LOGIN~Ava~
I dragged my ass home from campus around six, still sore from Thursday’s “tutoring session” with Calder he’d kept me bent over his desk for two straight hours, alternating between looking at my pussy and making me read my own failed midterm out loud while he did it, like some kind of sadistic study guide. This man only watched me and did nothing. It was weird and hot too.
The house was quiet. Mom and Richard were supposed to be at some charity auction until late. Perfect. I needed to rest without mom saying some boring stuff and without that guy tryna act like my father. Like what the fuck. Who the fuck did he think he was.
I kicked off my shoes in the foyer, dropped my bag, and headed upstairs, already peeling off my hoodie. Jax’s door was cracked open just enough for the light to spill into the hallway. I was gonna walk right past it, I swear I was, but then I heard it.
My name.
Not just my name. My name moaned like someone was dying.
“Ava… fuck… Ava…”
I froze.
Another moan, low and ragged, followed by the unmistakable wet slap of skin on skin. Fast. Desperate. Like he was chasing something and losing his mind doing it.
I should’ve kept walking. I should’ve sprinted to my room, locked the door, and bleached my ears.
Instead, like the absolute disaster I am, I edged closer and peeked through the crack.
Jax was sprawled on his bed, jeans shoved down just enough, shirt rucked up to his chest, one hand wrapped tight around his dick and stroking like his life depended on it. His head was thrown back, neck muscles straining, mouth open, and every time his fist twisted up over the head he groaned my name again, louder, filthier.
“Ava… shit… just like that… fuck, Ava…”
His hips jerked off the mattress, abs flexing hard, and his free hand clawed at the sheets like he was trying to rip them apart. The sound was obscene (wet, sloppy, frantic), and his voice cracked on the second syllable of my name every single time, like saying it hurt and felt good at the same time.
I couldn’t move. My face was on fire, my heart was trying to punch through my ribs, and the worst part? The absolute worst? I was soaked. Instantly. Embarrassingly. My body decided right then that this was the hottest thing it had ever seen and betrayed me completely.
He sped up, breath hitching, and then he growled, “Cum on my tongue, Ava, fuck, let me taste you…..” and his whole body locked up. He came hard, thick ropes hitting his stomach, his chest, one shot even reaching his collarbone, and he kept stroking through it, milking every drop while moaning my name like a broken record.
I must’ve made a noise, because his eyes snapped open and locked on the door. On me.
For one second we just stared at each other. Him half-naked, covered in his own cum, fist still wrapped around his softening dick. Me standing there like a deer in headlights with my mouth open and my panties ruined.
Then his face went from shocked to pure panic to something darker.
I finally found my voice.
“You disgusting fucking pervert!” I screeched, loud enough to wake the dead. “I’m telling them! I’m telling everyone! You’re done!”
I spun around to bolt, but he was off the bed in a flash, jeans barely tugged up, lunging for the door.
“Ava, wait…yo yo yo….wait..”
“Don’t touch me!” I shrieked, shoving at his chest. He stumbled back, hands up, cum still glistening on his skin.
“It’s not what you think…”
“You were jerking off screaming my name! What part of that is open to interpretation, you sick fuck?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then actually had the nerve to look embarrassed. “I…. I can explain…..”
“Explain what? That you’re a walking HR violation? That you’re gonna be in jail by tomorrow?”
Just then the front door slammed downstairs.
“Ava? Jax? We’re home early!” Mom’s voice, way too cheerful.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Jax’s eyes went wide. “Ava, please….”
I shoved past him into the hallway just as Mom and Richard appeared at the top of the stairs, still in their fancy auction clothes.
Mom took one look at my face and frowned. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I snapped, at the exact same time Jax said, “She’s just in a mood.”
Richard raised an eyebrow. “You two fighting already?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Jax said.
Mom sighed like this was the biggest inconvenience of her life. “Ava, sweetheart, he’s your brother now. You have to try to get along.”
“He’s not my brother, he’s a stranger who moved into my house and….”
“Ava,” Richard cut in, voice calm but firm, looking at Jax. “Son, whatever you did, apologize.”
Jax swallowed hard, eyes flicking to me, then to his dad. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and it sounded so fake I wanted to punch him.
Mom turned to me, all soft and pleading. “See? He’s sorry. Now hug and make up. We’re a family.”
I stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “I’m not hugging him.”
Richard pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ava, please. For your mother.”
Jax just stood there, shirt still rucked up, looking like a kicked puppy who’d just been caught humping the couch. I could still see the shine of cum on his stomach. I wanted to scream.
Mom grabbed my arm gently. “Come on, honey. One hug. Then we’ll order pizza and watch a movie, okay? Like a real family.”
I opened my mouth to refuse again, but Richard gave me that look the one that said my mom would cry if I didn’t play nice. I hated that look.
“Fine,” I hissed through my teeth.
Jax stepped forward like he was walking to his own execution. I stepped forward too. We hugged like two people who’d rather be anywhere else. His arms barely touched me. I kept mine stiff at my sides. And his dick rose so fast, what the fuck.
Mom beamed. “There! Was that so hard?”
I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt. Fast. Guilty. Mine was worse.
Under his breath, so quiet only I could hear, he whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I dug my nails into my palms so I wouldn’t do something stupid like cry or knee him in the balls.
Richard clapped his hands. “Pizza it is! Jax, go clean up. You look like you just ran a marathon.”
Jax pulled away fast, face bright red, and practically sprinted back to his room.
Mom looped her arm through mine and dragged me downstairs, chattering about what toppings we should get.
I followed her like a zombie, thighs sticky, ears ringing with my own name in his voice, hating him, hating myself, hating how my body still hadn’t calmed down.
Family movie night was going to be so much fun.
God, I was never surviving this house.
Chapter 187IvySix months later, I was standing on a porch in America with a suitcase in each hand, watching my mother knock on her own front door.She didn’t need to knock. Her mother had been standing at the window for an hour. We’d seen her the second the taxi turned into the street, a small gray-haired woman with both hands pressed flat against the glass. But Mum stood there on the doormat anyway, with her knuckles against the wood, like she needed to do it properly.“You okay?” I asked.“No,” Mum said. “Yes. I don’t know. Ask me in ten minutes.”“You’ve been sober six months. You can knock on a door.”“Six months and four days.”“Six months and four days,” I said. “Knock, Mum.”She knocked.The door flew open so fast it bounced off the wall. And then my grandmother, a woman I had never met, whose name I had only learned half a year ago, had both arms around my mother on the porch, and they were both crying so loud that a man walking his dog across the street stopped and stared.
Ivy I woke up before the sun came fully up. Daniel’s arm was heavy across my waist. His breath was slow against the back of my neck. The room was still dark except for the thin line of light under the curtain. I lay there without moving and listened to him breathe.I never thought he would be my end game. Not once. When I first met him he was just the man who kept showing up. The man who drove me places. The man who did not flinch when my life fell apart. I told myself he was temporary. Safe for now. Good for the hard days. I never let myself think past that. End game was for other people. People with clean histories and quiet minds. Not for me.But here I was. In his bed. With the taste of last night still in my mouth and a blank canvas waiting in the living room because he had bought it without asking. Because he had written that note. Start with any color you want. Nobody’s allowed to tell you it’s wrong.I turned carefully so I could see his face. His eyes were closed. His mouth
Chapter 185IvyEverybody was looking at me. That was the worst part. Jax had said the words, a proper place, doctors who stay, and then every single head in that hospital room turned toward me like I was the one who had to answer.I wasn’t. Mum was.But I knew why they were looking. Because I was the one who had driven her to every rehab place in London since I was fifteen. I was the one who packed her bag. I was the one who sat in the car afterward and cried where she couldn’t see. I was the one who picked her up twenty-eight days later every single time, and watched her promise, and watched her break it.“Mum,” I said.She looked at me. Her eyes were red. Her hands were shaking.“You don’t have to decide right now,” Jax said.“Yes, she does,” I said. “If she doesn’t decide now, she’ll talk herself out of it by tonight. I know her.”“Ivy,” Riley said softly.“No, I’m serious. I’m not being mean. I’ve done this with her nine times. Nine. Every time she says this time is different, an
Chapter 184JaxI was halfway through my second cheeseburger when the door opened, and I honestly thought it was a nurse coming to tell me off again, because the last one had said a man with a hole in his shoulder should be eating soup, and I had told her that a man with a hole in his shoulder deserved whatever he wanted.It wasn’t a nurse.It was a woman in her late thirties with short dark hair and a leather jacket and a backpack on one shoulder, standing in the doorway like she’d just walked straight off a plane and into my room without asking anybody where she was going. Which, it turned out, was exactly what she’d done.She looked at me. I looked at her. I put the cheeseburger down.“Riley?”“Hi, Jax.”“What… how…”“You’re on the news,” she said. “You and Ava and some mayor from New York. Every channel. They showed a picture of her from when we were nineteen. The one from the school yearbook. I was at work. I dropped a whole tray of coffee on the floor.” She laughed, but her eyes
Chapter 183IvyHospitals always smell the same. I have spent more nights in hospitals than I can count, waiting for Mum to wake up, waiting for Mum to sober up, waiting for some doctor to come out and tell me she was going to be fine this time, and every single one of them smelled like this. Bleach and burnt coffee and fear.But I’d never waited for Jax before.“He’s going to be fine,” Daniel said for the fourth time. He was sitting next to me in a plastic chair in the waiting room with his elbows on his knees. My hands were clean now. A nurse had taken me to a sink and helped me scrub them until the water ran clear, and then she’d given me a set of blue hospital scrubs because my dress was ruined, and now I looked like I worked there.“You keep saying that.”“Because it keeps being true.”“You don’t know that. You’re not a doctor.”“I know the bullet went in under the collarbone and out the back. I know he was talking the whole way down in the elevator. I know he asked the paramedic
Chapter 182DanielI heard the door open through Ivy’s microphone before I understood what it meant, and then I heard Ava say his name, and every person in that van turned around and looked at me like I had done it.“How is she in there?” Morales snapped. “Where’s Jax? Jax was supposed to keep her at the end of the street!”“He was,” I said. “He was supposed to.”Superintendent Whitlock was sitting at the front of the van with one hand pressed to her own earpiece and her face didn’t move at all. “Is she wired?”“No.”“Is she armed?”“She’s Ava,” Morales said. “She’s barely holding a handbag.”Through the speaker, Noah Carrington laughed. It came through the little box on the table in the van clear and warm and friendly, and it made my skin crawl.“Ava. My God. Twenty years. You look terrible.”“You look exactly the same,” Ava said. Her voice was shaking. “That’s the worst part.”“Mum, go,” Ivy said. “Please. Go back downstairs.”“No, baby. I’ve been going for twenty years. I’m done go
Ava I sat there on that crinkly hospital bed paper, staring at this doctor guy who'd just frozen like I'd slapped him, and then it hit me harder no, not…. , it was actually Noah, holy shit, Noah from way back in high school, the one who'd been my massive crush, all brains and that shy smile that m
Ava I slapped my hand to my cheek where the sting was still buzzing like a pissed-off bee and just stared at her for a second, mouth open, brain finally catching up to the fact that this whole thing had gone from hot to straight-up humiliating in record time. “What the actual fuck, Yvana?” I snapp
Ava Two weeks crawled by like they were dragging their feet on purpose, but weirdly enough it felt... good? Chloe had already bounced back home the day after that whole disaster and vanished with her suitcase and Riley followed a couple days later, hugging me so tight I thought she was moving to a
Ava Yvana laughed. Turned halfway, kissed him over her shoulder while her hand slid up my thigh. Under the hem of his T-shirt I was still wearing. I gasped when she brushed the edge of my underwear.She smiled against Noah’s mouth. “Sensitive.”“Girl please…,” I muttered.Noah’s hands were on her







