“Nothing, if you don’t want to. But I wanted you to know that you could say something – anything – if you need a friendly ear. I never imagined you ending up with someone like Jazz.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he bristled – but it felt obligatory. Like he was supposed to be offended. Inwardly, he just felt tired.
She sighed. “I like Jazz fine. Considering.” She shook her head a moment, expression one of marveling at this life they were both a part of. It was a comfort to know that even Biker Princess Ava could hit mental roadblocks, sometimes. “But, for one, she’s a good bit older than you.”
“Youwanna talk about age gaps? Really?”
“Totally different situation,” she said with a dismissive wave. “What I mean is: Jazz isn’t anything like the girls you used to go out with in school.”
“Like you were paying attention,” he scoffed, surprised by the bitter note of his voice.
Ava was surprised, too, if the way she blinked was any indication. “I’m a writer, dude, I notice things. And the kinds of girls you dated were spending a hell of a lot of time trying to make my life at school miserable. So.”
He ducked his head a fraction, anger fizzling out.
“I thought,” she continued, gentler again, “that you were the kind of guy who’d end up with a high school sweetheart. That you were the wife and picket fence type.”
He snorted. “You saw the house where I grew up. I told you about my old man.”
“What does that matter? Is Mercy his mother? Or his father, even? It doesn’t matter where you’re from. I always thought you’d be the romantic type. The spoil-a-girl type.”
He couldn’t think of an answer that wasn’t either insulting to Jasmine, or damning to himself.
“If you tell me that you’re perfectly happy with Jazz, and that you aren’t missing out on anything, then I’ll leave you alone.”
Again, he couldn’t answer.
“Are you interested in Leah?”
“I don’t…know.”
“Because if you are, and you’re ready to break things off officially with Jazz, then I think that’s great. I think you guys could be good together. But if you’re just looking at her because she’s so different from what you have…because you’re tired of the wild side…” Her voice took on a warning tone.
“I’m not. I mean, that’s not what I’m doing. I…” He huffed out a breath and remembered being a teenager, and Ava helping him write his English papers so he wouldn’t fail and get kicked off the team. Years later, and he still didn’t have a way with words. “I don’t know, okay?”
She sat back in her chair. “Fair enough.” Pressed her boot soles to the floor and set the chair to rocking.
He pushed off with his feet, too, and they rocked in silence a few moments.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, after a while, “from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look like you’re happy.”
“Hm.”
“Even Tango’s worried.”
“He is?” Though he’d seen the worried looks from that quarter himself.
“Tango’s been down in the pit,” she said, voice growing soft with old sadness. “He knows how hard it is crawl back out if you get down too far.”
His chest tightened, as he thought of the white walls of the hospital, and Tango’s wildly uncharacteristic screams coming down it. The nurses rushing in with sedatives, the grave looks on everyone’s faces. They’d almost lost him, and no one had known he was on the brink until it was nearly too late. Aidan had pulled him out of a bloody bathtub; tears had slipped down his cheeks when he related the story, later.
He and Tango had never been close, but Carter had been shocked; had been hurt. It had felt like a betrayal, Tango trying to leave like that, permanently; like he was abandoning them all.
That oldyou don’t know what you have until you lose itthing.
“I’m not in the pit,” he said, and knew it the moment the words left his lips. Yes, he’d been depressed, felt aimless, felt like he was drifting and perhaps didn’t belong in this club. But he wasn’t ready to end it. He wasn’tdespairing. He hadn’t been through anything like the torture, mental and physical, that Tango had endured.
Ava stared at him.
