Ava tried again to shrug away from him, and this time he let her.
“Do you think I’m lying to you, Ava?”
“No. I know you’re not.”
“How do you feel about me?”
It may not be fair for him to ask when she was in such a vulnerable state of mind, but he had to know. If she didn’t think she could love him, it would devastate him.
“Ava?”
“Don’t do this, Tabon.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re…this…isn’t real.”
“It is to me.”
13
When they got back to Tabon’s house, he said he had calls to make, and told her to make herself comfortable.
“I’ll bring your bags in.”
“Thank you,” she said, feeling bereft by his distance.
“They’re in here,” he told her, pointing to the first doorway she saw down a hallway.
She murmured her thanks a second time, and went in to organize her new clothes and other belongings. She breathed a sigh of relief when she looked in the closet and saw his clothing filled more than half of it. For a minute she’d worried he’d relegate her to a guest room.
Running her hands along the shirts hung in his closet, Ava took a deep breath of Tabon. For a guy who said he didn’t like doing laundry, his clothes were meticulously cared for. The scent that she now identified with him was clean and woodsy, like the cedar lining the floor of the walk-in closet almost as big as her bedroom in New York.
Granted, apartments were typically small and outrageously expensive in places like the Big Apple, but still, the place set aside for holding his clothes had to be at least four hundred square feet.
Ava remembered him saying he’d inherited the house from his grandparents. Did that mean he was an only child? He’d also said he wanted her to meet his family, but he hadn’t been specific about who that might include.
Instead of wandering around in the rest of his space uninvited, Ava decided it might be best if she stayed in the bedroom, even after she’d gotten her belongings as organized as possible back into her suitcase.
Since she had a few minutes to herself, Ava tried to call her sister, but Aine didn’t answer.
She found two books on Tabon’s nightstand. One about significant battles of World War II, and the other about Oregonian hiking trails. Neither sounded that interesting, but she thumbed through the trail book until she felt her eyes growing heavy. Instead of fighting it, Ava let herself drift off to sleep.
—:—
Razor heard sounds of Ava moving about his bedroom, wishing he could wind back the clock and unsay everything he’d said to her this morning.
Clearly, she hadn’t taken his statement about her being the love of his life seriously, but then what twenty-something woman would have when it was said by a thirty-something man?
If someone had asked him his thoughts on age a week ago, he would’ve said it didn’t matter. His philosophy had always been, “you’re only as old as you feel.”
There weren’t many days he felt much different than he had at twenty-five, although he did recognize he was more mature.
In the last hour, he felt like he’d aged ten years, at least.
How foolish had he been to think someone like Ava—young, beautiful, smart, and funny, just starting out in life—would be as interested in him as he was in her?
She’d actually gone so far as to ask him to stop embarrassing himself. Don’t do this, Tabon, were her exact words.