Ava (A Hart Twins Novel Rx Book 1)

by Charyse Allan

  I stopped sweeping for a second, considering that. Justice would be sweet, if I actually knew who did it. But I didn’t, so there was nothing to be done. Whoever did this would not have any sort of control over me, would not scare me. They were obviously trying to send a message, but I had no idea what the message was or who it was coming from, so there was no point in dwelling on it.

  “I am pissed, Kelsey,” I told her in a flat, calm tone. How collected I was surprised the heck out of me. “But there’s nothing I can do about it and nothing the police can do about it, believe me. So I’m not going to let whoever is doing this control me. I’m going to clean this up and see what I can do with the dance.”

  I resumed my sweeping while she continued to stare at me as if I had horns growing out of my head or something. She shook her head then shrugged as if she didn’t really care. Walking over to the closet, she grabbed another broom.

  “You don’t have to help clean it up, Kelsey,” I told her, and she turned to give me another confused look. “I can take care of this. I’m only going to ask that you please don’t tell anyone about this.”

  Her mouth fell open with an audible pop. Yup, she thought I was insane. And had probably been planning on being the queen of gossip on Monday, as she looked like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. With an eye roll, she sighed. “Fine, I won’t tell anyone. But I’m not going to stand here and watch you clean this up by yourself.”

  We cleaned in silence, filling multiple black trash bags. We dragged those and the bigger pieces that wouldn’t fit into bags, to the dumpsters behind the building. When I told her that’s where I wanted to put them, so no one would find them, she gave me those “you’re crazy” eyes again. She left in a big hurry afterward, without any small talk about parties or boys, and I couldn’t blame her.

  The almost friendship we had there went up in smoke, and I couldn’t say I was upset about it. She was a nice person and all but not the type I would be friends with. I left right behind her, feeling worse than I had the entire week. I could only hope I would be able to figure something out for my dance before Ms. Keller decided to pull it from the show.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cade

  When Monday rolled around, my temper had about reached its limit. I had been pissy since the fight with Ava. Not wanting to be around anyone, I went straight to my classes, ate lunch alone, and then got straight to work after school, even if I wasn’t scheduled. I told Rick he didn’t have to pay me, so he left me alone to sort the music, not asking any questions.

  My mom brought Darrel home almost every night in what I guessed was an effort to force us to talk. That wasn’t happening. I may have promised to play nice, sure, but I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with anyone.

  The only person I wanted to talk to was the one I was avoiding like the plague. Acting the way I had pissed me off more than anything. My temper had gotten the best of me and gotten in the way of how I really felt. Even knowing she was doing something important to her, I asked her to drop it. My anger made me blind to the fact I actually was asking her to stop doing what she needed to get done. Even so, I hadn't meant I wanted her to stop doing all of it in general.

  She thought I hated the stuff she did, but that wasn’t it. I loved how intelligent she was, how she could take on anything thrown her way. Her thinking she had to do it all herself was what pissed me off. Feeling like I had lost something that would have changed my life was the tip of the iceberg. It was probably for the best, though. She deserved better than me.

  I kept my head low to avoid dealing with anything or anyone on Monday. At least a few people had to know nothing was going on between Ava and me anymore, since Sydney showed up around every freaking corner, latching herself onto my arm. I didn’t want her, didn’t want anyone else, but I didn’t put much effort into brushing her off.

  She found me during lunch, which was a huge surprise since I was hiding at a picnic table behind the motor shop away from everything. The fact she even knew we had a motor shop baffled me. She swaggered over in skimpy, white shorts and a pink tank, her hair a pile of curls cascading over her chest. The view was appreciated, since it was there, but I still wasn’t interested.

  “Mind if I sit?” She flashed me a killer smile and sat down across from me without waiting for a response.

  It took a lot not to roll my eyes. “Sure.” I shrugged, taking a bite of my pizza. She didn’t have any food with her, so she obviously wasn’t there to eat with me. “You not eating?”

  With a giggle, she flipped her hair over a shoulder. My cringe was hidden behind another bite of pizza. “The food here is awful for you.” She gave my pizza a weary eye. “I eat when I get home from school, so I don’t have to carry around a silly lunch pack.”

  Ugh, I wanted so bad to get up and find a different spot, but I couldn’t be that rude, not even when I was in such a foul mood. “Sooo, what’s up?” If she would just get whatever it was out, I could eat in peace.

  “Weeell,” she drew out the word with a smirk. “I was just talking to Kelsey and she said she’ll be throwing a party at her house this Friday after the dance concert.” The mention of the concert ripped through me. I didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about Ava up on the stage looking amazing. It took a couple deep breaths for me to pay attention, but she didn’t appear to notice. “So I was wondering if you might be going? Because, you know, we could go together or something?”

  With another bite of my pizza, I considered her. The smile she wore was enormous, and she kept batting her long eyelashes. There was no doubt she was cute, but she wasn’t who I wanted. But the one I wanted didn’t want me, and I didn’t really deserve her to begin with. There wasn’t anything wrong with trying to get over Ava, even if it wouldn’t work. It would be impossible.

  I washed the pizza down with some Coke before clearing my throat. “I’ll think about it.” Her bottom lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout, making me chuckle. This was almost as bad as that time in the parking lot, but at least she wasn’t making ridiculous slutty offers. “I might have to work, so I’ll have to check. And I don’t think I’m going to the concert, so… yeah. We’ll see.”

  “Why wouldn’t you go to the concert? I thought you and that girl… what’s her name… Avery? I thought you two were friends?”

  I gave her my best “really” face. She knew her name—she knew something went on between us, and she now knew we weren’t anything. Correcting her name meant saying it out loud. It hurt like shit every time I did. “Um, yeah, we’re cool. I just might have to work, so I probably won’t go.”

  Her face lit up with delight, as if I said she was getting a free mani/pedi. Apparently my response confirmed Ava and I were no longer a thing. “Well, I hope you can at least come to the party. It’s gonna be a blast.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, my tone flat. Parties weren’t my thing, but going might help get my mind off her. It was something I would have done back in my Seattle days—get wasted so I could forget my shit life for a few hours.

  We fell silent for a few minutes, in which I thought she would get up and leave, but she sat there. I continued to eat, pretending she had left. Then her face lit up again, as if she had something really important to tell me.

  “Oh, I forgot. Did you hear what happened to Avery yesterday?” Her eyes were wide with excitement.

  I was anything but. My stomach filled with dread. Something else had happened to Ava and I didn’t know about it. “What happened?” I demanded, but my dry throat caused my voice to crack.

  Her face flashed with a mixture of delight and anger. I couldn’t care less about her feelings—I would go find out from someone else if she didn’t tell me in the next few seconds. “Well, you have to promise you won’t say anything. Kelsey is the one who told me, and she said I couldn’t tell anyone because Avery made her promise not to.”

  Teeth gritted, I rubbed my hands over my face before fisting them on the table in front of
me. “I won’t tell anyone,” I ground out. “And her name is Ava. You know that already, so stop calling her Avery.”

  “Oh, that’s right, Ava.” She giggled, sticking to the act. “Anyway, Kelsey was telling me she came to the school yesterday with Ava to help her finish her props. Because, apparently, she’s way behind on a bunch of stuff. I even heard she’s having trouble with the prom stuff too, by the way. If you ask me, that girl has bitten off way more than she can chew.”

  My ears buzzed, drowning out her jabbering. The logistics of it meant shit to me. Knowing what happened was a necessity. And her mentioning those damn props pissed me off even more. Why hadn’t she finished them? Wasn’t that why we got in the stupid fight in the first place?

  “So, anyway,” she went on, making a big waving gesture with her hands, snapping me out of my train of thought. “They came here to finish them and when they got to the prop room, her props were destroyed. Like, broken into little pieces. Kelsey said Ava got all crazy about it and demanded they just clean it up and not mention it to anyone. Kelsey wanted to call the cops, but Ava refused.”

  Anger swam through my veins, almost too strong to fight. Blinking a bunch and shaking my head around did nothing to help, other than aiding in my efforts to look insane. “Wait, what happened?” I demanded. “Someone ruined her props?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I just said. Aren’t you listening, silly?” She giggled, shaking her head while I ground my teeth together. “But don’t you think she’s totally crazy for not wanting anyone to know?” Her question was ignored as I shoved away from my seat. “Where are you going?”

  Giving her an answer was impossible. She even yelled my name, but I ignored her. I had to find Ava. There wasn’t really anything I could say or do, but I had to make sure she was all right. She wouldn’t be with Rabia and Mason eating lunch, since her concert was coming up, so I deduced she would be in practice.

  If I remembered right, she said they were doing practice in the auditorium that week, so I went straight there. Not wanting to screw around, I went through the back in hopes to catch her backstage or something. Having only ever watched the concerts from the audience, I had no clue how it worked, but I was certain I would see her at some point.

  I went through the florescent, lit hallway, which led to the dressing rooms and whatnot. A bunch of girls rushed between the dressing rooms and the door, which led backstage, dressed in skimpy outfits. Some gave me weird looks and others smiled and waved, but I didn’t pay them any attention.

  The dark, curly hair I was searching for among them was nowhere to be seen. Braving the unknown was my only option. I followed a few girls backstage, who looked at me as if I were some pervert. Whatever. They could think what they wanted. I wasn’t there to watch them shake their asses in their tiny outfits.

  My eyes took a moment to adjust to the complete darkness, causing me to almost bump into a couple girls. The stage was dark, and I figured a dance was about to start, so I moved to the side of a wing, hoping I would find Ava when the lights turned on.

  Kelsey stood near the front of the curtain I was looking through, and she gave me a smile and a small wave. I was about to approach her to get some information out of her, but the lights came on.

  There she was.

  The lights were a dim, silver glow shining down on her. She wasn’t in the center, more off to the side of the other girls, but she was the center of my attention. Her hair was its usual curly mess falling into her face. She wore some black, flowy dress thing that barely reached the tops of her thighs and was see-through in the middle. The music started, a tragic, instrumental number that made my heart wrench for some unknown reason—that’s what made good music. The moment she moved, every muscle in my body tensed.

  The stage, the girls crowded around me, my pain, my anger, all dissipated. I had seen her dance in the concert the year before, so I knew she was good, but she had gotten even better. There was no doubt she could easily join some professional group. Emotion poured from her, making every single movement burn into my brain like a snapshot. She spun, kicked, and glided gracefully.

  I tried to watch the rest of the dancers, because she had choreographed the dance. When I let myself focus on the whole picture, I saw the art. The way the dancers moved together and around each other was perfection. Something was off, and I realized they were trying to accommodate for the missing props, but I barely noticed.

  When the music ended and the dancers hit their final pose, the lights turned bright and a woman’s voice boomed from the speakers. “That was great, girls,” the woman said, who I guessed was Ms. Keller, the head of the dance department. “I’m looking forward to seeing it with the props. They should be done by tomorrow, right, Ava?”

  Ava gazed at the booth at the front of the auditorium, her face hardening, her entire body stiffening while the blood drained from her face. A quick nod was her response. The fact she hadn’t told anyone was unbelievable. Did she think props would just magically appear?

  “Good,” Ms. Keller clipped out. “That’s it for today. Everyone clean up and make sure you’re on time to your next class.”

  A herd of girls moved around, heading for the exit, but my gaze remained on Ava. She was talking to one of the girls in her group when her eyes finally landed on me. A multitude of emotions passed through her gaze, causing pain to rip through my chest, before her walls slammed in place, as if she remembered she was supposed to be mad at me. She and the girl continued talking while they came closer to me. I was afraid she might walk past me, pretending I wasn’t there, but she stopped only a few feet away.

  “I’ll let you know by tomorrow,” she told the girl.

  “Okay.” The girl nodded. “If you need any help, go ahead and call me. I’m not busy tonight.”

  “I will. I’ll see you later, Stacey.” Ava waved her off.

  “See ya.” She waved back, giving me a smile before heading out the exit.

  Ava closed her eyes and took a deep breath before finally coming over. It sucked that it was so hard for her to be around me. I wanted to at least be friends with her—maybe after it stopped hurting so much—but I had the feeling I ruined it by trying to make us more.

  Up close, her little outfit did very little in the covering of her perfect curves. The see-through material covering her flat stomach was almost worse than her walking around in a bikini. I ached to wrap my arms around her, to feel her soft skin under the measly piece of material.

  Her gray eyes were the storm I could never see into, her posture guarded. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a flat tone, working to cover whatever emotion was really there.

  I rubbed my neck, squeezing hard. “Uh, someone told me what happened to your props. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Her eyes flashed with anger and betrayal. I held in a snort. Believing Kelsey wouldn’t say something to someone was hilarious—the girl was a gossip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With raised eyebrows, she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You don’t have to play dumb with me, Ava,” I growled, then took a deep breath. “Look, I know you’re still pissed at me, but someone is obviously trying to mess with you. Who knows what else they might do? I just want to make sure you’re okay and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  Her jaw tightened, but the fear that moved through her eyes made me want to kill someone. “I don’t need any help,” she ground out. “I appreciate you checking on me, but it was unnecessary. I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to my next class.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, hands fisted at my sides when she walked through the door. That hadn’t gone at all how I wanted it to, but I hadn’t had high hopes of it ending with us making out in a dark corner. I took a deep breath, letting it out on a heavy sigh before leaving the stage area. Her still being mad at me was understandable, even if it was shitty and made me hate myself a little, but there was no reason f
or her to take this mess on by herself. She may not want any help, but she couldn’t stop me from doing so anyway. Even if I had to call in a favor from an old acquaintance from shop class and go a night without sleep, I would do whatever I could to get those props built.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ava

  Being so rude to Cade was awful. It was what I imagined it would be like to voluntarily shove bamboo splinters under my nails. I was still mad at him, mostly because I felt as if he was keeping a part of himself from me but also because I didn’t want him butting in. He didn’t like the stuff I did, so he didn’t need to be a part of it. My reaction was also, in part, me being ashamed.

  I was furious Kelsey told people, but I couldn’t expect more from her. She was a gossipmonger—she couldn’t help sharing such juicy news. Now that the news was getting out though, I was going to have to figure out my problem by the next day, no matter what.

  When school let out, I trudged to the Jeep, finding my ever-faithful bestie standing by the car with Mia. Surprisingly, my sister’s pain-in-the-ass-ness was at an ever low, and I wasn’t complaining. I had no clue what happened to make her change tracks, but I had high hopes it would stick.

  Their looks of concern either meant they heard the awesome news, or they were preparing themselves for another day of bitchy Ava being on commission. I sighed inwardly, hoping it was the latter. Dealing with more pity thrown in my direction made me want to vomit.

  “Hey.” I waved at them while unlocking the Jeep. I had a happy dance niggling at the back of my mind because my car was supposed to be ready to pick up later that night. Woo-hoo! Basically the highlight of my entire month. “You guys ready to go?” I asked when they stood there watching me open my door.

  They gave each other a look before finally opening their doors and getting in. This was sure to be a fun drive. They sat in awkward silence while I got on the road. “Is everything okay?” I asked them, looking at Mia in the rearview mirror who watched me as if I was about to explode or maybe even melt. I couldn’t be sure. “Where’s Kenny been, Mia?” I asked when they remained silent.