“Yes,” the girl smiles politely as she pulls out a map that looks like a scribble of different colors and begins to explain the subway routes to me.
I am confused by the time we are three seconds in, but I least I have an address to head toward now.
After a harrowing jaunt through the city, nearly getting run down twice, and wasting an hour of time by getting on the wrong subway line; Ifinallyarrive at Ava’s firm. By the time I get to the front door of the company, I am disoriented and overwhelmed, and feeling completely out of my element. I am also nervous about Ava’s reaction since I have ghosted her the past couple of days, and she has no idea that I am even here. I suck in a big breath of the city air, which is nowhere near as clean as the air at home, and open the heavy slab door to the office building to walk right in.
“What in the fresh hell are you doing here?” Max hollers the moment my foot steps inside the building.
Wouldn’t you know that of coursehe’sthe first person that I run into. This guy is really starting to become a thorn in my side.
“I’m here to see Ava,” I say with absolutely no regard to what he thinks about it.
“Get out!” he shouts.
“Ava?” I call into the hallway behind him. If she’s here, I want her to hear me.
“Janet, call security,” Max barks at a secretary that is sitting at a nearby desk. “Tell them to have this man escorted out for trespassing.”
The woman gives him an apprehensive nod and picks up the phone.
“I’m just here to see Ava,” I say. “I’m not trying to start trouble.”
“Shame that you already have,” Max snarls. “She’s not here and she doesn’t want to see you anyway. I highly suggest that you get out of my office before security shows up.”
Just as the guards show up, and Max is almost successful at getting me to leave before Ava even knows that I am there, I see her coming down the hallway.
“Trevor?” she said in shock as she picks up her pace and runs up to me. “What is going on? What are you doing here?”
The security guard looks between all of us, trying to figure out if he’s supposed to make me leave the premises or not. Ava quickly assesses the situation and tells the guard that I am here to see her and that his services willnotbe necessary. Then she shoots a glare at Max before quickly grabbing my arm and walking me down the hallway toward her office. As I walk past him, I give him a grin—asshole.
I’m not sure what kind of trouble I have just caused Ava, and I’m sure that she’ll have Max to contend with now on my behalf. But I am here—with her— and the feeling of her hand on my arm makes all of it worth it.
3
Ava
“What are you doing here?” I ask Trevor in an excited and hysterical shock as soon as I close my office door behind us. I absolutely can’t believe he came all the way here to the city. “You haven’t answered any of my texts.”
“I know,” he says with a tinge of guilt on his face. “I’m sorry about that. I just wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Well, you’ve definitely succeeded with that,” I say. “What is going on? Why did you take the house off the market?”
My head is spinning. I want to just lunge forward and kiss him, but I also want to know why he has suddenly shown up in Manhattan at my office. I am both ecstatic and worried. No one has ever done anything like this for me before. It’s like the kind of thing you read about in fairytales; the guy travels great distances to track down the woman he refuses to lose. But I am worried about what Max will do. He’s definitely not going to handle this intrusion with grace. There’s no doubt that Trevor’s presence here with provoke him, and as much as I wish I could just leave, the threats that Max made toward my job and toward charging Trevor with assault after that incident at the house are ones that he won’t hesitate to act on.
“I came to get you,” Trevor says, and I can feel my heart melting in my chest at his words. “I’m not leaving here without you, Ava. I know why you left this time, and I know that you are just trying to protect me. But I’m not going to let you sacrifice your happiness, not this time.”
I can hear Max slamming doors outside of my office, and I pity the wrath he is levying on the secretary for not being quick enough with calling security.
“Okay,” I say as I try to get a handle on how to deal with everything going on all at once. “Just sit tight here for a minute while I go try to talk Max down, okay?”
“I’ll come with you,” he offers.
I laugh nervously. “Oh no, I definitely don’t think that’s a good idea. Just stay here in my office and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Trevor gives me a worried look and then has a seat at my desk as I leave to go talk to Max, closing my office door behind me as I go.
Max is a classic narcissist, and he doesn’t care about anything other than keeping control over things that he thinks are trying to subvert him—which currently meansme. I had the audacity to try to leave the city, and the design firm, andhim. And so now he’s going to make me pay for bruising his ego. I know the moment I walk into his office that this entire conversation is a lost cause. He doesn’t listen to a word I say. He simply repeats the same threats he made back in Fairport, yells at me to get Trevor to leave, and makes a few theatrical gestures to show me how pissed-off he is, like knocking over the cup of pencils on his desk and sending them all scattering across the floor. By the time I leave his office, I know that there is no reasoning with him.
“How’d it go?” Trevor asks when I walk back into my office. I think he can tell by the look on my face that it didn’t go well.
