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“No, Connor, you can’t think like that. You can’t take it personally.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” I sigh. “But I don’t know how not to. I get that she’s going through a lot, but all I’m doing is trying to be there for her, for them, and she just keeps pushing me away.”
“Yeah,” Dad mumbles, and I can see his mind working. “She’s going through a lot, Connor. And sometimes our problems are greater than the need to express them.”
I stare at him, right into his eyes, and hope that he can somehow see that I’m going through something, too. But I don’t have the heart to tell him. “I guess.”
Dad gets up to leave, and I pick up my phone, look at the last message I sent her. I told her I love her. She wrote back: Ok.
Dad stops in the doorway, his hand on the knob as he turns to me. “Just give her the time and the space she’s asking for. When she’s ready, she’ll come back to you.”
If she comes back at all.
* * *
I wake up to loud knocking on my window, and I rush out of bed, knowing there’s only one person in the entire world who would be there. Under a starlit sky, Ava stands with her head down and her arms crossed. Her hair’s loose, wet, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. I’d been so worried and had gotten so worked up about us that I’d somehow forgotten how beautiful she is. But she’s here, now, and she’s everything I’ve needed, everything I’ve craved. She’s so damn perfect.
When I lift the window, she looks up, those maple-colored eyes clear of the tears that have coated them for days. “Hey, sorry, I tried knocking on the door…”
“Sorry, I must’ve been… it doesn’t matter. Did you want to come in?”
“Can you meet me at the door?”
I smile, giddy. “Yeah, of course.”
I’m already waiting at my open door by the time she comes around the front. I open the door wider, expecting her to come in, but she shakes her head, keeps her distance. My smile falls. So does my heart. Right to my feet.
“Connor…” It’s just my name. Two syllables. But I’d heard it in this tone once before… It was the last time she gave up on me. On us.
“I don’t know what I did,” I whisper, more to myself than to her.
Her eyes meet mine, and those tears she’d been carrying return. “I’m leaving, Connor.”
My stomach plummets. “What?”
She turns to look behind her, and it’s only now I notice Peter’s car sitting idle at the curb, headlights on, with Miss D sitting in the backseat. “Ava, what the hell are you doing? Leaving me is one thing, but leaving—”
“Trevor has to stay to finish up some jobs,” she interrupts as if she’s planned this entire conversation in her head, and I wasn’t even part of it. “We have to leave tonight to get Mom’s placement at the treatment center.”
Dread solidifies every organ. Every muscle. “Where?”
“It’s in Texas.” She blinks, letting a single tear stream down her cheek. “And Peter… Peter’s going to take care of me.”
“Ava, no,” I breathe out, stepping closer to her. I reach for her hand at the same time she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. She hands it to me, her head bowed.
My nostrils flare with my heavy breaths as I take in the scene. Peter has Miss D, and soon, he’ll have Ava.
Ava says, “You said you were in Georgia.”
“What?”
She motions to the paper, and I quickly unfold it. Bile rises to my throat when realization hits. It’s the fucking receipt for the room service. “You said you were in Georgia,” she repeats.
“That’s not what it looks like,” I rush out. “I can explain—”
“You don’t need to,” she interrupts. “It won’t change anything. I still have to leave.”
“But—”
