Chapter 8: Apartment Reverberations
AVA’S POV
Pale, gritty dawn light striped my rumpled sheets. I sat bolt upright, his ghost imprinted still on my skin. My fingertips caressed my lips, tracing the ghost imprint. His imprint. Fast, possessive, devastating.
Julian's kiss was not a memory; it was a brand. My cheeks burned with heat even now, by myself in my room. It happened. The hungry look in his eyes, the needy way his mouth took mine… and then the cruel pull back, the cold lie: "This never happened.”
The protest was a hollow, false denial, and my body screamed out the truth. How do I walk into this office today? How do I look at those eyes? The memory buzzed against my skin like a live wire – terror and ecstasy, combined. Illicit. Risky. Unstoppable.
The shiny Sterling lobby buzzed, a crowd of people rushing to attend to their own affairs. I kept my head bent, my scarf pulled up high around my neck like a thin veil between me and the world – and him. Just make it to the elevator. Just breathe.
And then I felt it – the air cooling, the crowd shifting ever so slightly. He was here. I could sense him. Julian. Moving through the crowds like a warship cuts through the waves.
My breath caught, hard and scorching in my throat. See me. Please, God, see once, just one tiny glimpse to prove it wasn't nothing. But his eyes skated over me like ice on glass. Completely blank. Completely impersonal.
He strode by close enough for the cedar-mint of him to hit me with a slap, like a punch. Not a hint of an expression. Not a pause. Total, icy indifference. Ouch. The brush-off hurt. I tightened my hold on the scarf, nails digging into my palm, fighting the sudden prickling in my eyes. Never happened. Right. The ache in my chest was an empty, throbbing thud where stupid hope had bloomed in me last night.
My work environment was more of a cage made out of raw humiliation. E-mails flooded in, the pings rang – all the typical sounds of a normal day. All of it was dull and mournful. I scrolled through his email chain, my eyes catching on that acrid, final line: "This never happened. "Each word sounded like a tiny surgical wound.
Was any of it true? That sharp sparkle in his eyes when he defended me against Victoria? When his tone became coarse? Or was it merely… power? A flash of vulnerability he immediately regretted?
The doubt ravaged the memory, dissolving it. I pushed my face into the blue glow of my monitor, losing myself in constructing plans for a job I couldn't stand to see anymore, trying to numb the burning destruction inside. Professional. Be stone. That's clearly all that he wants.
His aide came over to my desk shortly, starched as new clothes. "Mr. Sterling needs you in his office right now, Ava. You're assisting Caleb on the restoration of the Montclair Library historic wing. Five minutes." Relief washed over me, cool and fast – work, a lifeline, something to hold on to. Then, confusion. Caleb? The brilliant structural engineer whose easy smile and warm brown eyes always seemed. safe. Complicated. A shiver of something more stormy came up – anticipation? Fear? Side by side with Caleb? It was like a breather. or like he was pushing me away. Is Julian pushing me aside?
Or throwing me a life raft. away from Julian?
Walking into his office was like walking into a block of static. Julian sat behind the enormous black block of his desk, an impenetrable wall standing squarely between Caleb and me. Caleb flashed me a quick reassuring smile that untied some of the tension in my shoulders. Julian didn't even look in my direction. His eyes were steadfastly locked on the spread blueprints as if they held the secrets to all.
"Thompson," his tone was cold, proper.
Thompson. The knife spun. "The Montclair Library. Historic wing renovation. Three weeks to concept mock-ups." He barely glanced up, his eyes sweeping the space between Caleb and me, never quite settling on my face. "Caleb," a curt nod, "your structural boldness. Thompson," – a swift dart of his eye, so quick I nearly missed it – "your… creative spatial solutions. You'll work together. Blend together. Got it?"
"Understood, Mr. Sterling." My tone came out incredulously calm, concealing the shake in my fingers. Work together. With Caleb. "Absolutely," Caleb added, his energy warm against the chill. "Thrilled. Ava's ideas are great."
Julian's eyes leaped back to Caleb's face at the flattery, and back to me. Not assessment. Calculation. Possessiveness? Envy? Or plain steering away? This was not a project; this was a golden cage. He was steering me away, to the safe, complicated, sunny side of Caleb's charisma. Move on. Here's your alternative. The message was ice-cold clear.
We walked out together, Caleb matching my stride, the blueprints a physical barrier against the heavy silence coming from Julian’s office. The frosted glass doors hissed shut behind us, cutting off the world we’d left. Caleb leaned in a little, his voice warm and low. "Hey, seriously, this is great. Your work on the Hudson walkway? Blew me away. Really looking forward to working together."
His smile was easy, authentic. Unmenacing. Rock ground after bog. But when we turned the curve toward the design studio, some invisible string snapped tight. I glanced over my shoulder. Through the narrowing crack between the doors, I could glimpse him. Julian. Not at his keyboard. Watching us.
His expression was stone – impassive – but the intensity of his eyes held mine for an instant. Dark. Stormy. Herself, completely, horribly alone.
Caleb's gentle nudge at my elbow startled me. "Ava? You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost." I forced a stiff smile, my fingers tightening around the blueprints so they dug into my skin. "Yeah. Fine. Just. load-bearing walls." The lie was bitter. The ghost heat of Julian's kiss warred with Caleb's warmth against me. That searing, unreadable gaze out of the dark followed me along the corridor. Julian had charted this new path. Caleb's arm around my waist was like climbing into a lifeboat. But the pull of Julian's quiet, his watchful eyes, the crushing echo of never happened… was it rescue? Or was I racing headlong towards another crash? Save me or break me? All I was sure of was the ache in my chest and the deadly pull still pulsing in my veins.