Frisk Me(91)

She released him long enough to go to her purse, which she’d left by the door, and came back with a small recorder. She handed it to him.

“What’s this?”

“It’s the audio of the video Mihail helped me record before I came here.”

He looked at her. “Sum it up for me.”

Ava licked her lips. “It’ll be the follow-up to the interview, in case CBC…twists things. In it, I explain everything I just told you. That neither Beverly Jensen, nor Shayna Johnson’s parents, nor any law enforcement officers find fault with anything that you do.”

He rolled his eyes, tossing the recorder aside, but she pressed on, her voice louder, stronger.

“I’ve already called contacts at competing networks that will air it, Luc. It’ll set the record straight. It’ll show the viewers what took me way too long to understand. That you’re America’s Hero not because of your acts, but because of your heart. That you’d be less of a hero if you didn’t beat yourself up every day for the death of a friend and a little girl. I tell them that—”

He closed his eyes. “Get out, Ava.”

“But—”

“Out!”

“Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” she asked. “I’m trying to tell you I—”

“It doesn’t matter!” he yelled with a wild wave of his arm. “What did you think was going to happen, that you’d apologize and in a few months we’ll be curled up on the couch, watching your stupid TV series while planning our wedding? Fat f*cking chance.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and he fisted his hand so he didn’t reach for her.

“There’s no future for us, Ava. I showed up today for you, yes. I care about you and wanted you to get what you’d sought so desperately to achieve. But that’s as far as we go.”

“But I said I was wrong—”

He held up a hand. “Don’t. We’re both getting what we want. You can still go be a superstar journalist. Go get your damned Pulitzer Prize, or whatever.”

“And you? What will you get?”

Luc moved toward his front door, opening it as he picked up her purse and held it out to her.

“Solitude.”

Ava gracefully took her purse out of his hand, chin held high as she accepted her banishment. “You’re being an ass, you know that, right?”

Luc shrugged. Don’t care.

Her eyes continued to hold his. “I love you. You know that too, right?”

Her soft-spoken words did something dangerous in the vicinity of his heart, and once again, he almost reached for her. Almost.

“I can’t, Sims. I can’t.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded once.

Then she walked away.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX



I look horrible in coral,” Ava said, staring at her reflection.

Beth came up beside her, radiant in her wedding dress. She wrapped an arm around Ava’s waist. “You do, kind of.”

Ava gave her friend an exasperated look. “But you picked it out.”

Beth shrugged and took a sip of her champagne. “You know how some of those brides claim they don’t care about their gorgeous maid of honor upstaging them on their wedding day? Yeah, I’m so not one of them. Just be thankful I let your size two, shiny-haired ass stand next to me at all.”

Ava sighed and held out her glass for a refill. “It’s the least you can do.”

Beth waggled a finger. “Pour it yourself. Spilling champagne on my wedding gown at my wedding is acceptable. Charming, even. Spilling it on my dress a week before the ceremony? Trashy.”

“How does everything feel?” the tailor asked, coming over to where she’d been arguing with Beth’s cousin over how low the neckline of the dress could go without risking a wardrobe malfunction.

“It feels like I won’t be able to eat for a week,” Beth said, resting her hand lightly against the bodice of the gown.

The severe-faced tailor nodded. “Excellent.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Wonderful.”

“And you?” the tailor asked Ava.

“I’m good,” she said with a smile.

It might have been the biggest lie she’d ever told in her life. Ava was so far from good it wasn’t even funny. She hadn’t been good in…twelve days.

Beth’s face lost some of its glow as she took in Ava’s forced smile. “He still hasn’t called, huh?”

Ava shook her head and she refilled her champagne flute. “No call. No text. No courier pigeon. No Twitter, no Facebook.”

Beth made an angry noise. “It’s his loss.”

“Is it?” Ava murmured. “He’s right not to trust me.”

“Bullshit. You’re unemployed because of him.”

“No,” Ava snapped, using a sharper tone than she ever had with Beth. “That’s not what this is.”

Beth didn’t back down; her hands went to her hips, emphasizing the hourglass outline of her mermaid-style dress. “So you didn’t turn down your dream job as a show of faith for your non-boyfriend.”

“I turned it down because it wasn’t what I wanted.”