The doors open, and I dart out, nearly taking the concierge off his feet too. “Sorry,” I call back, landing outside the foyer, my eyes scanning. I see her car, but I don’t relax. She was drinking. She wouldn’t have driven anywhere. Good girl. But is she walking? Alone?

I scrub my hands down my face, slumping back against her car. This isn’t how I expected the rest of my evening to pan out. I pull up her name in my phone, but as my thumb hovers over the dial icon, I hear something.

Ava?

I frown, glancing around.

And I spot her, sitting on a bench on the docks. She’s on her phone. I look at mine. I don’t know why; she won’t be calling me, and that fucking hurts. I wander over quietly, coming to a stop a few paces behind her.

“Oh, Kate,” she says on a sigh, her head dropped back. I can sense her despondency from here. Can feel her regret. “I’ve made a monumental fuck-up,” she whispers, and I flinch. How can she say that was a mistake? It was nothing short of perfection. “I’ll be home soon.”

My heart in tatters, I hit dial on my phone, as if I need her to ignore my call and give me the agonizing confirmation that she’s talking about me. Of course she’s talking about me.

But she does answer. And it throws me. “Hey,” she says quietly.

My mouth is working before my brain. “Where are you?” Please don’t lie to me. But her hand goes straight to her hair and the frantic, unconscious twiddling begins.

“I’m at home.”

I’m crushed. Fucking crushed. “Okay,” I murmur, hanging up before I say something stupid. Why is she doing this? It’s even fucking harder to understand now. She can’t give herself to me like that, make me feel like that, and deny me the chance to ever have her again. It doesn’t work like that.

My head spins as I watch her on the bench, sitting quietly, wondering what on earth is going on in her head. She needs to tell me. Maybe then I can reassure her. Or continue lying to her.