Always Loving You (Danvers #6)(3)
Chapter Two
Mac walked to his Tahoe in the parking garage of Danvers International. He slammed the door behind him as he settled on the leather seat. Seeing Ava was still like a punch to the gut. Yeah, this whole thing of dating and moving on with his life had been his idea, but f*ck, it was hard. At least before, he was spending a lot of time with the woman he loved, even if she couldn’t admit to feeling the same way about him. Hell, maybe she didn’t love him. Maybe he’d spent years of his life loving her and needing to believe that she felt the same way. For years he told himself she just needed time to come to terms with what had happened to her. Only, nothing ever changed. His twenties were behind him now. He’d served two tours in the military, and he was ready to settle down and get on with his life.
He’d loved Ava for most of her adult life. In fact, when he looked back on it now, it seemed he had spent his teenage years waiting for her to grow up. She had started out more like a little sister to him. She had always been the girl next door. At some point, his feelings for her had started to change. He had been determined to wait until she was older, but damn, she hadn’t made it easy. When she started to date, he had nearly lost it. No one was good enough for his Avie, but still he’d waited. Then that night had happened, and nothing was ever the same again. For either of them.
When he found her on his doorstep, he had almost lost his mind. She was so broken. Clearly in shock, with her ripped dress and blood on her face. He had taken her to the hospital and was ready to go after the guy and kill him with his bare hands. But he knew he had to inform her family before he did anything else, and Ava’s grandfather had insisted he would take care of it. He forbade him to go to her date’s house. Then the whole thing had just gone away. No police involvement, no reports filed . . . nothing. It was as if it had never happened. Money could make things disappear, and that had never been more apparent to him. It made him furious. Ava had deserved justice, but instead she only received indifference. At the hospital when Declan had told him that Ava refused to report the rape to the police, he had longed to persuade her otherwise, but her grandfather said that she was refusing to see visitors.
In the days and weeks that followed the attack, the Ava he knew and loved disappeared. He tried to talk to her, to be there for her while she recovered, but she distanced herself from him. He had attempted to talk to her brothers about what she was going through, but they both insisted she just needed time. His frustration and the pain he felt at what she was clearly going through, alone, just grew. When Declan had asked him to join the military with him, at first he’d said no. However, in the end, he just needed to get away. Ava still wouldn’t see him and it was eating him alive. He figured maybe they both needed some time apart. He came back home to see her on every leave, but his Avie never returned. The little hellcat he had once known was now a reserved shell of her former self. When his tour ended, he was in complete limbo, so he re-upped with Declan, needing time to figure out what happened next for him.
After he left the military, he’d decided to take advantage of the training he had received in the marines and opened his own security company. A couple of guys he’d served with wanted to come in as partners, and East Coast Security was born. Now, several years later, they had been successful beyond any of their expectations. He, Dominic Brady, and Gage Hyatt mainly ran the day-to-day operations while their employees handled the work on-site. Jason Danvers, the CEO of Danvers International and a client, had offered them space for their corporate offices, which was convenient since they were located in a high-rise in downtown Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. East Coast also handled personal security for Jason’s family. His wife and child were rarely without a security tail.
Mac had also made sure that Ava was covered. Since the bastard who raped her all those years ago was never arrested, Mac made it his business to make sure nothing ever happened to her again. After he’d been home from the marines for a while, they managed to resume some part of the friendship that they’d once had. A lot of their free time was spent together, but for Mac it hadn’t been nearly enough. Sometimes he thought he saw something that looked like romantic feelings when she was looking at him on the rare, unguarded occasion, but they were gone so fast he wasn’t sure if they were ever there. He had loved Ava for years . . . and he had no idea how she felt about him.
Watching over Ava so closely also had a downside. He knew entirely too much about her personal life. Every couple of months, someone new would spend the evening at her house and walk out the door looking rumpled but satisfied. It was never the same man twice, though. It tore him up to read those reports from her security tail. To know that someone else was touching the woman he loved while he was standing around on the sidelines. In those moments he would worry about invading her privacy and consider whether to continue monitoring her safety from afar, but he couldn’t take the chance that any harm would befall her ever again.
Of course, he couldn’t say that he’d been a saint either. He was a man and he had needs. He had slept with the occasional woman when the need was there. He wasn’t vain, but he knew that women found him attractive, and it was never a hardship to find a willing woman to spend a night with. He and Declan had found many of them during their tours of duty. It had just never meant any more to him than filling a physical need. Had Ava said the word, he would have stopped seeing other women and been faithful to only her without a single qualm about stepping into a serious relationship.