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I got as far as the Lexus, and then I stopped, my hands balled into fists. Damn it. What the hell was I doing?
You’re bailing on her, that’s what.
It had taken barely an hour. I’d stripped and Ava had sat there—doing what, exactly? Talking, asking questions, poking at me. Pretending like she didn’t give a shit about me. And she didn’t, I knew that, but somehow it still made me crazy. I was hot for her and guilty and pissed off, all at once.
So I left.
Fuck. Not my best moment.
I stood next to my expensive car and mentally kicked myself. I didn’t want to go back in there, but at the same time, by abandoning her, I breaking my rule: I was being disrespectful to Ava. So I stood there like an idiot, trying to figure out what to do.
The sound of heels clicking on the pavement came up behind me. “Dane Scotland!”
I turned to face her. “Listen, Ava—”
“You ditched me!” She was carrying a fashionable handbag, and in her fury she threw it at me with all the strength in her arm. She was likely aiming for my head, but the bag hit me in the middle of the chest with a hard smack. It was a lot heavier than it looked. I caught the bag as it fell.
“Ava, hold on,” I said.
“Do you know what you just did?” She was on a tear now. She had come up close to me, her hair coming out of its clasp, her eyes full of hurt. “You embarrassed me in front of the best menswear tailor in Chicago. You’ve tried to ruin this job when I desperately need it, because you don’t care. And then you tried to apologize for proposing to me!”
The words hit me like punches. She needed this job? I thought she was successful, that this job didn’t matter to her. But I realized now I was an idiot, because the success story was another one of Ava’s illusions, one of the weapons she used to pretend she didn’t need anyone. She wouldn’t come all the way to Chicago, all the way to me, unless she really needed the money.
And yes. I had just apologized to her for asking her to marry me seven years ago, on the last day we’d seen each other. Because I’d been a jerk that day, and my behavior had haunted me ever since.
I didn’t know what words to use, how to make anything right. I didn’t know how to say anything I was thinking or feeling. I only knew this was Ava, and her brown eyes were filling with tears, and the sight of it was a knife in my gut. “You know I owed you an apology,” I said. “We were over. I saw you on a date with another guy, and I acted like an asshole.” We hadn’t seen each other in two years, but I’d proposed to her on the spot: in public, in the restaurant, while she was on a date. Ava had not only turned me down, she’d been furious, and she’d been right. We’d ended in a stormy fight, and I’d never said I was sorry. Until today.
“You did act like an asshole,” Ava said, “but I wasn’t mad for very long. You didn’t do it to hurt or embarrass me. You didn’t even do it because you loved me. You did it because of the baby.”
The words hung there, heavy and sharp in the late-afternoon air. Cars drove by on the street. A breeze blew. If the tailor guy inside was wondering where we both went, he didn’t come out to look.
You did it because of the baby.
That crazy, happy winter when I was twenty-three, I hadn’t just taken Ava’s virginity and given her mine. I’d also knocked her up. It was an accident—she was on the pill, but somehow, something didn’t work at the wrong time. We never knew why. We only knew that she wasn’t pregnant, and then she was sore and tired, throwing up every few hours. Because she was going to have a baby.
My baby. Our baby.
Incredibly, the other guys, including Aidan, thought Ava had the flu. They never caught on. They were twenty-three-year-old guys who didn’t know what pregnancy looked like. We had just sold my software and were launching a new company, working crazy hours, rarely home. Still, they would have figured it out, considering Ava and I were pretty much panicked. It would have become obvious if the pregnancy had lasted. But it didn’t.
A week after her symptoms started, Ava started bleeding, and then she wasn’t pregnant anymore. She didn’t have time to get to her first doctor’s appointment before it was over. She spent a couple of days in bed while I was sick with worry, and then she was up again. She said she didn’t want to talk about it.
I was angry and sad and relieved all at once. I was pissed at the world and mad at myself for some reason I couldn’t fathom. And I wasn’t finished with Ava—not even close. I still wanted her in every way it was possible to want her.
But we were done. She’d just miscarried my baby at nineteen years old. Where were we supposed to go from there? We’d never even had a real relationship, and we were both out of our depth. So it was over just as abruptly as it began.
We all moved out of the apartment and went our separate ways. I stayed in Chicago while the others spread to their respective cities. Ava stayed in Chicago for a few more years, taking fashion and makeup art classes before making the move to New York. We’d been over for so long, but when I saw her in that restaurant, on a date with another guy, it felt like seconds. I’d walked in there and interrupted them as if no time had passed at all. And the only thing I could think of to do was propose.
Fucki
ng propose.
Not my finest moment. Just like this one wasn’t.
You didn’t even do it because you loved me.
That was what she thought, and I didn’t blame her. But it still hurt like hell.
Ava wiped the skin just under her eyes, in that careful way of women wearing mascara. “It was a long time ago, Dane,” she said. “But let me give you a tip. Even when your reasons were bad, don’t ever apologize to a girl for proposing to her.”
