Touch & Go (16 page)

The time and distance thing wasn't working. Four weeks Ava had been in San Diego already, and if anything, she was in worse shape than when she arrived. Her heart hurt all the time. And despite having tried to pick up every spare bit of work there was, she still found herself with enough unoccupied moments throughout the day for her thoughts to wander across the miles, back to Wicker Park and the friend she couldn't stop wishing was more.

She tried to keep contact to a minimum. A couple of texts and a few cheesy snaps: the beach in the morning; the fish tacos she'd had one lunch; and an apple with a bruise she swore made it look like the thing was laughing at her. Sam called a handful of times over the first two weeks, but whether she was available or not Ava had let the calls go to voicemail. Then after listening to his message, finding herself caught up in the sound of his voice and the pause between words when she could hear his breathing, she put her phone away and made herself wait to call back.

It nearly killed her, because all she wanted was to talk with him. To hear the low rumble of his laugh and feel that connection that always ran between them. But distance meant not dropping everything the instant he called, not falling into the kind of rhythm so easy between them that it didn't allow for anyone else to get close. She'd promised Sam nothing would change, but more and more, she realized she couldn't go back to how it had been between them. That if she was serious about having a real life of her own, a family like the one she'd grown up in, and the love that was complete and mutual and hers, truly hers…she might not be able to go back at all.

Or at least not until she found her own way to a heart capable of loving someone else.

A knock sounded at the conference room door where she'd camped out.

She looked up to find Drew Mitchel leaning into the room, amusement evident in his eyes as he surveyed the boxes of files littering the floor around her and the tabletop covered from end to end.

“That's some system you've got,” he said, stopping at the far end of the table to leaf through a stack of documents before letting out a low whistle of approval. “You need more help in here?”

Ava closed her laptop and, sitting back, crossed her legs. “I thought I was supposed to be helping
you.
But somehow, I've already got three assistants assigned to me. One of them yours.”

Drew set the documents back where he'd gotten them, straightening the pile into a neat line the way she'd had it before he came in. Then, walking over to the sole window that served as a wall separating her from the hallway, he knocked on the glass. “We at least ought to get you into one of the conference rooms that boasts an outside view. With the hours you're putting in, I'm pretty sure it'll be your only shot at getting a taste of the California sun we keep trying to sell you on.” Then, checking his watch, he shook his head. “Or better yet, it's got to still be lunchtime somewhere. Let's get out of here.”

Ava narrowed her eyes. “You're looking a little shady, Mitchel. I'm not buying this whole casual drop-in, let's-grab-a-bite business. What gives?”

Drew laughed, offering a single shoulder shrug, confirming her suspicions.

“I want to know what it's going to take to get you to stay.” He crossed behind her to where her messenger bag was tucked in the corner. Picking it up, he slung it over his shoulder. “You wouldn't be back here if you weren't thinking about it. So cards on the table, I say scrap lunch and we grab drinks and dinner instead. Talk it over and make it work.”

Her first instinct was to deny it. Tell him he was wrong. That she hadn't come back there with the intention to stay—but a part of her wondered if even that much was true. If on some level she'd known she was considering more than a few weeks from the start and like so many other things, just hadn't been ready to accept it herself.

Sliding her laptop into its case, she shot Drew a sidelong glance. “I haven't made any decisions yet.”

His grin was smug and sure. “Of course not. This is just talk.”

“You know I don't wake up this early,” Maggie announced by way of greeting, her head still half buried in her pillow, her blond hair a ratty mess.

Ava fluffed her own pillow and leaned back against the headboard, phone propped against her knees. “With the time difference, I figured if I was up, you had to be up. And if you weren't, you were sleeping your day away when you ought to be enjoying what The Weather Channel claims is sunshine, seventy-three-degree temps, and a gentle breeze blowing about three miles per hour. It's nice out. Get up.”

Maggie's single visible eye crumpled into a scowl. “If it's so nice, maybe you ought to come back. Seriously, how long are they going to hold you prisoner there? I'm sick of this.”

Clutching her hands beneath her chin, Ava blinked back tears. “You sweet talker, you. Get up. Take me to the coffee shop. I want donuts. You can show me the counter. Get up. Get up.”

Maggie let out a grunt, burrowing deeper into the bed, leaving most of Ava's screen covered by puffs of her white duvet. “I'm not taking you out for donuts when you can't even eat one.”

Disappointment sat like a weight on her chest. “I want the kind with the glaze that's all dense and crumbly, not just the regular donut.”

“Get Sam to take you.”

Ava slumped lower in her bed, and Maggie raised her head. “Or has he got company again?”

Suddenly Ava wasn't interested in the donuts she wouldn't actually be able to eat, anyway. “Been keeping busy lately?”

He'd gone on his date. She knew because he texted her the night after she'd texted him with what hadn't been a total lie. Gretchen had said specifically, “It's a date,” when they'd made plans to grab dinner after work. Sam hadn't bothered to ask, so she hadn't felt compelled to clarify that Gretchen was one of the sixty-five-year-old partners who'd been trying to recruit her for two years.

Maggie's brow pulled together and she sat up, adjusting her phone as she went. She didn't look so hot. Maybe Ava should have let her sleep.

“Actually, the guy's been laying pretty low since you left. So I guess I meant, again, like he's over his dry spell or whatever it was.”

Then Maggie sat forward even more. Stared straight ahead a second like she was trying to forget something unpleasant. And suddenly the video feed was whirling as Maggie swore in the background and Tyler was asking if she was okay and Ava was left with a screen full of bedroom ceiling and the sounds of retching in the distance.

Ava's brow furrowed. “You okay, Maggie?”

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she walked three and a half steps to the kitchen counter, where she grabbed a new bag of Pirate's Booty, ripped it open, and popped a puff into her mouth.

“Tyler, everything okay over there?” she asked again a little louder.

Another retch and some quiet muttering were followed by the sound of running water in the background.

Sitting back on the bed, she sighed contentedly, feeling for the first time in weeks like she wasn't on the outside looking in. Which she obviously was, but it didn't feel that way. It felt like she was close. Finally getting the kind of real-time updates on how things were going with the people she loved the best.

Though even as she thought it, that contentment faded.

If she moved to San Diego, she'd be giving up more than a fantasy with Sam. She'd be giving up the man who was her best friend, being a part of the everyday with her dearest girlfriend, knowing exactly what her flaky brother was missing right beneath his very nose.

So much.

The underside of an enormous foot loomed overhead and Ava shrieked. And then Tyler was filling the screen, his face half green and his eyes bright.

“Cripes, what did you guys eat last night? Because I told you not to go to that place over on—”

Tyler cut her off with a quick shake of his head.

“Ave, Maggie'll call you back later.”

She clutched the phone, promising, “I don't mind waiting.”

“Yeah, uh, that's sweet of you. But she's going to get back to you. Catch you later.”

The screen went black and Ava continued staring at it for several minutes. She needed to get out more. Which reminded her, if she wasn't going for a donut ride-along with Maggie, she ought to get back to the office and see what she could get done.

Only then her messages lit up with a text.

Maggie:…Forget the donuts. You're coming with while I pee on a stick.

Ava blinked, and blinked again. And then her breath rushed out in a burst and she was jumping around holding the phone that was as close to her friend as she could get.

A baby.

Maggie was having a baby. Oh, she hoped it was a little blondie, but then she thought about Tyler's side of the double helix and realized chances were good she was going to be cuddling a little dark-haired beauty. A girl, maybe?

Visions of tiny shoes and frilly tutus danced through her head. Baby-powder smell and chubby fists clinging tight to a pinky.

Maggie's baby!

But then she stopped jumping and her hands dropped to her sides. Because in that moment, she knew. Her best girlfriend was going to become a mother and Ava wasn't going to be there.

If she ever wanted to be hurling into her own toilet or buying her own Baby-On-Board T-shirt, she couldn't go home and fall back into her old routines. She couldn't settle for a life of cheering for her friends as they found their happily ever afters if it meant sacrificing her chance at her own.

Jesus,
eight more months of this. Sam shook his head, listening to Tyler tell the fourth random stranger at Big Star about Maggie's vomit while showing not just one, not two, but
three
pictures from his phone of a pregnancy pee stick sporting two pink lines.

The guy was over the moon, and Maggie, there with her pee basically on display, didn't seem any more grounded.

They were nuts. And Sam couldn't be happier.

For them, and for himself, because if there was one thing that was going to get this bullshit with Ava over and done with, it was Maggie with a bun in her oven.

He gave it three days, max, before she was bursting through the door flinging those deceptively strong arms of hers around her baby-making bestie—and life as he loved it would be back the way it belonged.

Flagging the bartender for another round—two tequilas and a water—he couldn't fucking wait.

She was going to have to tell him.

Keeping Sam in the dark after she'd essentially made up her mind about making her move permanent was a crummy thing to do. But
essentially
making up her mind and the decision being cement solid were two very different things. And until the paperwork was signed, the transfer official, she didn't want to risk Sam working her over about leaving.

She needed to do this
for her.

And when she told him about the transfer, she wanted it to be a done deal. Something where there was no backing out. Where it was too late to be corralled into promising she'd wait on a decision until they'd talked again, until Sam had a chance to convince her to come home, until he'd reminded her of every last heartbreaking person, place, or thing she would be saying goodbye to.

She didn't need to be reminded, because it was impossible to forget.

“Okay, so the places we looked at today were probably a little more than you want for yourself at this stage.” Drew held the door to the hotel lobby as she walked through. “But if you're planning a life here, you ought to know what we've got to offer.”

Ava was wiped, more emotionally than physically, and at that moment didn't want a life anywhere. All she wanted was to throw the covers over her head and hide in bed until somehow, miraculously, everything was better. She wanted her mom to sit by her side and stroke her hair, telling her she was making the right decision, or gently ask her all the questions that would guide her toward figuring out on her own if it wasn't right after all.

But her mom was gone, and all the people she loved next best were the people she was about to say goodbye to in a way she'd never done before. It felt so wrong to be pushing them away, when for years all she'd ever done was try to keep them close.

Drew checked a message on his phone, and she realized she hadn't been keeping up her end of the conversation. So she pasted on a suitable smile and replied, “I'm convinced. There's more to San Diego than the inside of my windowless conference room.”

“Good.” Grinning, he stowed his phone. “So I'm thinking we head down to the Gaslamp Quarter tomorrow. Check out what's available there in the morning, then swing back to work in the afternoon. Get you a look at your new office?”

“Already?” she asked, because they were still negotiating, still hashing out details with the Chicago office, who weren't exactly thrilled to be losing her. But if she was staying, then it made sense they'd get her moved into her own space. So it was good; it was just that hearing the words gave her decision a certain finality that still didn't sit right.

“Don't worry, the conference room will still be there for you. Look, I need to head back to the office. You okay?”

Work. That's what she needed.

“Can you give me five minutes and I'll go with you?”

Drew was already striding toward the door. “No can do. You're off for the evening.”

Her smile faded as she thought about returning to her room. Maybe she'd call Maggie.

No.

As bad as she wanted to talk with her, Maggie would just press for the date Ava was going to be back, and Ava didn't want to tell anyone what her plans were until she'd told Sam. He deserved to know first. And she'd tell him. Just as soon as the details were final.

Ava waved to Denise and Morgan at the front desk as she walked past to the elevator. If she got really bored, maybe she'd come down and see how Denise's quilt for her granddaughter was coming, or check in on how Morgan's boyfriend was doing giving up smoking.

Riding up to the second floor, she reached into her bag to grab her key card. Only instead of landing on the canvas flap, her hand fell through empty space, taking her heart with it.

No bag. She'd left it in the back of Drew's car.

Oh no.
Her key card, her tablet…her
phone
!

She couldn't go the whole night without that stuff. She'd have to call Drew and ask him to come back, only then she realized that as many times as she'd called him, she had no idea what his number was. It was after five and reception would already be forwarded to voicemail.

Dejected, she hit the Lobby button and rode back down, ready to beg a new key card off Denise. Only as the doors slid silently open, she stopped dead—her feet physically unable to move, the air in her lungs leaking out as though she'd just taken her last breath, and her eyes fixed on the man in front of her: faded blue jeans with the barest wear at the pockets; a fitted long-sleeve shirt in soft gray, untucked, with a pair of sunglasses hooked into the neck and the black strap of a duffel bag cutting diagonally across the chest she'd studied and savored every inch of; and soft blue eyes that had locked a hard hold on to her.

Ava's heart stumbled, skipped, and then started to race, bringing the rest of her body back online in a way only one man could.

“Sam.”

His name seemed to snap him out of whatever stunned state he'd been in. And then he was grinning at her, closing the distance between them in two strides. She was in his arms, her feet dangling above the ground as he swung her from side to side until, shocked or not, there was nothing to do but laugh.

“Jesus, you don't know how bad I needed to hear that,” he growled against the side of her head, the rough stubble of his jaw catching in a few hairs and triggering more nerves, heightening her sensitivity and, that fast, dragging to the surface all the desire and awareness and single-minded
need
she'd been trying to tamp down for more than a month.

No denying it now.

Distance would never be enough.

Her heart was slamming against her ribs, each beat begging her to get closer.

So she did the only thing she could…wriggled out of the hold she never wanted to end. “You're squeezing the air out of me,” she said, forcing a laugh less sincere than the one before.

Sam set her back, his hands lingering on her shoulders and arms. His eyes coasting up and down the length of her like he couldn't get enough. Like his best friend had walked out of his life and even now was planning to run farther.

“Sam, what are you doing here?”

The contented grin he was wearing turned hard, and he took a step back of his own.

“Gonna invite me up?” he asked, an edge to his voice that hadn't been there before.

“Of course, but I just realized I don't have my key card, which is why I was coming back down. I forgot my bag and—and never mind. Just give me a second and we'll go upstairs.”

Walking over to the front desk where Morgan and Denise were watching with unabashed curiosity, Ava explained about the key and got her new card. Sam waited by the elevator, pleasant and polite enough, but Ava could feel the tension coming off him from all the way across the lobby.

She shouldn't have bothered asking why he was there. She'd known the guy most of their lives and if there was any question she should have asked, it was how she had thought he
wouldn't
come.

Because he was like her. He tried to keep the people he loved close.

And like her, he was going to have to learn to let go.

This was so fucked up.

Something had definitely snapped in Sam's head when he woke up that morning, called Jesse, and asked him to take over for three days. Then hopped the first flight to San Diego he could get.

No phone call.

No “How 'bout a visit” text.

No chance for her to put him off.

Because he'd had this idea that all he needed to do was show up and suddenly everything would be great. One hug and Ava would be the one squeezing the life out of him, wrapping herself around him like a koala bear the way she used to when they'd gone more than three days without seeing each other.

Of course, those days were over. Because for a few weeks he'd had her wrapped around him in a very different, not-even-a-little-platonic way. And it had fucked up those hugs, the way it had fucked up everything else when he took his best friend to bed.

Ava had finished up at the counter and was walking back to him with a smile that wasn't quite right. She'd been gone weeks longer than she was supposed to be. And unlike last time—when she'd bitched her heart out about being away from home every time they talked—this time the phone calls were few and far between, and she was careful never to complain. Careful to keep that distance between them any way she could.

It was driving him nuts.

Every day he could feel her slipping further and further away from him. Feel the connection that had been there since they were kids, the one he'd counted on more than any other in his life, stretching thinner and thinner.

He couldn't let it keep going that way. He couldn't sit idle while the person who meant more to him than any other drifted out of his life.

Yeah, she'd promised to come back. And at the risk of sounding like his mommy issues weren't entirely resolved, he'd heard that before. The first time he'd been seven years old and there hadn't been a damn thing he could do about it. At seven he hadn't even known who his mother really was. He had blind faith, limitless trust—
she'd been his mom.
Of course he believed her.

With Ava, it was different. He knew her like he knew no one else. Trusted her like he trusted no one else. So when she said she was coming back, he knew she meant it. Her heart was so damned big. And she was so full of love. It just couldn't be any other way.

But the fact was, she'd been gone going on six fucking weeks, and things weren't one fucking bit better between them now than when she'd left. So whatever she'd thought to achieve putting half the fucking country between them wasn't fucking working and he wanted his best friend back, dammit.

So smart guy that he was, he hopped on a plane to get her. All well and good, except for the part where he took one look at her and he was fucking pissed all over again that she'd left in the first place. That she thought distance was the key to anything except growing apart.

Add to that feeling like a jackass for showing up unannounced with the actual expectation she was going to pack her shit and come home with him. The woman had goals, career plans, and a serious commitment to keeping her word. Which meant whatever she'd agreed to with these guys in the San Diego office, she was going to stick to. So his best hope for this trip? Find out what she'd committed to, and then get her to commit to coming home.

Because, damn it, he missed her so much it hurt. He felt like he was walking around half dead and the part of him that was alive was running on a constant loop of “Ava'll get a kick out of this…Gotta tell Ava about that…” Only to then remember Ava didn't want to talk to him, so he couldn't tell her anything at all.

New key card in hand, Ava walked over to where he'd been waiting by the elevator doors.

“All set, then.” She was smiling but it wasn't real. It was nervous. Uncomfortable.

They rode up to the second floor without a word and walked to her room the same way. Then, sliding her card past the sensor, she opened the door and hesitated, looking back at him with concern in her eyes.

“It's…a little tight in here. It's not, you know, like an actual apartment or anything. It's just a super functional, super small space.” He nodded and gave her the smile he could call up in a second, the one that had kept too many concerned and caring eyes off of him as a kid, the smile that appeased concerns about the state of his clothes, about the bruises he couldn't cover up, about the way he fell on the food they put in front of him in the cafeteria. The smile that made him fit in as he got older, going through middle school and then high school. The one that promised and assured everyone that everything was okay with him.

That smile had kept people from looking too closely—and that was exactly what he wanted with Ava right then. That, and to get them into a space that was private enough for the kind of conversation they needed to have. The kind that might get loud, because it was definitely going to get honest.

Planting a hand at the door above her head, he waited for her to walk in. The silky, dark strands of her ponytail brushed across the center of her back and Sam found himself caught in its sway, following the line of her neck, and the turn of her waist and the curve of her ass.

Christ,
he was here to yell at her, not drool over her. But even knowing he should stop looking, he couldn't. He couldn't stand how long it had been or how empty he felt without her filling his arms. His bed. His life.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to have his hands all over her, but more than that he wanted things to be right with her, so he needed to knock his shit off and fast.

“So this is it,” she said with a nervous breath. “Home, sweet home.”

Sam looked past her into the room and swore.