Ava
Chapter 36
The Board Meeting
Ava walked out of the boardroom with considerably less anxiety than she’d entered with. She’d accomplished what she set out to do, even with the lingering heartbreak that took residence in her chest. The walk to her office passed in a blur as the adrenaline slowly receded from her body.
She found Morgan waiting for her, typing away on the laptop perched on her knees. At her entry, Morgan’s head whipped around so fast her curls hit her cheek.
“How’d it go?”
“Good. Better than I expected,” Ava said. She tried to smile, but she was sure it fell flat.
Morgan placed her laptop on the desk and got up to hug her.
“I’m so proud of you, even if you can’t feel proud of yourself right now.”
Ava bit her lip to ward off the tears that wanted to gather. Now was not the time to be upset. She aced her interview she spent all summerpreparing, and they had an offer on the cabin already. Everything was working out the way it was supposed to. Right?
So what if there was a ragged, gaping hole where her heart beat, that ached each time she took a breath?
“Come on, let’s go celebrate. Lunch is on me,” Morgan said, releasing her.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I insist. Just need to make a stop by the ballroom before we head out. Coming with?”
“Sure.”
Ava rounded her desk to grab her purse from the bottom drawer, then followed Morgan. They took the long way there. Morgan’s eyes were glued to her phone, to the point she almost ran into an opening door.
“Watch out. Might want to put the phone down before you hurt yourself,” Ava warned.
Morgan grimaced. “Sorry. Trying to coordinate something. I’m putting it away now.”
She made a show of sliding the phone into her pocket and waggled her fingers once they were phone-free. They neared the ballroom on the ground floor, and Ava hung back to wait for Morgan outside the door.
“Come inside. I want to show you something,” Morgan said, gesturing her to follow.
Despite how weird Morgan was acting, Ava trailed behind her.
“What did you want to show m—oomph.”
The air was knocked out of her lungs, quite literally, when someone threw their arms around her waist in a tight squeeze. A mess of shaggy brown hair she’d recognize anywhere greeted her, and then a freckled, smiling face peered up at her.
“Avery? What are you doing here?”
Her mouth parted in her first genuine smile in over a week, and she hugged him back without thinking about the reason he’d be here. Because if Avery was here, then that meant …
Owen.
She pulled her attention from Avery and met Owen’s gaze. He stood with his hands behind his back, his black shirt pulling tight across his chest from his stance. A few strands of hair escaped his bun, and she itched to brush them back from his face. But he didn’t deserve that from her. Not after the way they left things. Not after the words he hurled at her like sharpened knives, aimed at making the biggest impact.
“We came to see you,” Avery said. “Dad said you forgot something, and he needed to get it back to you.”
Ava frowned. What did she leave? Aside from the obvious.
Morgan approached with her face twisted in a grimace.
