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“Want me to take this cutie downstairs so you can have a few minutes?” Cash asked me.
“Sure,” I said, wondering what Ava was so determined to talk to me about that we’d need privacy. There’d be no shortage of people downstairs willing to look after my daughter though. “Be good, Bug,” I told Junie.
Ava transferred June to Cash, kissed both of them again, sent them on their way, then turned to me.
“What’s going on?” I asked her. “Did you hate the last chapter I sent you?” I’d sent it late last night, managed to string some words together over the past few days while Juniper napped, not ready to confess to Ava I was on my own with childcare. It was admittedly not my best work.
“I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I won’t hate it. Dork. I came up first and foremost to do exactly what I said—make sure Cash was playing nice.”
“Did you put him up to apologizing?”
“He saw the light mostly on his own,” Ava said, making me laugh. She perched on the love seat, so I pulled the desk chair out and sat.
“Thanks for any part you had in it. That’s a weight off my shoulders,” I said.
“He’s a stubborn one, but I love him. What’s this I hear about Quincy not nannying for you anymore?”
There it was. The real reason she wanted to talk. I frowned. I’d mentioned Quincy’s leaving in passing at the table, but Ava had been in the other room. I’d made sure of it. She was the only one I’d ever fessed up to about my involvement with my Quincy, the only one who would read more into it than just my nanny moving on. “You have good ears.”
“Hayden told me. But I knew something was wrong even before she said anything. You’re not yourself today.”
“I’m doing okay,” I lied. I’d gone to great lengths to be upbeat and holiday-cheerish all afternoon.
She narrowed her eyes at me and crossed her arms. “I don’t buy it, but if you don’t want to talk about yourfeelings, I get it.” She said it like a challenge.
“No feelings to talk about.” Another lie. Ava knew it, and I knew it.
“What happened, Knox? I thought she was staying until mid-January.”
I looked away, debating whether to open up.
“She decided not to go back to school. She’s staying in Dragonfly Lake.”
“Because of you?”
I winced. “She used the L word.”
“And how did you respond?”
“I told her I couldn’t let her throw away her future.”
Ava cringed visibly. “I was afraid of that.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you’d push her away.” She leaned her head back into the cushion, her eyes closed, as if there was no hope for me.
“You and I talked about it,” I reminded her. “The age difference?”
Her eyes popped open. “She changed everything up when she told you her feelings.”
“We’re still in different life stages, feelings or not.”
“You were worried about her missing out on college life. She decided against college life altogether. It sounds like she’s not so much in frat-party mode after all.”
“I can’t let her throw that away for me.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
