“Perfectly,” Ava says, her voice shaking like she’s close to crying. I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking do anything. A moment later, the office door opens and Ava steps out, her head hung low, her eyes on the ground.
She takes a step toward me, but only notices me standing there when she damn near plows into me. I want her to hit me, hurt me, slice me with her words like I’ve done to her. I’m a bastard, an asshole, and I wouldn’t doubt it if she hates me now. She was telling the truth all this time…she was the one telling the truth and my father was lying. And continuing to lie.
Her head snaps up and our eyes meet. I take in her tear-filled green orbs and forget how to breathe.
My chest hurts. I fucking failed her.
Chapter Seventeen
Ava
He heard everything. I can see it written in his features. The shock, the shame, the guilt. He finally believes me…but it’s already too late. I don’t think I can forgive him for what he did. It took hearing the truth from his father, not me, to make him believe it. How do I let go of something like that? It’s not like what we had was anything special, not to him. He just used my body to hurt me, all while my heart bleeds for the boy I had cared for, the boy who was as close to a best friend as I would ever get.
“Ava,” he whispers, his voice somber and regretful. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
I shake my head, tears slipping down my cheeks. It’s too late for sorry. Too late.
“I needed you, Vance. I needed you to believe me, but you never did, and when I needed you the most, you turned your back on me. When I was already down and thought I couldn’t feel any worse, you made certain I did.”
A sob breaks free from my throat, and it feels like my heart is going to burst. I can’t do this right now…I can’t. Pushing past him, I storm through the house, grabbing my purse from the entry table before running outside and onto the front porch. Glass shatters somewhere inside the house, followed by the sound of Vance yelling at his father.
Gulping fresh oxygen into my lungs, I let it build and build.
If he would have just believed me a few days ago. If he would have trusted me, I would have forgiven him, but now? It’s too late.
Unlocking my car with the key fob, I speed walk across the driveway and hastily get into the driver’s seat. I crank the engine and back out into the road with my tires skidding across the pavement. There’s no way I can stay in that house anymore, not with Henry’s threat looming over me, or Vance’s guilt suffocating me. I need to go somewhere, anywhere, anywhere but here.
Where can I go? I could call Jules, and go stay with her, but I don’t want to involve her in my problems, plus I wouldn’t ever be able to repay her. Then it hits me… hotel. I’ll go to a hotel, the one in town at least for a short time. Until I can figure everything out.
The drive to the hotel goes by abnormally fast, even though I’m driving slow because I can hardly see through my tears that started to fall again. I park in the back of the parking lot and sit there for a few more minutes trying to piece myself back together again. Trying to put together the broken pieces enough so that I look like a normal person, at least on the outside.
When the puffiness and redness around my eyes finally vanished enough to make it look like I haven’t been crying for the last twenty minutes, I get out of the car and walk inside. I’m greeted by an older man at the reception desk who thankfully checks me in quickly. I swipe my credit card and he hands me the key to my room without question.
As soon as I’m in my hotel room, I fall apart. Sobbing uncontrollably, I crawl onto the bed and curl up in the fetal position. He knows the truth, I should feel better now, but I don’t. Instead I feel worse, because he only believed me after hearing his father say that he lied. He doesn’t trust me, he never did, and he probably never will. I don’t know why I’m so hurt by that fact. Maybe because I trusted him, I believed in him and all he did was hurt me in return. I took comfort in his touch while he took comfort in my pain. I guess I’m partly to blame because a tiny part of me had hoped that maybe, just maybe, something would come from me sharing the truth with him, from letting him have a tiny piece of me.