The Garden
682 Words
The dinner was a success. Ava charmed Asano with stories of her event planning disasters ("The time the doves wouldn't release, so I had to chase them around the church in heels"), impressed him with her knowledge of classical music, and even managed to make Noah laugh—genuinely laugh—at a story about her mother's terrible cooking.
"Your wife is a treasure, Noah," Asano said as they left. "Do not let her go."
"I have no intention of it," Noah said, and the way he looked at Ava—just for a moment, just a flicker—made her wonder if he was still acting.
In the car, they were quiet. The city lights blurred past, painting Noah's face in shades of gold and shadow.
"You were good tonight," he said finally.
"Thank you."
"You didn't have to be. You could have been terrible, collected your money, and left. But you tried. You actually tried."
Ava turned to look at him. "Why do you sound surprised?"
"Because in my experience, people don't try. They take. They use. They leave."
"Then you've been hanging out with the wrong people."
Noah was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was different—softer, more vulnerable. "The compass tattoo. You asked about it."
Ava held her breath, not wanting to break the moment.
"My sister gave it to me," he said. "Before she died. She said... she said I was always searching for something, always moving, never still. She said I needed a compass to find my way home."
"Oh, Noah..."
"She was sixteen. Car accident. Drunk driver." His jaw tightened. "I was eighteen. I was supposed to pick her up that night. I was late. I was always late, always busy, always chasing the next deal. If I'd been there—"
"You can't blame yourself."
"I do. Every day." He turned to look at her, and for the first time, Ava saw the depth of the pain he carried—the ocean of grief behind the wall of ice. "That's why I don't do feelings, Ava. Because feelings hurt. Because when you care about people, you lose them. And I can't lose anyone else."
Chapter 12: The Hand
Ava reached out, taking his hand. He didn't pull away.
"You're not going to lose me," she said softly. "Not for six months, anyway."
"Six months," he repeated. "Just six months."
But as they held hands in the dark, neither of them sounded convinced.
The first month of fake marriage was an exercise in contradictions.
Noah was meticulously polite in public—the perfect husband, attentive and charming and devastatingly handsome. In private, he was a ghost. He left for work at five AM, returned after midnight, and spent weekends locked in his home office. They ate meals together when required by the schedule, conversed in scripted pleasantries, and retreated to their separate corners of the penthouse like boxers between rounds.
Ava, who had never been good at leaving people alone, found this arrangement maddening.
"You're avoiding me," she accused one morning, cornering him in the kitchen at six AM. He was making coffee with the precision of a chemist, measuring beans by weight, timing the pour to the second.
"I'm busy."
"You're hiding."
Noah didn't look up. "I have a company to run."
"You have a wife to pretend to like."
He finally looked at her, coffee forgotten. "I don't pretend to like you. I don't like anyone. It's not personal."
"It feels personal when you won't even eat breakfast in the same room as me."
Noah sighed, a sound of long-suffering patience. "What do you want from me, Ava?"
"I want you to be human. Just occasionally. Just enough that I don't feel like I'm living with a very attractive robot."
Something in his expression shifted—surprise, maybe, at the "very attractive" comment. Ava pretended she hadn't said it.
"Fine," he said. "Breakfast. Tomorrow. Here. I'll even make pancakes."
"You know how to make pancakes?"
"I know how to do many things, Ms. Williams. You'd be surprised."
- Writer
