Mag-log inThe list grew longer over the following days, filling pages Ava hadn’t expected to fill. Not a pros and cons list exactly, nothing so tidy. More like an excavation, digging back past the last two years to find whatever was left of the person she’d been before any of it started.She wrote down that she missed running along the river, the habit she’d confessed to Nathaniel weeks ago and never actually resumed. She wrote down that she wanted to work somewhere her name wouldn’t trigger a Google search full of tabloid headlines before anything about her actual career came up. She wrote down that she loved marketing, genuinely, the strategy and the psychology of it, and that somewhere in the last year that love had gotten buried under crisis management and survival instinct until she’d nearly forgotten it was there at all.She wrote, near the bottom of the third page, that she didn’t know if she wanted to leave Damon. That surprised her, seeing it in her own handwriting, because she’d assum
The email from Nathaniel arrived four days later, formal in subject line but warmer once she opened it, the kind of message that had clearly been drafted and redrafted before he let himself send it.“I heard about the resignation through the grapevine, and I’m sorry it came to that. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you had another good option left. I wanted to reach out because a position just opened on my team here in London, leading brand strategy for our expanding client roster. No connection to the Blackwood accounts, no overlap with anything from the last year. It would mean relocating, at least for a while. I understand if that’s the last thing you want right now, but I’d rather you hear the offer from me directly than not hear it at all.”Ava read it three times, sitting at her kitchen table with the box from her old office still only half unpacked in the corner.She hadn’t been looking. She hadn’t updated a resume or reached out to a single contact in the four days since she
Damon found out about the resignation from Emma, who found out from Ava herself in a short, steady phone call that afternoon, no drama in her voice, just fact.He tried calling three times before he gave up and drove to her building instead, standing outside her door at nine that night with no plan beyond needing to see her face.She opened the door in sweatpants, hair pulled back, the box from her office still sitting unopened on the kitchen counter behind her.“You heard,” she said, stepping back to let him in without being asked, which he took as a small mercy given everything.“Emma told me. I would have rather heard it from you.”“I would have gotten there. I needed a day that wasn’t about managing anyone else’s reaction to it first.”He nodded, absorbing that, and didn’t argue the point, which she noticed and was quietly grateful for. He stood in her living room looking lost in a way she rarely saw on him, all his usual command nowhere in evidence.“I should have fixed this befo
Her boss called her in on a Thursday morning, and the moment Ava saw his face through the glass wall of his office, she knew this wasn’t going to be another version of contained.“I need to be straight with you,” he said, once she’d closed the door. “Halden’s staying. The Meridian Cross documentation held up, the story mostly burned out. But two other clients raised concerns this week. Nothing official. Just questions about whether the agency’s judgment is compromised by how much personal drama keeps intersecting with the account. I fought for you. I meant what I said last time, that I don’t think you did anything wrong. But I’m one person, and the partners are starting to ask questions I can’t keep answering with your track record alone.”“What are you telling me.”“I’m telling you I don’t have a formal action to take. I’m telling you that if this happens a fourth time, I might not have a choice about it.” He said it gently, which somehow made it worse than if he’d been harsh. “You’r
Emma showed up at Ava’s apartment the next evening, uninvited, a bottle of wine in one hand and an expression that suggested she already knew, somehow, that something had shifted.“Damon told you,” Ava said, stepping back to let her in.“He told me you asked for space. He didn’t say why, exactly, just that he thought I should hear it from him instead of finding out secondhand.” Emma set the wine on the counter without opening it, more prop than intention. “I’m not here to fix it. I don’t think I’m in a position to fix anything right now.”“What does that mean?”Emma sat down heavily at the small kitchen table, and for the first time in months she looked less like the composed, healing version of herself Ava had watched rebuild steadily over the past year, and more like the frightened, uncertain woman from the very beginning of all of this.“I’ve been trying to hold everyone together,” Emma said. “You and Damon. Damon and Julian. Julian and the rest of the family that still doesn’t ful
Ava went to Damon’s office two days later, the Halden fallout finally settled enough that she could think past the immediate emergency for the first time all week. She hadn’t planned to have this conversation there, in the same room where she’d once walked in on Vivienne’s hand pressed flat against his chest, but it was where he was, and she was too tired to wait for a better setting.“I need you to fix this,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Not contain it. Fix it. I need Julian dealt with, permanently, in whatever way actually stops this instead of just managing the next leak after this one.”Damon looked up from his desk, and something in his face told her, before he even said it, that he didn’t have what she was asking for. “I can’t do that without proof. Right now all I have is a strong suspicion and a pattern that fits. If I move against him publicly without evidence, on the heels of everything we just went through to reintegrate him, it undoes a year of work rebuilding t
The drive to Damon’s penthouse passed in a haze of heated touches and stolen kisses. His fingers stayed buried between Ava’s thighs the entire time. Stroking her slowly. Teasing her swollen clit while the driver navigated the glittering Chicago streets. She bit her lip hard to stay quiet. Her pussy
Ava moved through the party like a ghost in her own skin. Her legs still felt unsteady from the intense fucking in the private suite. Damon’s cum continued to leak slowly into her panties. A constant filthy reminder of what they had done. What they had done multiple times. Her pussy felt tender. Sw
Ava lay on the couch catching her breath. Damon’s cum cooled on her skin. Streaks of it decorated her breasts and stomach. She felt marked. Claimed. The molly still pulsed through her veins. Making every nerve ending sing with leftover pleasure. Her pussy throbbed from the hard fucking he had just
Ava slipped back into the main party area on shaky legs. Her body still throbbed from Damon’s touch. Her lips felt bruised from that fierce kiss. Between her thighs she was soaked. The molly kept everything heightened. Every brush of her dress against her sensitive nipples sent little jolts straigh







