AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t keep pushing until you tell me the truth? Because guess what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Ava,” he growls.
“Don’t growl at me, Jet! I’m not leaving until you tell me the truth.”
He flies to his feet and launches the tiny model plane into the air with a booming,“Fuck!”
It smashes into the hallway wall and explodes, falling to the floor in pieces. He swipes up his skipping rope and spins, storming up the stairs.
I race after him. “Tell me why you did it!”
He continues striding away, and I grab his arm, curling my hand around it. His skin is on fire.
“Tell me!”
He grabs me so fast my head spins, and pushes me against the wall. One hand curls around my throat as the other slams against the wall in a fist, his skipping rope clenched between his fingers.
“You fucking know why!”
His eyes are like two blue flames, searing into mine. The sight makes energy dance in my veins. They aren’t hollow anymore. They’re bright and alive. He looks like Jet again. The Jet that I push to get a reaction from. The Jet whose heated looks make me weak at the knees. The Jet who held me when I stepped onto a plane again. The one who flew it home himself, so he could be in control and make me feel safe.
I inhale slowly, my windpipe meeting resistance against his palm. “Tell me.”
He drags in splintered breaths, and for a crushing moment, I think he’s going to stay silent again. But instead, he bangs his fist against the wall, his eyes wild like a man possessed as he roars, “Because of the way I feel about you, Ava. The way I fuckingfeel!”
He traces the pad of his thumb up my neck and along my jaw until he reaches my bottom lip. He pushes the tip inside my mouth, swiping it over my tongue. He’s enthralled, his attention stolen by my mouth as he slides his thumb out and rubs my saliva over my lips.
“It’s the one thing I vowed never to do… It’s when I knew I had to let you go.”
I part my lips to speak, but he presses his thumb over them, sealing them shut.
“I chose for you to hate me, to lose me. Not her. I didn’t want you to lose your mother, Ava.”
My breath escapes me in a sob as I look into the tortured blue eyes of the boy in the photograph in Magnus’s office, still in so much pain over his grief, that he can’t allow himself to admit what he needs to say.
Not for me, but for him.
The thought of him living his life like this makes my heart feel like it’s being shredded.
I pull his hand away from my mouth. “You should have told me the truth when you knew it was her. Tell me why you didn’t.”
“And ruin your dream? Ruin the way your face lit up whenever you spoke about her? Wreck the one relationship you’ve been yearning after for the past ten years?”
Hope starts to fade in my chest as he curves my question.
“I had a right to know. That was my story. No one else’s.”
“It still is. It will always belong to you.” He steps back from me in a rush. “You should go.”
“What?” I step closer to him, removing the gap he’s created. “That’s it?”
“Ava,” he hisses. “You. Should. Go.”
“Or what?” I’m toe-to-toe with him, challenging him. Trying everything to get a reaction from him. To get something.
“You shouldn’t be around me right now.” His voice has a dangerous edge to it, a darkness that sends an unexpected thrill skating up my spine.
I stare at his mouth. At the way his lips are curled down, a muscle clenched tight in his cheek.
