The determination in her words, her voice, took me by surprise yet again. As we sat across from one another, her confidence seemed to drain as her shoulders deflated and her eyes deflected.
She pulled her feet from me, ripped the blanket off as her hands went around her knees, and tucked herself into a ball. A protective ball.
“When Lanie came to us last semester about you, about the living situation, she was quite convincing, regardless of what went on between the two of you.”
I felt my fingers twitch with the stress of the topic.
“Becca was, of course, fine with you living here, and I get that, you guys are good friends. Macie wasn’t a hard sell, she loves everyone, to a fault.” She gave a cynical laugh after that. “That left me. And if I objected, well, you had nowhere to live and wouldn’t be able to come back to school. I felt the pressure.”
Shit. I had no idea any of this had happened. From the sounds of it, neither had Becca. She told me there were no issues.
“All I knew was you were the guy who touched Lanie inappropriately, got his ass kicked by Xander for it, then left school due to a drinking problem. And I was being asked to have you as my roommate.”
“Ava…”
She put up her hand, quieting me.
“Please let me finish.” She settled back into her tight little ball. “There’s a lot in my past that went into my judgments about you without even meeting you. Where do I even start?”
As she asked herself that question, she threw her arms up over her head, almost in frustration. Her eyes were dark in the glow of the candlelight as it cast odd shadows in the room.
“I guess you start at the beginning.” I hoped my words encouraged her, I knew this couldn’t be easy.
She sat staring at the flame of the candle flickering, doing its dance, for a minute, gathering her thoughts. That minute stretched into two, and I wondered if our talk wasn’t going to happen.
“My father used to hit my mom,” she said, barely a whisper. “Apparently it started when she was pregnant with me, the fucking bastard. They didn’t know that we knew, my sister andme, but we knew. She could only stifle her screams so much. We were young, but we knew what was going on.”
I sat, frozen with her confession, my heart breaking for her.
“Did he…”
She shook her head before I could finish.
“No, he never hit us, thankfully. But I would hear them in the bedroom, I know he forced himself on her as well. Made her do things when she didn’t want to. Eventually my mom left him. She was stronger than a lot of women, so who knows if he would have started hitting us too, we won’t know. She moved us in with our grandparents. Turns out my dad had a drug problem, and their lack of money had a lot to do with it.”
“Ava, I’m sorry.”
She pooh-poohed my concern for her, shaking her hand and head as she adjusted herself on the couch. There seemed to be an increase in nervous energy as she couldn’t stop moving, now sitting on the arm of the sofa.
“We’re good now, the three of us are really good. My grandparents helped us get on our feet, and my mom did a great job, took really good care of us, and we’re like the best of friends. But it took its toll. I mean, I have this cloud over me when it comes to trusting guys, I think. Very classic when it comes to all that psychology bullshit.”
Well, no shit. And I really fucked this up.
“Ava…”
“I’m not done,” she said. Her hands twisted together in a knot as she stared down at her bouncing toes covered in striped socks. “I’m very impressed with what you’ve accomplished with your recovery over the past, I guess almost, year. I really am, Logan. But at the same time, it scares me. You scare me. And probably not for the reason you think.”
She let out a pent-up breath and then jumped from the sofa to her feet. Her frenetic pacing across the room had my head spinning, no clue where this was headed.
“I know you remember when we first saw each other, the first day we met. When we were both in the registrar’s office. When you came downstairs back here, I was stunned to realize it was actually you, the guy from campus.” She laughed, almost to herself, like I wasn’t even there. “Macie knew, though, but I didn’t want to believe her. But when you came downstairs, I was…pissed.”
She turned and looked right at me. Her moss green eyes, that color after a long rain has saturated the ground, stared deep into me, through me. The dancing light reflected off her irises.
“I was so mad…because I liked you. I was immediately attracted to you, and that never happens to me.”
CHAPTER 15
Logan
