Page 53 of Little Bird (Advantage Play 3)

Fed up, I rip the sheets away from me, then head upstairs in a pair of basketball shorts and nothing else. I feel like this night will never end. The smell of coffee tickles my nostrils as I round the corner to the kitchen. Digging my heels into the dark wood floors beneath me, I stop short when I recognize the culprit behind the warm caffeine’s aroma wafting through the air.

“Oh,” I grumble before turning on my heel.

“Wait!” Ace calls out when she sees me.

Positive I’ve heard her wrong, yet unable to help myself, I freeze.

“I just made some coffee,” she murmurs behind me. “Do you want some?”

With my heart pounding against my ribcage, my feet move on their own until I find myself facing her again. In a dark kitchen. While everyone else is sound asleep.

The irony isn’t lost on me, and I almost drown in the tsunami of regret when it hits me square in the chest.

“Uh…sure,” I mutter, feeling awkward as hell.

After giving me a kind smile, she stands on her tiptoes and reaches for a second mug before pouring coffee into it. When I notice her splash a bit onto the counter, I realize she’s shaking. And it’s all because of me.

Shit.

I can feel her anxiety rolling off her in waves, though she does her best to hide it.

“Hey, uh…Ace?”

“Mmmhmm?” she hums, but she doesn’t look over at me. Her attention is glued to the swirling granite countertop.

“Can you wait here for just a second?”

Bringing her cup to her lips, she swallows a big gulp of coffee before nodding, though she refuses to look me in the eye.

I take the stairs two at a time down to my room then rummage through a duffle bag I’d tossed into the corner. When I find what I’d been looking for, I race back up to the kitchen, shocked to see that Ace actually listened to my request and stuck around for a minute.

In an effort not to startle her, I keep my movements slow and deliberate. Placing a wrinkled cashier’s check next to her cup, I make sure not to set it in the spilled coffee from when she’d attempted to pour me some.

“What’s this?” she asks, her voice almost squeaking in surprise when she realizes what it is. Her hands remain tight on her cup like she’s afraid to reach out and touch it.

“It’s your winnings from the tournament,” I answer her.

“But—”

“You earned it.”

Licking her lips, she peeks up at me through her thick, dark lashes before finding the courage to set down her cup and touch the worn piece of paper that she sacrificed everything for. Ace drags her trimmed fingernail along the amount typed onto the check, her coffee seemingly forgotten as she inspects it closely.

“Umm….” She releases a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

Scratching the scruff along my jaw, I search for my own courage to finally voice an apology that’s been brewing inside of me since the moment Burlone gave me my orders to beat the shit out of her.

“Hey, Ace?”

She looks up at me. “Yeah?”

“I’m uh….” I rock back on my heels. “I’m sorry for what I did.”

She forces a tight smile onto her face before shrugging one shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” I argue, hating myself a little more that she would even consider using fine as a way to describe what I did to her. “Ace, listen to me. I was a coward for not standing up to Burlone like I should’ve. I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my life, but hurting you was hands down one of the most despicable out of all of them. I was born a survivor, and survivors will do a lot of shady shit to make it to the next day. But hurting you? It was unacceptable, and I promise I won’t let anyone ever order me to do something like that ever again.”

“I’m a survivor, too, Dex. I get it. I think we all live with regrets in our lives. Part of me wonders if it was my fault that Gigi was taken. Sure, she’s Kingston’s sister, but maybe she wouldn’t have tried to sneak out that night if I hadn’t been dumb enough to enter that tournament in the first place. Maybe she wouldn’t have had any desire to sneak out if I’d never sat down with her at Dottie’s and sparked a friendship. Maybe—”

---