Page 41 of Insta-Love

I don’t want her in a month’s time. I don’t want her next week. I want her now.

“I don’t know,” Ava whispers in answer to my question.

“What are you afraid of?”

Her lips press tight as she swallows. “It’ll sound silly to anyone else.”

“Try me.” I give her hand a squeeze.

She sighs, eyes fixed to mine. “You know how when you don’t know any better, you can be complacent in your ignorance?”

“I think I know what you mean, yeah.”

“What if you show us a better life? If we get to experience things with you that I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of giving Lily on my own?”

“What’s the issue with that?” I let go of her hand and rock back to land on my arse.

“When it’s all over, then I’m going to resent this life more, aren’t I?”

“This life?” I frown at the crazy woman.

“My life.”

Fuck me. “It doesn’t have to be your life.” I sling my arms around my knees, fucking uncomfortable where I am, but I’m not giving her that chance to find an excuse to end the conversation if I put a break in it by finding a better seat. “This is what I’m trying to say, Ava. You and Lily? You deserve better. I can give you that better.”

“I don’t want you to, though,” she snaps standing. “I want to do it myself.”

“You can’t,” I growl. “Stop being so fucking stubborn. You were given a shit start to things, but that’s not your fault.”

“So why do you act as though your shit start is yours,” she shoots back with a raised eyebrow.

Fuck. She’s got me figured out there.

“Look at it from my side, Bowen. You want me to uproot my life to move in with you, even if it just next door, and explain to my kid why we’re doing it when you’ve been in our life all of ten seconds. And yet, you haven’t told me a damn thing about you. What kind of role model would that make me if I had to explain to Lily that I put our well-being in the hands of a stranger just because he fancies her mum?”

“You want to know more about me?” I snap.

“I do.” She holds firm, staring me down.

I lean back and spread out over the ground, groaning as I press my hands to my head. “Fine. Family is a foreign concept to me, Ava, because my father was never home. He worked away a six on, two off roster, so I had roughly eighteen weeks in a year with him. Most of that, he still wasn’t home because he’d rather go fishing with his mates, camp out with his single buddies, than face what he’d created at home.”

“What he’d created?”

“He took that job even though my mum said no. And you know how she coped with that? You know how she dealt with her anger and resentment toward him?” I crunch, hands laced behind my head to help me see Ava. “She beat the living daylights out of me. You know why I hate hospitals? Because I spent more time than any kid should in them. And know why I don’t trust anyone? Because no matter how many times I was admitted, despite the staff knowing me by name, I never got any help. None. The system failed, my mum failed, and ultimately my dad won when she took her own life and he found an excuse to walk away from his teenage son.”

“Holy shit …” Her concern is clear in the way her lips are parted, her wide-eyed stare.

“I don’t tell people, because I hate the way they pity me once they know.” Her eyes soften. “I guess you probably understand that more than other people I know, though.”

“I do.” Her arse hits the lounger again. “Am I right in guessing your obsession with working out, with competing, came from trying to prove yourself?”

“Underneath it all, I guess it did. But I genuinely enjoyed it. Still do some days, but they’re more rare than common now.”

“We can’t be substitutes, Bowen.”

“You’re not.” I set a hand behind me, and push to sit. “You just opened my eyes on how badly I want this. I feel like I could do right by you.”

“And I have no doubt you could,” she says with resignation. “But for how long? What happens when you don’t enjoy us anymore? What happens then?”

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