Chapter 22
HARLAN - BE PATIENT WITH ME
I brought tacos.
Not fancy ones either. Not the artisan kind with pickled slaw and mango chutney, just the kind from the truck with the dented side panel and a line that wrapped around the block on Friday nights.
Ava raised one eyebrow when she saw the brown paper bag in one hand and an assortment of chocolate bars in the other.
“Bold choice,” she said, eyes darting to the chocolate.
“You said no flowers.”
She hummed in acknowledgment, grabbed the chocolates, and her fingers brushed mine. Too quick to mean anything, too deliberate not to.
“You didn’t turn them down,” I teased.
She didn’t argue. That told me everything.
We ended up in the clinic lounge. Not her apartment.
Not a restaurant. Just here — familiar, neutral ground, the kind of place that already carried her fingerprints.
The walls were painted in soft neutrals, the couch sagged like it had been carrying too many stories for too long, and two mismatched mugs sat half-full of something I didn’t ask about.
The early spring air leaked in from the cracked window, cool and damp, smelling faintly of thawed earth.
Ava folded her legs beneath her and unwrapped her taco like it was a test. I waited.
One bite. Then another. Then, finally, she gave a little wiggle of approval.
“Okay. You’re safe. For now.”
“Noted,” I said, setting mine on a napkin. “So, this is what passes for a first date in your world?”
She gave a humourless smile. “I don’t do first dates.”
“What do you do then?”
She didn’t answer. She just studied me with those ocean eyes that never looked the same twice. Tonight, they were more green than blue, sharp as glass when she wanted distance, softening when she thought I wasn’t watching. But I was always watching.
And I caught it, the flicker she tried to hide. The same pulse of awareness I felt humming low in my chest.
So, I picked up my taco and let her study me.
The silence stretched. Not uncomfortable. Curious. Charged.
“I was half-expecting you to cancel,” I finally said.
“I almost did.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her gaze flickered down to her lap, then back up. “Because you asked like someone who wouldn’t ask again.”
That hit somewhere deeper than I expected. Because she wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t here to play games.
She took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “You want the tragic backstory?”
“I want whatever you’re willing to give me, Ava.” And I meant it.
Her shoulders dropped just a fraction, like no one had said that to her in a long time. Her gaze softened, blue bleeding through green, and she began.
“You know Remi and I grew up together, right?”
“I figured. You two practically finish each other’s sentences.”
She smirked. “Sometimes thoughts, too.”
I leaned back, giving her room. Letting her steer.
“She wasn’t always like this,” Ava said, tapping a finger against her knee.
“Remi used to want to be an artist. She was wild and carefree, like the wind… if the wind was in technicolour. But after Jenny… after the fallout, she hardened. She took hit after hit, and instead of breaking, she solidified. Now she’s more like the earth than the wind. ”
Her voice cracked on Jenny’s name. I didn’t press. I just listened.
“We made a deal once,” she went on. “Back when we were barely old enough to vote and already tired of the world. If one of us started drowning, the other would jump in. No questions asked.”
“And now?” I asked gently.
“Now I’d follow her into fire, into hell, into a hurricane.”
She said it like a vow. Like she already had.
I looked at her, really looked. At the steel she carried under the silk of her dress.
At the way her fingers trembled when she set down her drink, even though her jaw never did.
She didn’t see it, but she was just like Remi.
She thought she was the one who needed saving.
She wasn’t. She was the fire everyone else gathered around.
“Is that why you do this?” I asked. “The clinic. The cases. The chaos. Is it all for her?”
“It may have started that way. But now… now it’s for the ones we couldn’t save. For the girls who never...” She broke off, caught herself, and forced her voice steady. “For girls like Sofia. For Jenny. For me.”
“For you?” I repeated. And an ache was settling deep at the thought of her being a victim.
Her eyes flared blue at that. Too honest. Too exposed. “Remi didn’t start off saving strangers. She started off by losing her sister and saving me.”
That one landed like a blade between us.
I hadn’t expected this tonight. Not the rawness. Not the way she peeled herself open just enough to let me see past the armour. Not the way desire coiled low in me, not just for her body but for the impossible honour of being let in at all.
“You don’t have to fix anything,” she said suddenly, catching my stare. “I’m not a project. I don’t need saving.”
“I know,” I said, voice low. “I just want to stand beside you. Maybe make the weight a little lighter.”
Her lips parted. She blinked, once, twice, then looked away like she didn’t trust herself to hold my gaze too long. Like she knew I saw her. All of her.
“I don’t know if I know how to let someone do that,” she admitted.
“You don’t have to know yet. But maybe we can start by trying.”
For a long moment, she said nothing. Just breathed slow and deep, like she was making a decision that could change everything.
“It’s hard for me to let people in, Harlan.
With the work I do, the things I hear and see every day…
It’s hard for me to trust. To not assume the worst. I try to live without a jaded perspective, but it’s really hard, especially when I’m proven right more often than not.
That’s why I don’t do first dates. Because I don’t date. ”
“Okay.” It was all I could say. All I needed to.
“You’d have to be patient with me,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
She studied me again, long enough that I felt it in my chest. Like she was measuring the distance between us, the danger, the possibility.
Then she reached for another taco.
And in that small, ordinary gesture, I saw the yes, she wasn’t ready to give voice to yet.
Not tonight.
But soon.