In bed with Havoc

CHAPTER TEN

AVA

Sleep and I had never been good friends but tonight we were full on enemies.

I tried everything, counting the cracks in the ceiling, staring at the window until my eyes burned, pulling the blanket over my head like that would somehow silence the noise inside my own skull but nothing worked and by three in the morning I gave up and got out of bed.

The estate was different at night and not in a comforting way. The hallways were too long and too quiet and the marble floors were cold enough to hurt under my bare feet but I kept walking anyway because moving felt better than lying still and thinking about everything I couldn't fix.

I wasn't looking for anything in particular and I just needed a door that wasn't locked and a room that wasn't mine and when I pushed open the heavy door at the end of the east corridor I found both.

The library was massive and the kind of room that should have felt warm but somehow didn’t, the shelves went all the way to the ceiling and the fireplace on the far wall was still going, the rain outside was hitting the windows in slow, steady drops and for one second I thought I was alone.

Then I saw him.

Ryder was in the armchair closest to the fire with a glass of whiskey balanced on the arm and no book, no phone, no paperwork, nothing, just sitting there in the near dark with his eyes somewhere far away and his jaw loose for once, not clenched, not working through something, just still.

I almost backed out.

And honestly? I should have backed out.

But he looked up before I could move and his eyes found mine across the room and neither of us said anything just letting the silence stretch long enough that leaving would have felt more awkward than staying so I walked to the nearest shelf and pulled out the first book my fingers landed on without even reading the title and crossed to the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace and sat down.

He didn't say anything.

I didn't either.

The fire crackled between us and the rain kept coming while I opened the book to a random page and stared at the words without reading any of them but the silence was so heavy I could feel it pressing against my chest.

I broke first because I always break first and I hate that about myself.

"Why do you have a library if nothing in this house looks touched."

It wasn't really a question but he answered it anyway and he didn't look up from his glass when he did. "Some things are for looking at, not using."

I stared at him for a second and I couldn't tell if he was joking or if he actually believed that and somehow that made it worse because I was delusional enough to think he was talking about me. But hey? A girl is allowed to dream, right?. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."

He didn't answer just reached for the bottle on the table beside him and refilled his glass then slid a second one across the small table between our chairs without asking or looking at me. I hesitated for exactly one second before I picked it up because I needed something to do with my hands and whiskey was better than nothing.

I took a sip, it burned slowly down my throat then I went back to pretending to read.

We talked after that but carefully not to reveal anything personal to each other.

We talked about books I liked, half remembered stories of his life before the military. I also told him about the first story I ever had published and he listened without interrupting which I hadn't expected. The whole conversation felt very easy and that scared me because ease around Ryder wasn't something I could afford right now.

Every few minutes I felt his eyes on me but every time I looked up he was already looking somewhere else and I told myself it meant nothing.

At some point my hair fell from behind my ear where I had tucked it but as soon as I reached to tuck it back, I heard him shift in his chair, making me glance up at him just as his hand fell back down on his lap, his jaw tight as he glared at the fire like it had npersonlly offended him.

I turned a page I hadn't read a single word of.

He swirled the whiskey in his glass and said nothing and I watched the firelight move across the side of his face for one second longer than I should have and then looked back down at the book in my lap.

He refilled his glass again without offering me more this time and I didn't ask.

The rain got heavier against the windows and the fire popped and I turned another unread page and we stayed like that for longer than made sense for two people who supposedly hated each other, I kept waiting for him to say something cold or dismissive or to tell me to go back to my room but he didn't and that silence felt different from all the other silences since I'd arrived here but I didn't know what to do with that so I just sat with it.

When I finally closed the book and stood to leave it was close to four, my eyes were heavy and I'd read maybe three sentences the entire time but I felt calmer now but I hated the fact that deep down I knew that his presence had something to do with the calm felt.

I was thinking of the next best way to b erate myself when he spoke up.

"You always used to fall asleep reading."

I stopped.

My hand was still on the arm of the chair because I hadn't fully straightened yet and he chose to drop a bomb in my f*****g heart.

I turned around slowly.

He wasn't looking at me and his eyes were still on the fire with his glass was halfway to his mouth like he hadn't meant to say it out loud. I stood there and looked at him but he didn't take it back and he didn't look at me.

"You were watching me even back then," I said and it came out quieter than I intended but it wasn't a question because we both already knew the answer and I think we'd known it for a long time.

He said nothing.

So I left.

I walked back through the dark hallways with my bare feet cold on the marble again but this time I barely acknowledged it as my chest was doing something complicated that I absolutely refused to name so I kept my eyes forward with my jaw set and by the time I reached my door I had almost convinced myself it was nothing, just a quiet night with a shared glass of whiskey and a man who said something he shouldn't have but I could file it away and not think about it again.

I pushed open the door and reached for the light.

And then I saw it.

A book on my pillow.

There was no note. Slowly, I walked to it and picked it up, turned it over and the moment I read the title the air left my body all at once.

It was my favorite and not a famous one, not something anyone would guess, just a sweet book I had mentioned exactly once years ago in a conversation that hadn't even been a serious conversation, just a passing comment I'd thrown out without thinking and then forgotten entirely.

He hadn't forgotten.

I stood there in the middle of the room with the book in both hands and the rain still going outside and the tide shifted the foundation underneath everything I had built to keep myself steady and I didn't know what to do with that so I just stood there and held the book and let it sink in.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the cover and for the first time since I'd arrived here I wasn't angry.

That scared me more than anything else had.