I eat a granola bar. I call it lunch.
Day two. Quiet.
I drive to the studio early and work on the master bedroom bay window design. I draft several versions of the built-in seat adjusting depth for the cushion, adding storage underneath the cushion.
My measurements are clean. My notes are detailed.
I skip lunch because my stomach turns every time I look at food. I buy a water bottle from the cafe downstairs and drink half of it over four hours.
My phone is still a flat black rectangle that’s dark without the call I need.
I’m not going to look at it.
But I’ve already looked at it thirty-seven times. Or is it forty-two?
Day three.
Morning sickness slams me so hard I barely make it to the studio bathroom. My knees hit the industrial tile. I grip the rim of the toilet and retch until my stomach is empty and my eyes are streaming.
The bathroom is cold and echoey and nothing like the warm oak six feet away in the workspace Kai handed me with both hands.
I rinse my mouth, fix my hair, walk back to the drafting table.
My junior designer is giving me a worried look but I pay her no mind because I’m perfectly fine.
Composed. Cool. Professional.
Laura's renovation plan glows on my iPad. I see the kitchen where she gave me scones, the height chart penciled on the doorframe in fading graphite. Kai, age 6. Kai, age 8.
My stylus hovers over the bay window sketch. The tip trembles against the screen.
I'm drawing a built-in seat for the bedroom of a woman whose son hasn't spoken to me in days. Designing the home where he grew up, surrounded by evidence of a family that welcomed me in, while the man who invited me into that family has gone completely silent.
My vision blurs. The iPad swims.
My stylus clatters onto the table. Both hands go flat on the surface, fingers spread, pressing down because if I grip anything I'll snap it. My shoulders curl inward. The muscles along my spine seize.
You're fine. He's angry. People need space when they're angry. You gave him space and he's taking it and this is healthy.
A tear hits the drafting table. Then another.
I fold forward until my forehead touches the cool surface of the table. My body shakes. Tears hit the iPad screen and slide across Laura's kitchen floor plan. Naomi comes to me and starts patting my back.
I cry until my ribs ache and my nose is completely blocked and the studio lights feel too bright through my swollen eyelids.
Then I close the iPad and drive home with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel and my jaw clamped so hard my molars grind.
I'm over it. Fully, completely, definitively over it.
That afternoon, my phone rings.
It’s an unknown number with a local area code. My thumb hovers over decline but something in my gut won't let me press it.
"Hello?"
"It's me."
Kai's voice. Low, tired, stripped.
Those two words are enough to make my knees give out. I catch the kitchen counter with my free hand, hip bone hitting the edge. The phone presses against my ear so tight the case cuts into my cheekbone.
"Kai." His name comes out cracked.
"Why did you block me?"
"I... what?"
"I’ve been calling you for four days, Ava. Every call goes straight to voicemail. I borrowed Theo's phone yesterday. Same thing. I'm calling from the facility line right now. Why did you block my number?"
I grip the edge of the counter harder. "I didn't block you."
"What do you mean you didn’t block me? I've called thirty times."
"I never got a single one." My throat is closing. My voice comes out in pieces. "I thought you..."
I can't finish. The sentence is too humiliating to finish:
I thought you were done with me. I thought you figured out what I've been hiding and walked away, the same way everyone walks away, and I was right to be scared all along.
"Check your phone." His voice is careful now. "Go to settings, blocked contacts."
I put him on speaker and navigate to settings.
Kai Donovan.
Theo.
Every team member’s number on my phone.
Their numbers are right there. Blocked at 11:47 p.m., four days ago.
That was after Kai hung up. While I was on my bathroom floor with my knees pulled up and tears drying on my jaw. While Lucy held me.
While Lucy had access to my phone.
Shit!
"Ava? You still there?"
"I see it." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "I didn't do this, Kai."
"Then who did?"
I stare at the screen. My passcode is our birthday, mine and Lucy's. She's known it forever.
"I have to call you back."
"Ava—"
"Ten minutes. I swear."
I hang up and walk to the guest room.
Lucy is sitting on the bed with her laptop open, hair in a tight ponytail. She looks up when I get to the doorway.
"Did you block Kai's number on my phone?"
Her fingers pause on the keyboard. She closes the laptop lid. The movement is slow, controlled as if she’s building her defense.
"Yes."
No pause. No flinch or apology. Just the word, clean and sharp.
"Why?"
"Because he hurt you. Because you were on the floor sobbing and he's the reason."
"You had no right."
"I had every right. I'm your sister."
"That doesn't mean you get to decide who I talk to."
"Somebody has to make that decision because you won't."
The words land like a slap. My throat burns.
“Don’t tell me that, Lu.”
Lucy stands. She has my build and my face. But where I curve, she angles. Where I soften, she sharpens. Looking at her is like looking into a mirror that shows who I'd be if I replaced every feeling with logic.
"You were broken on your bathroom floor for a man who hung up on you while you're carrying his baby. And I'm supposed to just let him call back and sweet-talk his way in?"
She steps forward, arms folded across her ribs, shoulders squared.
"I watched Mom melt herself down for eighteen years over a man who showed up when it was easy and vanished when it cost him something.
I sat at that kitchen table while she waited by the phone.
I watched her put on lipstick before he walked in the door like she had to earn the right to exist in her own house. "
Her voice rises. "And now I'm watching you do the exact same thing with a different man and you want me to sit here and let it happen?"
"Kai is not Dad."
"Every woman in love says that about the man she's currently excusing."
"He's not."
“He hung up on you while you’re pregnant, sick, and struggling. What part of that is different from what Dad did?”
My chest tightens.
“That’s not exactly what happened.”
Lucy’s eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
I look down at my hands.
“I never told him.”
A beat of silence.
“Told him what?”
“That I was pregnant.”
Her face goes completely still. “Ava.”
“I was going to. Then he lost his memory, and every time I tried, there was another reason to wait. I kept telling myself I’d do it when he was stronger. When he remembered more. When the timing wasn’t so terrible. Then things between us got complicated and— ”
“And now?”
“I still haven’t told him.”
Lucy is quiet for a long moment. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll tell him. Tonight.”
She studies me, and I can see all the things she wants to say. Somehow, her not saying them is worse.
“I don’t trust him,” she says finally. “I don’t trust that he won’t hurt you.”
Her words land because they sound too much like the fear I’ve been carrying around since the charity gala.
That eventually Kai will leave.
That I’ll be the idiot who should’ve known better.
My eyes burn, and I look away.
Lucy’s expression softens. She crosses the space between us and pulls me into her arms.
“I’m trying to protect you,” she murmurs into my hair.
“I know.”
Since we were little, Lucy has thrown herself between me and anything that could hurt me.
She fought girls who called me too sensitive. She told Dad to leave when I couldn't. She built a fortress around me and mortared every brick with loyalty.
But the air inside that fortress has been getting thinner for years. I can't breathe inside it anymore. Her arms feel like safety but her words feel like a collar.
“I need to go.”
She pulls back. “You’re going now?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightens, but she doesn’t try to stop me.
I pick up my keys and dial Kai’s number.
He answers on the first ring.
“I’m coming over.”
I drive to his building with Biscuit in the passenger seat. My eyes are swollen. My heart is slamming so hard.
I don't know if Lucy is right. I don't know if Kai is different. I don't know if the man waiting in that penthouse will stay or go or shatter me the way my father shattered my mother one kitchen-table goodbye at a time.
But I know what it feels like to stop breathing.
And I know who makes me start again.
The elevator opens on the top floor. I walk to his door. Biscuit pulls ahead of me, nails clicking on marble, and presses her nose against the gap at the bottom. She scratches the door and whines. My fist hovers over the wood.
On the other side, I hear footsteps. Fast. Already moving.
The door swings open before I knock.