Page 40 of Ava After Midnight

“Oh my God,” she whispers, eyes locked on the dancers as the choreography unfolds. Our story. The way we circled each other at the bar, the heat of our first dance, the storm that changed everything.

“This is inappropriate!” Matthew’s mother tries again, but even she can’t look away. Not when Mateo leads a sequence that makes several older women fan themselves.

I step closer, my voice low enough for only Ava to hear. “You know what’s inappropriate? Trying to cage a woman who was born to fly.”

The music shifts—bachata bleeding into hip hop bleeding into classical, just like Ava’s own playlist. My company moves through the sacred space like liquid desire, turning this perfect little country-club ceremony into something untamed and alive.

“This is what passion looks like,” I tell her, stopping just close enough to see the rapid rise and fall of her breath. “This is what you do to me. Make me want to create beauty just to match what I see in your eyes.”

Her chest rises, falls, her lips parting, but no sound comes out.

She feels it.

Around us, the dancers weave a story of heat and defiance. Mateo leads a sequence that makes the younger guests pull out their phones, while the security guards Matthew summoned remain mysteriously absent—Zoe’s handiwork, no doubt.

Matthew turns, wild-eyed, but no one moves to stop the performance. To stop me.

“You can end this now,” I say, my voice carrying. “Or you can admit what we both know.”

I extend my hand to Ava.

“That real love isn’t a business merger. It’s a dance.”

The music swells, reaching its crescendo, and I see it—the war inside her. The fire. The hunger.

She takes a breath.

“I can’t marry you, Matthew.”

The church erupts.

Hope blooms, sharp and dangerous inside me?—

But then?—

“And Domingo...”

She steps away from both of us. And my world stills.

“I can’t marry you either.”

The confession slams into me. Around us, the dancers freeze in formation, but I feel Mateo’s sharp glance, the unsaid question hanging in the air.

“This is...” Ava swallows, something like a laugh escaping her lips. “This is beautiful. Insane. Perfect. But I met you yesterday.”

“Ava—” I start, but she lifts a hand.

“Let me finish.”

She turns to Matthew. “I’ve been hiding—or maybe just blind to—what a controlling narcissist you are for too many years. Making myself smaller, quieter, more ‘appropriate’ for your world.”

Matthew’s face is pure rage, his jaw tight as whispers ripple through the crowd.

“And you,” she faces me again, eyes full of mischief now. “You crashed my wedding with a flash mob and the sexiest choreography this church has ever seen.”

My heart slams against my ribs.

“I can’t marry you,” she repeats, steps closer, and I catch the faintest trace of her perfume. Familiar. Mine.

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