“Heaven?”
“Old people, I was gonna say.” He made a laughing sound in his throat. “You really do love books, don’t you?”
She sighed to herself. Once upon a time, she hadn’t ever had to explain that to her man. Once upon a time, she’d been stupid.
She turned, and found Ronnie staring at his phone, head down, completely unenthusiastic about the wall-to-wall books around them.
Ava resumed her walk, leaving him to Twitter or Facebook or whatever the hell had held him captive since they’d arrived in Knoxville. In a small, back part of her mind, she knew she should have been worried that he was texting another girl, that he was running around on her. But the realization that she didn’t care if he was – that was overpowering. That propelled her down the aisle, deeper into her haven of books.
She was in the mood for something dark and Gothic, some tale peopled by steep-roofed houses and ominous cloud cover. What she got instead was a near-collision with a dark-haired young man studying the paperbacks laid out on a table the next aisle over. He glanced up at the muffled sound of her heels on the old carpet, and her heart lurched up her throat.
He had long since lost the shine of health and popularity, was thin, pale, and smudged under the eyes, but Mason Stephens Jr. still cut a rich-boy figure in his J. Crew and khakis, his hair long on top and parted on the side, carefully combed down with paste.
Unlike her, he didn’t evidence surprise at their sudden meeting. His eyes fastened to her in the way she remembered and hated, and a slow smile spread across his lips that brought up all the old repulsion, like her breakfast was trying to make a break for it.
“Teague,” he said, voice still oily, that little taunt, like he had a secret he wouldn’t share. “Look at you, all grown up.”
She cast a furtive glance down at her outfit, the skinny jeans, elbow-sleeve sweater, and the high-heeled sandals Ronnie said he liked best. Straight out of a Macy’s catalogue, all of it, with her hair in tidy dark waves down her shoulders and just a hint of lip gloss. She knew she didn’t look like the girl Mason had threatened to rape in Hamilton House five years ago. She knew she looked weaker than that.
The nausea doubled, the salty saliva flowing beneath her tongue. Her stomach cramped and her pulse accelerated; the fine hairs on her arms prickled and she felt the first blush of panicked sweat at her throat and breasts. It was like her body remembered him, what he had done to it, and it was telling her to run, run, run!
But she lifted her chin and said, “Did you learn how to read since I saw you last?”
“Ooh.” He mimed fear, hands raised. “Kitty’s still got claws.”
Five years ago, when he’d finally been released from the hospital, Mason had transferred to a private school and Ava hadn’t so much as passed him on the street afterward. Ghost made it clear that he and Stephens Sr. had come to some sort of arrangement: she and Mason would be kept apart, and everyone would pretend that night in Hamilton House had never happened. Ava hadn’t thought to run into him here, like this. She’d figured he was married, or in rehab, or living in Aruba by now. What would someone with Mason’s wealth and contempt want with Knoxville at this point?
She didn’t know, but she didn’t have the stomach for him. Time, it turned out, didn’t heal all wounds or assuage all hatreds.
Ava turned, to go back the way she’d come, when Mason said, “Did you hear my father’s the mayor?”
Let it go, her common sense told her.Just keep walking.
But she glanced over her shoulder and said, “Finally? Hasn’t he been running for some kind of office for twenty years? Guess it’s true what the old story says: the slow one always wins the race…eventually.”
Mason remained as unflappable as ever, still grinning. “Well, sugar, I hope you went away to law school, because your Little Doggies are about to be in major fucking trouble. It’d take a miracle to keep the lot of them out of jail.”
“Mason, Mason,” she said, clucking her tongue. Inside, she was shaking, but she said, “You keep threatening that. How ‘bout you deliver or shut the hell up already.”
When she pulled her head around, Ronnie was standing in front of her, phone forgotten for the moment in one hand, his gaze trained on Mason, mouth plucked sideways in a frown. “What’s going on? Is this guy bothering you?”
“He’s always bothering someone.” Ava grabbed the front of his shirt and steered him back around the aisle. “Guess it was my lucky turn,” she said, loud enough for Mason to hear, and kept urging Ronnie back toward the exit.
Once they were in the next aisle, she snatched up Ronnie’s hand. “Come on.” And she towed him along after her, nearly jogging by the time she pushed through the door and out onto the sidewalk.
She didn’t stop until they were two shops down, and then she collapsed onto the bench in front of the ice cream parlor, panting, trembling, clutching her knees to keep her hands steady as she leaned forward and fought the awful tide of nausea.
“Ava. Hey, hey.” Ronnie dropped down next to her and laid his had in the middle of her back. “What’s wrong? What did he say to you?”
She shook her head, choking on her gag reflex. “Nothing. Nothing, he – that’s the mayor’s son.”
His fingers flexed, back and forth, a light massage against the ridge of her spine. “Stephens?”
“Mason Stephens Jr.” She gulped in a deep breath of air, flavored faintly with waffle cone sweetness. If she breathed through her nose, she could smell chocolate, rich creamy ice cream, low tang of mint. It was helping, somehow, the clean fresh scent of the ice cream. “He…oh, shit, nevermind.” She sat up and leaned back against the bench; the street wavered in front of her a moment as her equilibrium shifted.
Ronnie was studying her with a concerned notch between his brows, lower lip caught between his teeth. “Ava, for the love of God, what is going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
