were home.”
“Oh, okay.”
Ava’s phone rings again, still Rhys, and this time Ava answers, puts it on speaker. “Hey, Rhys.”
“Ledger’s with you, right?”
“Yep.”
“Pool party at my house. Hurry your asses up.”
“All right,” Ava laughs out. “I’ll talk to my boyfriend and see if he wants to go.”
“He has no choice, A. He pussied out on last night’s party, and he needs to show up. He’s fucking captain.”
“Co-captain,” I cut in. “And it looks like you’re doing enough for the both of us on that front.”
“Ava,” Rhys deadpans.
“Yeah?”
His tone turns serious. “Tell your boyfriend he needs to at least make an appearance… for the team.”
Raising her eyebrows, Ava gives me that look that says, he’s right, Connor without saying a word, and so I tell Rhys, “I’ll be there soon… ish.”
Rhys hangs up without another word, and I turn to my side and ask, “How the fuck is he having a pool party when it’s cold out?”
“You haven’t seen his indoor pool?”
“There’s an indoor pool?”
“Yep. On the west wing.”
“They have wings?”
She ignores me and adds, “But it’s more of a beach than a pool. There’s sand and waves, and it somehow feels like summer, like the sun’s out even when it’s thirty degrees out.”
I ignore the nagging question of how she knows that and ask, “Do you miss it? The house and money?”
Her gaze fall, eyes moving to the space between us. “The house, yes, but mainly because of the memories it comes with. The money only because it would make our lives so much easier.”
“Whose house was it anyway?” I ask, moving closer and placing my hand on her hip. “Was it Trevor’s dad’s or your mom’s?”
“It was my grandparents’. They left it to Mom when they passed. It’s old money, like, great-great-great-great grandparents. It sucks that I’m not able to pass that on to our kids when we—I mean my…I—” She stops there, pink flushing her cheeks.
I push away the fantasies of a forever with her, even though I’ve thought about it more times than I’d like to admit.
“Mom told me her parents were pissed when she decided to join the marines. It came out of nowhere. She went to St. Luke’s, too.”
“Oh yeah?”
Ava nods. “She was the first female student to get suspended for not wearing appropriate clothes, but it wasn’t like her skirt was too short or anything. It was because she wore combat boots and pants.” Her words falter at the end, a weak giggle taking their place.
“That sounds like your mom,” I muse, then ask, “Do you know who your dad is?”
“Nope,” she answers, shaking her head. She flips to her back, eyeing the ceiling, her hand covering mine on her stomach. “Mom said he was a guy she dated for a while, but he didn’t stick around long enough for her to even tell him she was pregnant.”
“You ever want to look for him? What if he could help you out financially?”
“I thought about it for, like, one second. But it would be almost impossible. She never told me his name or had it on my birth certificate, and I don’t want to ask her now. I don’t want her to know how desperate we are, you know?”
I lean up on my elbow, look down at her. “It’s that bad?”
“We’re doing okay right now, but yeah…” The corner of her lips dip downward. “We’ll be going in the red pretty soon.”
“So, what do you do then?” I ask.
Ava shrugs, her chest rising with her weighty inhale. Her eyes flick to mine quickly before shifting away. “Just hope everything falls into place.”
Her phone chimes with a text, and she rolls her eyes as she reads it.
Rhys: I’m going to send Mitch to pick your flakey asses up if you don’t get here soon.
Ava sighs. “Do you want to go?”
“Do you?”
“I guess, yeah. It should be fun.”
“So would staying in bed and beating my PB.”
Laughing, she gets out of bed, dragging me with her. “We’ll have more time for that later.”
“Ava.” I stand in front of her, take both her hands in mine. “This is important, and I need you to listen to me.”
“Okay.”
“Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Connor.” She pouts up at me. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, suck in a breath. “I don’t know if I can beat a minute, forty-eight.”
Ava’s in a bikini that shows off everything. Well, not everything, but close enough, and I don’t know how to feel about it. Luckily, we haven’t left yet, so there are no prying eyes.
“Is