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“You’re Jet Grant.”
He looks up into my eyes, the weight in them pulling me up two more steps toward him, like a magnet bound to him.
“One and the same, isn’t it?”
“Yesterday, I’d have said yes. But today…” I reply, stopping a few steps away from him. I want to run to him, wrap my arms around him. But the part of me that’s still angry at him—angry, hurt, and confused, with a whole ton of questions—stops me.
“Today?”
“Today you’re exactly who I’ve always known deep down you are.” I climb another step. “Welcome back.” I give him a small smile.
“Don’t, Ava.”
“Don’t what?”
“Just fucking don’t.”
Something ignites in me. The anger of what he’s put me through, what he’s puthimselfthrough the past month reaches up and grips my windpipe, stealing my air.
“Is that too hard to hear? That you’re not the asshole you like to play?”
His eyes snap to mine, a hardness in them that I ignore.
“If you want to be that, then go ahead. I’ll walk out of here right now. You’ll never have to speak to me again. But you’ll not care, will you? Because you’re an asshole devoid of feelings.”
His nostrils flare as he takes in a measured breath.
“Yeah, didn’t think so.” I shake my head. “So let’s cut the bullshit. You don’t have this impenetrable stone heart.”
He stares at me, his eyes darkening as I push him. He looks like a man on the edge, brow set firm, sweat clinging to his recently pounded muscles. I bet he skipped a thousand times in a row trying to disperse the tension that’s commanding his body, holding him stiff and solid on the step.
Desperately trying to maintain a poker face, like it really is just a game.
“You’ve told me how you found out, before claiming it was you who took it. Now tell mewhyyou did it.”
“I have,” he grits. “I wanted you to have that relationship with your mother you wanted,that—”
“That’s not why, Jet! Tell me why you wanted me to have it. Why you did something so… so self-fucking destructive in order for me to have that?”
Silence.
“Why?” I say again, my voice rising.
More silence.
“Why?” I shout, blood rushing in my ears, setting all efforts to be calm flying out of the window. “Why did you do that?”
He looks at me from underneath dark brows.
“You know why.”
I stomp higher, stopping two steps below him. “You need to do fucking better than that! I’ve spent weeks hating you! Questioning my judgment, my sanity… everything! I’ve hated myself for trusting you. Hated thinking of you every single day and asking myself why you would do this to me. And it wasn’t even you. You even said in New York that you’d make the same decision again. The same decision to fucking lie to me. The least you can do is tell me the truth about why you’d do that.”
“Ava, don’t.” He tips his head, making his neck crack. But he doesn’t look at me. His eyes are fixed on the tiny model plane in his hand, his face taut, the vein in his temple bulging like it might explode.
“Don’t what? Don’t ask questions? Don’t speak my own mind? Don’t fucking what?”
“Just don’t,” he hisses.
