CHAPTER ONE: A SIMPLE LIE

“Ian! No stop! I don't want to be late!” She said those serious words but a smile cracked through her sternness and once again she fell under the spell of his irresistible charms.

“Just one more Ava…pleaseeee,” his smile was something she could not resist and when he used that voice! And those puppy fog eyes! Ava was powerless against those two forces so she gave in.

“Okay, just one more kiss and then I'll have to start getting ready,” she said but knew that she would give in again and again if he needed more kisses.

He basically held all the power when it came to her and she knew it but what could she do? She needed him just as much as he needed her, maybe even more.

He wrapped his arms around her and devoured her lips in his. She held on to him as if she was the air she needed to stay alive and kissed him even harder than he did her.

They both knew that they would have to separate for a little bit to catch their breath but breath…breathing seemed very irrelevant to them at that point so they continued to kiss each other until they literally had to separate to remain alive.

“I love you so much, crazy,” Ian said breathlessly as he held on to Ava and breathed in her scent.

“I love you two, psycho,” she called back in a breathless chuckle.

“Hey, what about me? Nobody loves me?” Someone else said from the far end of the room. They both looked away from each other for a little bit to see their son Eli standing in the doorway in his pajamas.

“Oh my little baby munchkin,” Ava said as she hurried to pick Eli up and pepper him with kisses. Ian gestured for Ava to bring Eli closer, using the secret sign they used whenever they wanted to prank their son.

“No no no! dad, mom no!” Eli laughed hysterically as his father tickled him and then hugged him close.

“There's no one I love more in this world than you Eli,” Ian said but then the look on Ava's face made him rethink his statement.

“I mean you and your mother… There's nobody in this world I love more than you and your mother,” Ian retracted his statement with a small laugh.

“Better,” Ava looked satisfied by this.

“And I love the both of you more than life itself,” Ava kissed her son and then her husband on their forehead.

At that moment, all she could think about was how lucky she was to have the two people she loves the most next to her. She kissed them again and silently prayed that the universe would keep them all together forever.

All her life, Ava had been alone.

She was orphaned before she could even learn how to speak. Her mother died while giving birth to her, the doctors had to operate to keep her alive. 

They were hesitant to do it but her mother had stated clearly during her pregnancy that if the complications got worse, they should save her daughter instead of her.

Ava became motherless on the day she was born, she was wrapped in a blanket and sent home with her father who was hell-bent on showering her with all the love in his heart, this was however impossible in the long-run because he also died a few weeks after from an unknown cause.

Ava was then taken into the foster care system, she moved from one foster home to another until she turned eighteen and she decided to venture into the world on her own.

She was thirteen when she met Ian, he was fifteen at the time, they were both teenagers with totally different backgrounds.

There was Ava with all the trouble surrounding her home life, her horrible foster mom who was hell-bent on traumatizing her, and reminding her that she would amount to nothing and there was Ian who had the perfect home life, with parents who loved him more than anything.

Although Ian's parents were poor, they had enough love for him, little wonder, he could not fully comprehend that a parent could hate a child as much as Ava's foster parents hated her.

They were best friends from the first day they met and made a pinky promise to stay that way forever but the first storm came when Ava hit puberty and started feeling an uncontrollable attraction towards Ian.

 It worried her greatly because no matter what she did, no matter how much she distanced herself from him, the crush-attraction did not dissipate.

They both eventually decided to upgrade the best friends pact into a lovers forever pact when Ava reached the age of eighteen and Ian twenty.

They both decided to leave home, for Ava, that decision was easy because she never did feel at home in her house anywhere but for Ian that decision came after a month of grief and tears.

That decision came after his mother, his only living parent at the time, died. 

With no hope of going to college and no family left, they both decided to be each other's family forever.

They got married in the small local chapel by the beach with just their friends in attendance and then moved into the little house that Ian's parents had owned… a tiny place by the water.

They were determined to be happy with each other forever, they were stuck in their own heads where they idea of happily ever after was possible but like every fairy tale, reality crept in after the birth of their first and only child Eli.

Eli's birth was a very scary one, it was during his pregnancy that Ava had discovered the genetic disorder that she had, the same one that her mother had had, one that stops the cervix from dilating as much as it should, thereby keeping the baby stuck in the womb after the embryonic sac had ruptured.

After this was discovered, Ian was unwilling to watch his wife die so he gathered every bit of his savings just so she could receive the best medical attention and it worked.

Eli was born healthy, Ava stayed alive but one thing changed, they got way poorer than they ever had.

Like everything else, they were determined to overcome this and they almost did but then another tragedy struck when Ian suffered a work accident at his construction job.

He was given a few weeks off of work, but after these weeks were over and his legs did not heal fully, he was laid off.

As Ava watched her family sprawled on the bed, all happy and giggly, she hoped that she could keep them that way forever.

She hoped that the interview at crown magazine would go well and she would get the job.

Ava felt a pang of guilt as she thought about how she had lied to Ian about why that day was so special.

She had never lied to him before, they prided themselves on being honest to each other, she wondered what he would do when he found out that his honest wife was a liar.

Ava shuddered as she thought about this, hopefully she gets the job…maybe that would make the lie worth it?