“Ava...Ava...Ava.” My name is barely a whisper from his lips, but amidst my stomach-turning nerves, it might as well be a plea shouted from the rooftops.
Stay.
I heard him say it a week ago while we both thrashed through an earth-shattering climax, and I pretended I didn’t hear him. But I heard. Loud and clear.
* * *
An hour later,Lucky and I are in our bed—hisbed—and I’m lying on his bare chest, my ear pressed against his scar-riddled left pectoral muscle while I meditate on the sound of his breath and heartbeat. The sheet is draped haphazardly across my hips, and his fingers tap out a silent rhythm against my spine.
My eye rims burn, and I swallow a lump that threatens to rise in my throat. “What song is it?”
He stops tapping and slips his hand under my chin, forcing me to look at his face. “You’re leaving me, aren’t you?”
I don’t say anything, but the welling up of my eyes answers far more effectively than words could.
His throat pulses with a swallow, and he speaks with a harder tone. “When?”
I hesitate for a beat. “Friday.”
His gaze flits around various places on my face before he withdraws his hand from my chin, tucking it behind his neck and flattening his head deep into the pillow. His other hand strays from my back and drops to the mattress next to me. Silence stretches for several beats as I brace for some kind of reaction.
“Please don’t be angry.”
Another long silence sprawls between us. The tick in his jaw indicates he’s repeatedly clenching and unclenching his teeth. His heart rate picks up beneath where I’m resting on his chest. He doesn’t look at me for a long time.
“Lucky.”
He draws in a breath so intense that his nostrils briefly collapse, his eyes lifted to focus on the ceiling. He gives a subtle shake of his head as he speaks so quietly it seems more to himself despite him addressing me by name. “Don’t do this to me, Ava.”
“I’m not trying to do thistoyou—”
Any further words I might offer are silenced when he wraps his hand around my bicep and forces me onto my back, his mouth crashing down over mine, his kiss merciless and angry. His tongue probes aggressively into my mouth, the intensity building, causing our teeth to gnash a number of times, and he grabs my wrists to pin my arms to the bed.
Lucky kisses me so hard and so long that I can’t even draw in a breath for several moments. I pull my mouth from his just so I can breathe, but the air trips on the lump that’s lodged itself in my throat. He pauses, his dark blue eyes staring at mine like he’s looking way deep down into my soul, and we stay still like that for a long time. Tears resurface on my eye rims and spill out, trickling down my temples, and he releases my wrists to frame my face and catch the tiny streams with his thumbs. I reach to hold the back of his head, my fingers intertwined with the close-cropped strands of his coal-black hair. He presses firm kisses to my forehead, my eyelid, the side of my nose, my cheek, and the corner of my mouth. I can’t hold back the small whimper that leaps from my throat. But we don’t say a word.
We just stare at each other for a long time, and then Lucky lets go.
He turns over, shifting away from me, and climbs out of bed. I watch him as he locates his boxer briefs, pulls them on, then grabs his trousers and undershirt and pulls those on as well. He says nothing as he fastens his fly and picks up his silver cigarette case off the nightstand.
And then, he leaves.
He doesn’t return.
And that’s when I know for sure that our parting isn’t going to be anything like Pearl and Piper’s.
When I leave Lucky De Luca’s Jazz Manor, it will be the end of everything between us.
Twenty-One
Lucky
Quarantine Day 79
I don’t fucking cry.
I do notfucking cry.
And that’s why I’m standing in my living room, staring out the window, while a random old man with a bandana wrapped around his nose and mouth loads Ava’s bags into his trunk, and Ava hugs Pearl, Piper, and Meyer, and they all say their goodbyes.
