She exhales heavily, and I’m hoping I’ll just hear about some girl drama that will be easy to distract her from. Instead, what I hear causes me to sit forward and clench my teeth so hard I’m close to snapping my jaw.
I try to keep it together as she tells me someone sprayed her with something that included rose water. She doesn’t know if it had another chemical in it or not. It got in her eyes and brought her to her knees on the sidewalk. She was scared it might be acid, so she diluted it by dumping spring water over her head. And after all that, she had to ride the bus home alone, scared and crying, and covered in whatever the hell the guy splashed her with.
That son of a bitch.If I get my hands on him, I will fucking end him.
“It really sucks,” she says. “Why do there have to be psychopaths in the world? And why do they have to find me? Especially when I was having the best day.” She shrugs and stands, hands shaky. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m going get through this shit,” she whispers. Then she seems to pull herself together. “Anyway, that’s what happened.”
This is the Avery of old. The one I wanted to make mine. The one I would’ve spilled blood to protect.
My anger at the asshole who splashed her is still a blazing bonfire, so I don’t really process her standing to leave until I circle back to it in my head. “Sit back down,” I say. “Actually, no, don’t.”
She tilts her head with a look of confusion.
I stand and put my arms out. “Come over here.”
Her big blue eyes get bigger. Then she walks closer, but not close enough.
I pull her to me and wrap my arms around her.
She melts against me, which doesn’t help me remain sensitive to her stress. My cock only has one kind of objective where Avery is concerned, and the fact that she feels so fucking soft in my arms is a distraction.
I cup the back of her head. Her hair’s silky against my fingers.
“I’ll find him, and when I do, I’ll make him sorry he’s alive.” My voice is rough in all the ways there are for it to be that way.
“I wish you would,” she whispers, her fingers stroking my back.
If I don’t let her go soon, I’m going to kiss her and then fuck her all night. There is no other possibility for how this moments ends. Until she speaks.
“You have to talk to Ethan.”
“What?”
She pulls back, so she can look at me. “I want you to call him. Maybe tonight?”
My arms drop, and I step back. The moment’s over. “Whether or not I talk to my dad is none of your business, Avery.”
“The rift is hurting him so much. It’s time to repair it, Shane. If you can forgive me, you can forgive him.”
Christ, not again with this bullshit where they act as though they're the victims of undeserved neglect. Walking out of that house and limiting my interactions with the three of them was the only way I could stop her mother’s constant, warped paranoia and its fallout from shredding me to ribbons.
“Who says I’ve forgiven you?”
Avery’s eyes narrow on my face, and she looks much older than eighteen. For the first time in my life, I understand how my father becomes such a pussy when his wife wants something. The way Avery looks at me gives me pause. Fiery and beautiful. She acts like she’s got the right to make demands. She almost makes me believe it.Almost.
Her hands reach out and slide over my forearms, clutching. The smell of shampoo and beautiful girl hits me all over.
“You can’t tell me that things haven’t changed, Shane. I know they have.” The blue of her eyes from under her lashes is like the Colorado sky, endless and fucking breathtaking.
Careful, I tell myself. This is how one little siren takes the whole ship down.
“Some things are different,” I say with as much neutrality as I can muster.
Her slim hands move in to rest against my chest. The touch is deceptively light, but it packs plenty of power behind it, causing sensations to hum through me, making my balls ache, and making me want to touch her the same way.
Time to change gears.
“Let’s revisit how things are different.” I unbutton my jeans. “Grab a pillow from the bed.”
