“I guess I look different, right?” She touched her hair, as if remembering the brown it used to be. “Are you going to let me in?”
&n
bsp; Like an idiot, I was still standing in the doorway. I stepped aside and Ava walked past me, balancing like an expert in those heels. I’d never paid much attention to high heels before, but when Ava walked, I couldn’t help but notice how they made her ass move under her skirt. I jerked my gaze away.
“Nice place,” Ava said, dropping her handbag on the sofa. She looked around at my penthouse—one of the largest, most luxurious penthouses in all of Chicago—and shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I see you cleaned up for me,” she said.
This was the Ava I knew. She was caustic, sarcastic, especially around me. She had a tough shell, born of her not-so-great childhood, and she knew how to throw an insult. She threw most of them at me, or at least she used to.
Even after everything we’d been through. Especially after everything we’d been through.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said.
Ava blinked, and for a second I saw hurt in her eyes before she brushed it away. “Aidan didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“I’m not really taking his calls,” I said. “He texted me something about sending you. I didn’t take it seriously.”
She nodded. “I agree, it’s odd that I would spend my precious time and expertise on you. I must have been feeling charitable.”
“Ava,” I said.
“What’s this about a nerd meeting?” she said. “A Japanese bigwig wants to meet with you, I hear, and Aidan doesn’t want you to wear the Space Invaders shirt you had when you were eighteen.”
“That was a nice shirt,” I said.
“For dorks,” Ava corrected me. “It was a nice shirt for dorks.”
“Yeah, well.” I walked to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. “I’m not wearing white jeans to this meeting, so you can forget it.”
Her dark-lashed eyes went wide with what I could have sworn was pleasure. “Dane Scotland, you read my blog. And I was exactly on point that day. White jeans are in.”
“Once,” I clarified. “I read it once. Never again. And Kaito Okada is a software guy, like me. He’d probably actually like the Space Invaders shirt. He won’t care what I wear.”
“Huh.” Ava crossed her arms over her chest. I very much was not looking at how her dress fit over her breasts, the way the fabric hugged them. No, I wasn’t. “Well, I don’t care what you wear either, but Aidan does. So here I am.”
“Reluctantly,” I added.
The tip of her tongue appeared and she licked her glossed lip. “Reluctantly,” she agreed after a minute. “Though I’m no more reluctant than you, I guess.”
I shrugged.
She glanced away, then back at me. “Aidan doesn’t know about us. So I guess you never told him.”
“Of course not. You think I’d actually tell him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never told him, either.” She ran a hand through her blonde hair. “It should be so easy to say, right? Oh, by the way, big brother, your best friend and I had sex a bunch of times behind your back—”
“Ava,” I cut her off.
“Why didn’t we tell him?” She stepped toward me, and suddenly she was close enough that I could catch a whiff of her scent, something with vanilla in it. The scent surprised me; if I had to guess, I’d have expected her to wear an expensive designer perfume. “In all these years, Dane, why didn’t we tell Aidan? Or the others? Why didn’t we just admit what happened between us?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “Do you want me to say I’m ashamed of it? Because I won’t. I’m not.”
Suddenly, I got it. That was what she’d thought. I could see it in her eyes. She’d thought I hadn’t come clean because I was embarrassed. So she hadn’t come clean either, because she hadn’t wanted to embarrass me.
And I’d had no idea. All this time.
I told her the truth. “I didn’t tell Aidan because it’s none of his fucking business,” I said. “He’s your brother, not the owner of your life. The others, too. As far as I’m concerned, they can all butt out of what’s between you and me.”