Chapter 23
AVA - PERFECT
The first time I stayed over, I didn’t mean to.
It was late, the clinic had run long, and Harlan had dropped by with tea just as I was finishing my last pass at my notes.
I told him not to hover. He said he wasn’t.
Then sat in the chair across from me and did exactly that, with his arms crossed and that frustratingly still patience he wore like armour.
I don’t remember how the conversation turned into dinner. Or how dinner turned into me sitting on his couch, tucked into a throw blanket with a glass of wine and a crime doc we both pretended not to already know the ending to.
What I remember is this: I fell asleep mid-sentence, and when I woke up, groggy, annoyed, disoriented... There was a hoodie draped over me that smelled like him, a glass of water on the table, and him asleep in the armchair across the room.
He’d let me take the couch.
He hadn’t gone to his bed for comfort.
He stayed by my side.
And I don’t know why that mattered. But it did.
The first kiss happened four days later.
It was one of those damp late-spring nights where the rain smelled like cut grass and earth, the kind of night that makes the air feel heavy.
I was outside the shelter after midnight, waiting for a late delivery of emergency supplies.
Harlan had shown up again, no sirens, no uniform.
Just jeans, boots, a shirt that hugged him just right and that same quiet gravity I was slowly learning to lean into instead of away from.
We weren’t talking about anything important. Just... nothing. The kind of nothing that feels like air after being underwater for too long.
Then I said something, I don’t even remember what, and he laughed. That low, gravel-soft sound that always hit deeper than it should.
I turned to look up at him, not realizing how close we were, and he looked down at me like I was something he’d been waiting on for a long time.
And just like that, we weren’t talking anymore.
His hand was on my jaw, gentle but certain. His mouth on mine, slow at first, like he wasn’t sure I’d let him stay. But I didn’t pull away. I leaned in. I pushed up onto my tiptoes. Let the fire curl through my belly until it felt like the only thing holding me upright.
When he finally broke the kiss, his thumb brushed my cheek.
“You ok?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I whispered. Perfect.
The word love hovered sharp and bright in my chest, reckless and uninvited. I bit it back hard enough to taste copper.
Time seemed to fly by with him; work was still heavy and all-consuming, but I found that I also enjoyed being wrapped up in him.
Some nights, we didn’t talk at all.
We’d end up in the small kitchen at his place, me barefoot in one of his old t-shirts, him making grilled cheese like it was some sacred ritual. We’d sit on the floor, backs against the cabinets, legs tangled, laughing about nothing and everything.
Once, I caught myself watching him cut a sandwich in half, of all things, precise, careful, and the thought came unbidden: This is what safe looks like.
And it terrified me. Because I wanted more of it.
Other nights, we talked too much.
About work. About the system. About how the weight always finds you, even when the day is done.
“I feel like I’m always holding back the tide with a teaspoon,” I told him once, eyes fixed on a crack in his ceiling.
“You are,” he said. “But somehow you still manage to hold it back.”
Sometimes, there was no talking at all, just the hum of a box fan in the window fighting off June heat, my head on his chest, his hand tracing idle circles on my arm.
Once, half-asleep, I almost whispered, I love you. The words brushed the back of my teeth, hot and terrifying. Instead, I kissed his shoulder and buried my face there until the urge passed.
One night, I told him the truth.
About survivor rage. How it eats you alive if you don’t give it somewhere to go.
“Some days I hate how much I care,” I said. “Because caring means you hurt. And I’m so tired of hurting.”
He pulled me closer, his hand on the back of my neck, his mouth near my temple.
“Then don’t carry it alone.”
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t how it worked. That I didn’t know how to let someone help. But instead, I let my body rest against his. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember what safety could feel like.
And safety... safety was dangerous. Because it was addictive.
It was Remi I worried about. More than me. More than anything.
She’d been quieter lately. Quicker to brush things off. Slower to talk about Jack.
I noticed the space between them growing in inches. Then feet. Then miles.
One night, lying in Harlan’s bed while rain tapped the windows, I whispered it out loud.
“She’s pulling away from him.”
Harlan didn’t ask who I meant. He just nodded slightly in the dark.
“I think she’s scared,” I said. “Of what it means to need someone that much. Of what happens if he stays... or if he leaves.”
“You think she’ll talk to him?”
“She’ll talk to me,” I said. “Eventually.”
“Why won’t she let him stay?” he asked as he rolled over on his side and pulled me closer.
I sighed, because that was a loaded question with a complicated answer. “Short answer is that she doesn’t want to repeat her parents’ mistakes.”
“That bad?” he asked.
I turned my face so I could look into his eyes. “They’re the reason she is who she is today.”
He didn’t push beyond that. He sighed like that answer was a heavy one, and it was. Then he brushed my hair away from my face and asked, “And you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Ava. What do you want?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I think I’m just starting to understand what that could look like.”
He pulled me closer.
“What’s that?”
I closed my eyes. “A little quiet. A little peace. And maybe... someone who stays when it’s easier to go. Who listens and doesn’t judge. Who doesn’t use my past as a weapon against me.”
I felt him press a kiss to my shoulder and then to my temple.
“I can do that,” he whispered.
And just like that, I started to believe he might.
Because some mornings, I’d catch him watching me like I was sunlight he wasn’t supposed to look at for too long.
Because he memorized things, how I took my coffee, how my eyes went greener when I was angry, bluer when I was breaking.
Because he never asked me to be anything but what I was, even when I was jagged and raw.
June nights stretched long, cicadas buzzing outside, sweat-damp sheets sticking to our skin. He’d pull the fan closer, grumble about how I stole the blanket even when it was too hot for one, then let me press my freezing feet against his calves.
And one night, after too much wine and too much silence, I let my hands find his face, trace the faint scar below his jaw, and kiss him like I couldn’t remember why I’d been holding back.
That was the night the words almost slipped again, sharp and terrifying at the back of my tongue: I love you.
I swallowed them whole.
But I think he heard them anyway, because he kissed me harder, like he was answering.
And that was the night I knew...
I wasn’t just falling.
I’d already fallen.