Page 19 of Claiming Pretty

The truth of it slammed into me, dragging me into the past, to the moment everything shifted. I remembered the change in her, the way she began to look at Ciaran differently. Like she saw something in him she couldn’t find in me.

I remembered the day I climbed into our treehouse to find it empty of her, her scent of jasmine a ghost in the air, and to spot her out the window riding away on the back ofhismotorbike.

I never found out what had happened between them, but now I knew for sure.

Somehow, some way, Ava had fallen for Ciaran.

I had lost her five years ago.

And it seemed I was doomed to keep losing her over and over again.

The McKinsey mansion was unnervingly quiet, like a stage waiting for its actors to take their marks. It was the kind of silence that wrapped around you, pressing in, making every creak of the floorboards feel louder than it should.

I leaned against the doorframe of Ava’s bedroom, watching her pace.

She was nervous—flustered even. She kept glancing at herself in the mirror, brushing her hair back into place, her hands fidgeting with invisible wrinkles in her clothes.

I didn’t have to guess why.

She wanted to seehim. Wanted to greet Ciaran alone, to reunite with him.

The thought twisted in my chest like a knife, jealousy threatening to rise. But I forced it down, hardening myself against it. I’d learned how to bury those emotions. I’d had to.

Ava wasn’t mine anymore. Not yet.

“I’ll be fine,” she shot back, trying to push me out of the doorway.

I didn’t budge.

“What if the Society’s men show up?” I argued.

She rolled her eyes and reached down beside her bed to pull out a small bat. She held it up with a smirk, the wooden handle snug in her grip.

“You taught me to defend myself, remember?” she said, her nervous tension giving way to her usual fire. “Let them come. We’ll follow their rolling heads straight back to whoever sent them.”

Her confidence was almost enough to make me smile. Almost.

“Cute,” I said, my tone sharper than I intended. “But I’m still not leaving you alone.”

She opened her mouth, probably to argue—when I heard it.

A sound. Faint, deliberate. Someone was here.

I shushed her, my ears straining against the oppressive quiet. Another noise followed, soft and careful, coming from the balcony.

My muscles coiled, every nerve on high alert.

“Stay back,” I said under my breath as I slipped into the shadows of her room.

Ava ignored me, of course. She turned toward the balcony, gripping the bat tightly, her jaw set.

The lock jiggled, the faint metallic rattle sending a ripple of tension through the air.

Then the handle began to turn.

From my place in the dark, I braced to strike.

Ava raised the bat, her knuckles white against the polished wood.

---