In bed with Havoc

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AVA

Sleep was a joke at this point.

I lay in the dark until four thirty and then I gave up, pulled on leggings and a tank top then grabbed my shoes and walked out because the walls of that room had absorbed too many of my thoughts over the past week and I needed to move or I was going to come apart at the seams.

The gym was on the second floor. I pushed open the door at five in the morning expecting it to be empty and silent but I got nothing.

He was already there.

Shirtless, facing the heavy bag, working it with a focus that made it clear he'd been at it for a while and the room smelled like sweat while the bag chain creaked with every hit but he didn't stop when the door opened, didn't turn around, just kept going like I wasn't there.

I thought about leaving for a moment.

I stood in the doorway for ten seconds longer than I should have because I couldn't help it. The tattoos covered more than I'd seen before, both forearms and up across his chest, over one shoulder and there was a scar on his left shoulder that was old and wide but I didn't recognize it. I wanted to and that wanting made me furious so I walked to the treadmill on the far side of the room, got on and started running.

He ignored me.

I ignored him.

Soon, the room filled with the sound of my feet on the belt and his fists on the bag while neither of us spoke.

Fuck you, Ryder. You made me a wreck while pretending like I didn't exist. f**k you. I cussed him in my mind.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. My lungs started burning but I pushed harder while the bag kept taking his punches. I stared at the wall in front of me and told myself I was fine, I was absolutely fine, the file was just words and words couldn't c***k something that had been set for five years.

Then he stopped.

"I'm sorry about last night." he said.

I kept running. "You put it on the laptop on purpose."

The bag swayed slightly under his hand.

"Didn't you." I said. Not a question.

He paused for a long time and that was an answer on its own. Then he turned around, i turned to face him and instantly regretted it because he was doing that thing with his face that made me feel pity towards him.

"Yes." he said.

I stopped the treadmill.

The belt slowed under my feet and I stood there breathing then fully looked at him across the room. "Why?"

"Because I'm tired of you thinking you're the only one who's been bleeding."

Really? I almost laughed out loud. Getting off the treadmill I walked across the room and shoved his chest hard with both hands.

He took a step back.

"Then say it to my face!" I screamed in his face. "Not in some file I was never supposed to find! Not in letters you never sent! Not in books left on pillows with no note! Say it! To my face! Like a person!"

"Ava—"

"Don't!" I shoved him again, harder, and he took another step back, his jaw tightening but he let me and somehow that made it worse. "You had five years! Five years of watching, following and writing things down in the dark but you couldn't say one word to me! Not one!"

"It wasn't that simple!" He finally broke.

"It was exactly that simple!" My voice cracked and I hated it, hated that he could hear it breaking, but I couldn't stop now. "You pick up the phone! You show up! You say something instead of leaving me alone with the worst thing that ever happened to me thinking you didn't care!"

"I cared!" His voice broke up too, finally. it was rough, uneven and nothing like the flat controlled tone I'd been dealing with for days. Good. "I cared so much I couldn't function! That's not something you can just say, Ava, that's not something you drop on an eighteen year old girl who's already—" He stopped. His jaw worked.

"Who's already what?" I stepped closer. "Say it!"

"Who was already falling apart because of me!" He yelled, this time taking a step forward which made me take one back. "I did that.. I knew I did that and showing up and saying I'm sorry I love you by the way would have fixed nothing because I was already in something that was going to get you killed and I chose—" He stopped again, breathing hard.

"You chose to leave." I said, my voice dropping because the anger had hit something underneath itself which was more painful. "You chose to leave and you let me think it meant nothing."

"I know."

"I lost—" I stopped. My throat closed. I couldn't tell him about the baby so I pressed my lips together and looked at the ceiling for a second then back at him. "You have no idea what I went through after you."

"I know more than you think." Oh you don’t, trust me.

"Then you know that your reasons don't fix it!" My voice broke fully this time and I let it because there was nothing left to protect. "You don't get credit for caring in secret! You don't get to love someone from a distance for five years and call it protection! That's not protection, that's cowardice and you know it!"

He didn't flinch or look away. Just stood there in since like I was throwing a tantrum.

"Say something!" I shoved him one more time, both hands, and this time he caught my wrists, both of them, his grip firm but not hard, and I tried to pull back and he held on and we stood there breathing, faces too close, his hands around my wrists and mine pressed against his chest and the room was very loud with both our breathing.

"I never stopped wanting you," he said, his voice low and stripped of everything except the truth of it. "Not for one day in five years. Not when I was trying to and not when I wasn't. That's the truth. That's all of it."

I looked at him.

The fury was still there but it had company now and the company was worse, grief, longing and the terrible ache of someone handing you exactly what you needed five years too late.

I pulled my wrists free.

"That's not good enough," I said.

I walked out. I kept my eyes forward, my jaw set and I was almost through the door when the mirror on the wall caught me and I saw his reflection making me slow down a bit.

His composure was gone as his head dropped forward pressed against the punching bag, one hand braced on it but not moving.

I looked away before he could see that I'd seen.

I kept walking.

But I carried it with me all the way down the hall, that image, the most painful thing I'd seen from him in five years and tried not to think about what it meant that I already wanted to go back.

Not just to the gym but what we had five years ago.