A Broken Fate (The Beautiful Fate Series book 2) (34 page)

“Yeah. Oh...and when were you going to tell me that August and Collin are moving out?”

“I assumed you already knew. I thought you were best friends with the guy.”

“I am, but apparently you and Collin are closer than the two of us.”

“Well, Ava, what can I say; I give great love advice.”

“Am I ever going to know what that conversation was about?”

Ari shook his head no really fast and made a grimace.

“Well, I am still mad at you – just so you know,” I said.

I pulled myself out of his arms and left him standing alone in the kitchen.

Chapter 28

The Host

I sat
on our bedroom chair with my arms folded across my chest. My feet were bouncing up and down so frantically they were making the chair shake. My eyes danced across the room as I watched Ari get ready for the evening.

“Are you sure you have to go?”

“I am not having this discussion with you again. Period.” He snapped.

I squinted at him in a cold stare and he rolled his eyes at me. I got up, said nothing more, and slammed the door behind me. Ari had given up following me out of the room during a fight days ago. He had found he had better luck to let me stew alone; fewer items flung at him in fury and broken that way. I walked to the study and slammed that door, too. The glass case holding my scissor collection rattled with the force of the door. I was probably going to wake Max up from his nap but I was too ticked off to be rational.

I did not want Ari to go to Margaux’s stupid cocktail party. More importantly, I did not want to be stuck entertaining Aggie all night by myself. I might have been okay if someone else had offered to stay with me, but it seemed everyone was going to Margaux’s party. I felt betrayed by my family and friends. Margaux, I was convinced, was determined to kill me and all the people who supposedly loved me were running off to some black-tie event she was hosting.

T
he study door opened and I looked up from my desk expecting to find a very crabby Max. Instead, Ari strolled in wearing a black dinner suit and tie. He looked absolutely perfect and I got even angrier.

“Don
’t look at me like that, Ava. I love you. Please stop being mad at me. I thought we were over this.”

“What do you want, Ari?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“I am going now. I wanted to tell you bye.”

I gave a very fake, too sweet smile.

“Bye!”

He clenched his jaw. Good. I was getting under his skin, just as he had gotten under mine.

“I promise I
’ll be back in time to kiss your soft, pink lips at midnight.”

“Okay,” I said. “But just let me make sure I have this right. You made plans to go out though I begged you to stay home. You made plans for me to stay here. You are dressed in black tie clothes and look perfect. The whole
baio
office and the whole family will be out with you except for your mother, who, even though she has actually banned me from her house, will be here with me. Oh and with Max, my other New Year’s Eve date. Well, let me just tell you, if you walk out that door, don’t worry about coming home at all, let alone about kissing my soft, pink lips!”

Ari turned and slammed the door behind him.
Hard
. So hard, in fact that the glass case slid violently down the wall and crashed to the floor. It should have shattered, it hit the floor so hard, but the case door, unharmed, swung open, hitting the wall behind it. The scissors tumbled out and formed a giant pile on the floor.

I ignored the mess and left the study after I heard Ari
’s car pull out of the garage. I padded down the hall to check on Max. I had kept him busy all day long and he was off schedule. I had been avoiding Ari all day… all week actually. Max hadn’t gone down for his nap until late in the afternoon and if he didn’t wake soon, he would definitely not go back to sleep at bedtime.

I walked softly in to
our bedroom.

“Come on, Max, it
’s time to wake up. Aggie’ll be here soon and she’ll have my head if you’re still sleeping.”

He rubbed his eyes and blinked at me a few times. It was already dark outside and Max looked confused.

“Hey, Buddy, it’s just me. Let’s get up for a while and I’ll make you something to eat.”

He climbed across our
bed and crawled up into my arms. I carried him to the kitchen and flipped on the lights.

“Holy crap!” I screamed and jumped about ten feet in the air.

“Aggie, you scared me! What are you doing here in the dark?”

“Ava, that is terrible language to use in front of a child. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Her voice was cold and flat, but she was right, nonetheless.

“Sorry, I was not expecting you for a while and you startled me. What were you doing in here in the dark?”

“I wasn
’t doing anything, Ava; I only just walked in.”

“The door was locked.”

Aggie held up my house keys, jiggling them between her fingertips. “I found these in my car – they must have fallen from your purse the other day when we went shopping.”.

“Oh,” a cold chill ran down my spine as I took my keys from Aggie. “Well… I was going to fix Max something to eat. Would you care to eat with us?”

“That sounds lovely, Darling.”

I pulled a roasted chicken out of the oven and Aggie sat at the table and watched me dish up the chicken, couscous and spinach. Max had wrapped himself completely around my leg and buried his face in my jeans. I had to peel him off me and strap him in to the booster seat at the table.
After setting a loaf of bread down on the table, I walked away to grab the knife.

“I’ll take that, Ava.” Aggie put her hand out towards the knife, I
placed it in her palm and she smiled and sliced the loaf.

Taking my seat in
between Max and Aggie, I ate and made a valiant attempt at conversation as dinner went on. I asked her how she was feeling and what she had been up to, I talked with her about some of the photos she had taken lately and about donating a few of her choice to the
House to Home
silent auction slated for the summer. But, when my phone rang, I sprang to my feet, thankful for a reason to get away. Thankful, that is, until I saw Ari’s name on my cell. I hit “decline” and put my phone back on the counter.

“Who was that,
Darling?”

“Uh… just Ari.”

“You can answer his calls; don’t feel as though you have to sit here and keep me company all night.” The peevish tone in her voice was hard to miss.

“Oh no, it
’s all right. He’ll just leave me a message.”

“Okay,” she said with a tiny smirk and a noncommittal shrug.

I walked back to the table, collected all the dirty dishes, and freed Max from his booster seat. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he took off in a dead sprint towards the living room.

“What
’s gotten into him?” Aggie asked.

I peeked into the living room.

“Rory must have left the TV on; he’s on the couch watching cartoons.”

“All he does over here is watch TV,” she mumbled under her breath, but loudly enough for me to hear every word.

I suppressed both a sigh and an eye roll.

“Aggie, please don
’t start. You know that isn’t true. Let’s have a nice evening.”

She batted her eyes at me and watched as I cleaned up the kitchen mess. My phone rang again and I saw it was Ari.
Decline
.

“You really ought to answer his calls – he may have something important to tell you,” Aggie
’s voice was sing-songy and really irritating.

“Doubt it.”

She peered at me from the corner of her eye and gave me a wicked little smile. I guess she was attempting to be coy, knowing full well that Ari and I were angry at each other and had been fighting all week.

Looking back at the week that had just passed, I saw clearly that the two of us had been at odds about everything. The only time we had communicated with each other in the last three days was to scream at each other. I had yelled so much that my throat was raw and my voice sounde
d gravelly. We argued about Max. Ari wanted to get started on getting Max’s bedroom put together. I didn’t want to set up a bedroom for Max. I knew in my heart that doing so would only make things tougher for when Max went back to live with Aggie. We argued about money, of all things. We argued over the lost journal and about how it had just disappeared off the face of the earth. I said Aggie probably threw it away and Ari defended her. I told him that his mother kept him on too tight a leash and he completely blew up on me. His mother put me down every chance she got and he kept taking her side, running across the yard to wipe her tears away instead of mine, even though he knew she was the aggressor and that I was right every time. We might as well have been born to be enemies.

Mostly we fought over the cocktail party though. New Year
’s Eve of all nights! The very date my ordeal with the Kakos had started the year before! Earlier in the week, in an attempt to salvage what little civility we seemed to have left, I had sat down with Ari to tell him how I felt about being left alone with his mother on New Year’s Eve. I asked him to reconsider. Ari came to his senses and agreed that going off to a party while Max and I stayed home was not a good idea.

But when Aggie heard of his decision, she called him over to her house and had little trouble convincing him all over again that he needed to go, that his job obligated him to attend and that because he had already promised Margaux he would be there, he should keep his word. She convinced him to go and I couldn
’t change his mind no matter how much I begged, screamed or cried. I reminded him of his promises not to leave my side or make me cry. He accused me of acting like a spoiled brat. I knew those wI ords had come right out of Aggie’s mouth. I told him he was breaking my heart and he scoffed at me. Aggie was poisoning him, plotting to turn him against me. What I couldn’t figure out was why.

I picked my phone up off the counter, stared at it, and then jumped when it rang again.

“You are awfully skittish tonight, Ava Baby,” Aggie said derisively.

I declined the call and shoved the phone in my back pocket.

“Hey, Aggie, I have a huge mess in the study. Would you mind if I disappeared for a minute to go sort it out?” I wanted to add, “Also, I need to get away from you.” But I held my tongue.

“Oh please, take longer than a minute, Baby.”

I bit my tongue and walked through the kitchen to the living room on the way to the study. Max caught sight of me as I passed by.

“Ava Baby, where are you going?” I secretly loved it when Max called me Ava Baby. How could the words sound so ugly coming from Aggie?

“I have to clean up a mess, Max. Do you want to come with and help?”

He hopped down from the couch and was at my feet almost before I could finish my question. Once in the study, I shut the door behind us and breathed a small sigh of relief to be out of the line of fire for a bit.

I started to pick up the scissors while Max sat on the floor and fooled around with some creepy little collectibles that I pulled down for him from the shelf, little items Ari and I had found on our various trips to the flea market. Max ferreted out my
Ghostbuster
action figure, played with it for a while, and then dug through the collection some more. I turned to place a pair of scissors on the desk and noticed the scissor cuff bracelet Margaux had sent me for Christmas. The inner surface of the cuff was visible and for the first time I saw an inscription. “Use them.”

Chills ran down my spine.

I thought briefly of Maya but my phone rang, ripping me from my thoughts. I placed the cuff on my wrist, hit “decline” and noticed that Max was holding up a pair of super-sharp, ancient scissors and I let out a gasp.

“Max, no! Give me those! They can hurt you.”

“Use these, Ava?”

“No, Max, put them down. They aren
’t a toy.”

I was distracted by my stupid phone again. Why on earth had Ari decided that Margaux
’s big party was the perfect time to call me and make up? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw the name: Margaux. Yeah, right…
decline
.

I had half of the scissors arranged back in the case when the study door swung open with a crash.

“Why do you have Max in here?”

“He wanted to help. Why, Aggie? What
’s going on?”

Her eyes grew impossibly big and round when she saw Max sitting on the floor holding my ancient scissors. Great, I
’ll never live this down.

“Where did you get those?” she spat.

“What do you mean where did I get them? They’re mine.”

“Where did they come from?” she asked again, trying this time for a sweet tone, but I could still hear the venom on her lips.

“Hmmm. Well, Maya gave them to me when Ari and I went to Greece last fall.”

“Give them to me. He shouldn
’t be playing with them!”

“No, Aggie. They
’re mine”

“Max, bring me those, now,” Aggie demanded.

Max let out a whimper and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Goose bumps spread down my arms. My phone had not shut up since Aggie had walked into the room. It was ringing again like crazy from my back pocket.

“Max! Bring them! NOW!!” Aggie demanded again.

I swallowed hard.