His Greatest Treasure (Greatest Love #4)

Chapter 36

36

AVERY

“Come in, sweetheart.”

Ava Hutton opens the door for me and ushers me inside with a brush of her hand across my back.

Dressed in a pair of loose jeans and a Hutton hockey shirt, she glows in the afternoon light. A candle is burning on the entrance table, making the house smell like cake and berries as we walk through to the same kitchen where I had a near food fight with Oliver. I toss that thought off a cliff and inwardly scold myself for thinking about him again.

Another chance to torture myself is all it is.

I’ve already spent the past two days in a downward spiral with takeout dinners and horror film bingeing. Nova’s enjoyed the lack of vegetables at dinner and a strict bedtime, but with every night I loosen the reins on my parenting, I only feel shittier. All of my hard work is so easily destroyed because I’m too busy overthinking and worrying. I fear the habits I’ve instilled in Nova are hanging on by a thread as I ignore mine.

I put on a brave face for everyone the way I always have, but for the first time in the past seven years, it’s almost too hard to keep up the act. Every stressful night that’s kept me up into the early mornings has taken its toll, and now I’m left weak and tired. Overworked and drowning without a life raft because I’ve tossed it away when it was offered in a pair of safe, reliable hands. The same ones I miss feeling on my body and in my hair.

“Your text sounded urgent,” Ava says, going right for the double-door fridge.

She grabs a jug of pink lemonade from the right side and turns to set it on the counter before meeting my eyes. I take a seat on one of the leather stools at the giant island and release a heavy breath. It does nothing to relax me.

She laughs lightly while collecting two glasses and filling them with the pink liquid. “Oh, you have a rant brewing, don’t you?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, let me have it,” she encourages, tucking a brown curl behind her ear. The round diamonds in her ears glitter in the sun rays that stream in through the tall windows.

I take the glass of lemonade she hands to me and drink half of it before she’s managed to pull the stool out from beside me. “It’s more of a word vomit and favour than a rant, if you still don’t mind listening.”

“I’ve got three children, Avery. Word vomit is a staple in this house. And I’d accept any number of favours for you.”

I crack a smile at that. “Right.”

“I also lived with your mother during her rowdiest years, so trust me when I say that nothing you tell me today will be worse than what I’ve heard from her,” she adds with a reminiscent smile.

“Do you miss her? And my dad?”

She wraps her hands around her cold glass and nods. “I’ve missed your mom from the moment she moved away. Time and age hasn’t made that any easier. It was a lot easier to visit each other when we were younger, but you get Oakley on a plane now and he’ll sit and grumble about the stiff seats for the majority of the flight. Hard to believe he used to spend a good chunk of the year in the air.”

“He was spoiled with private team jets.”

She blows out a breath. “That he was. I think he believes the kids moved all over the country on purpose just to torture him. He has to take a Xanax before every flight we take to Toronto.”

“In his defense, that airport is a nightmare.”

“A night terror, more like.”

After taking another sip of my drink, I let the cool glass rest in my palms, hoping it will help settle my nerves. “I know that my parents kept a lot of details regarding me and my circumstances quiet, but Mom must have told you something more than she did everyone else.”

Ava and my mom are best friends. Have been since they were teenagers, and while distance may have worn down that bond a bit, it’s still there. I’ve overheard several of the calls between them and know that my mom must have confided in her with topics she’d never bring up to me or Dad.

Chris was a subject I didn’t want anyone to know about, but Mom has a blabbermouth. She had to have told someone about him, and I’d bet it was Ava.

The woman beside me copies my actions and drinks from her glass before setting it aside and folding her hands on the table. When she looks at me this time, her eyes shine with an openness that settles me slightly.

“She told me everything,” she admits. “All the way from the beginning.”

The honest admission startles me. “Everything? As in, everything ?”

“As in everything.”

“So you knew where I was and didn’t tell anyone?”

Her chin dips slightly. “Only Oakley. Your mom swore us to secrecy and begged neither of us to interfere with your wishes to be left alone.”

Ashamed, I fight off a flinch. “When you say it like that, it sounds worse than I thought. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be around any of you. The opposite, actually. If I had told everyone where I was, you would have taken me back in, and I didn’t want the help I would have been offered. I didn’t want to rely on it only to have it stripped away if I couldn’t handle it here and wound up having to go back home away from you all again.”

Ava reaches over and sets a hand over mine, squeezing softly. “And it was hard on you being so far away.”

“You could say that,” I say with a short, blunt laugh. “Having to watch all of my childhood friends grow up with one another while I was in a different country, unable to do the same, wasn’t great. I was jealous all the time, wishing I could have been here for all the birthdays and Christmases. The graduations and hockey and football games. Noah’s concerts and Addie’s fashion shows.”

“They would have loved for you to be here then, Avery.”

“Yeah, I know.”

It doesn’t make me feel better knowing everyone missed me the way I missed them. Wishing to be with someone when there wasn’t a way of making it happen doesn’t help anyone. But the guilt I feel for wasting the past decade we could have all been together out of pride and embarrassment is the hardest pill of all. I’m unable to swallow it.

“In your text, you mentioned needing family lawyer recommendations,” she says, leading the conversation in a different direction.

“If my mom told you everything, does that include my custody agreement with Chris?”

“No. I only know you two share custody with you as the primary caregiver.”

“We’ve had a non-legally binding custody agreement since we split, but Chris . . . he found out about Oliver and threatened trying to take more time with her.” I tighten my hold on my glass, leg beginning to bounce. “He can’t handle more time with her. If he tries to do this, it will only be so he can prove a point.”

Ava’s brows draw together as her mouth tips down into a frown. “He’s threatening custody because he’s jealous of my nephew?”

“It’s ridiculous, right?”

“Incredibly. Does he have any ground to stand on here if he did pursue a more involved custody agreement? What is your current one?”

“He gets her every second weekend. No holidays after he forgot her fifth birthday and Santa was a no-show during the Christmas prior.”

“I’m sorry, Avery,” Ava whispers, disgust twisting her expression.

“Don’t apologize. Nova has me.”

“She does. And I have a few family lawyers I can reach out to. I’ve been a part of a few custody battles with the foster system, and it’s not easy, especially when one of the two parents are not willing to compromise. But if he truly is just doing this out of spite, he’ll be put in his place once you’ve shown how serious you are with legal aid at your side. He won’t continue to wave threats around when nobody will listen to them.”

“He’s slimy. I want to believe it will be easy to prove that I’m the better choice for Nova if it comes to that, but I don’t know if he’ll somehow weasel his way into taking her from me. I’ve worked too hard to let him take her when the right place for her is at home with me. He doesn’t know how to parent her, Ava. He’s never had to. I’ve always been there to pick up his slack, and there’s been so, so much of it,” I say, feeling an overwhelming sense of defeat wriggling beneath my skin already.

It’s premature and not the right time for it, but fuck. I won’t let him have more time with Nova than he deserves only so he can disappoint her and wish he’d never attempted this only days afterward.

“He won’t take her from you. You’re her mother and an incredible one at that.”

My throat is sticky when I blurt out, “What if it becomes a custody battle and Oliver doesn’t want to stick around for it? What if he starts to believe I’m too much work. That we’re too much work. I’ve already pushed him to sit on the sidelines and wait. Will he get pushed too far and leave? ”

“Oh, honey. I don’t think it’s possible for you to push Oliver away.”

I shake my head, immediately ignoring her attempt to placate me. “I did, though. Chris pushed all my buttons, and I shoved Oliver out the door the moment he tried to offer me his support.”

“Has he told you that once you left Canada with your parents that final time when you were seventeen, he forbid anyone from speaking about you around him? Or that he yelled at his brother on his eighteenth birthday when he made a joke about him finally being old enough to fly to Sweden to ask you out?”

My stomach flutters. “He mentioned not asking about me.”

“He did a lot more than that, sweetheart.”

“That was all a long time ago.”

“Are you trying to convince me of the relevance of that or yourself? Because I don’t think time matters much at all. It’s been over a decade since then, and right now, he’s the one your daughter’s father feels threatened by.

“Oliver can be his father’s son when it comes to mood and demeanour, but oftentimes, he’s more like his mother than I think anyone realizes. Once they set their mind to something, there’s no going back. No second option. You’ve been the one thing Oliver’s always wanted and wished he could have had. Now that you’re here, I have a feeling he won’t be letting go as easily as he did the first time.”

“He told me he loved me,” I whisper, her words sinking their claws into my heart.

Ava peels my fingers from around my glass and pulls them into hers before guiding them to rest on the countertop. “And he means it.”

“Falling in love with him was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

“That’s how you know it’s the forever kind. When loving someone feels natural. Like it was always meant to be that way,” she says.

“I need to take care of Chris, Ava. I don’t want him to be a hurdle I have to constantly jump over. ”

I refuse to fully integrate Oliver into my life until I have this mess sorted. If we’re going to be a family, I want us to have a stronger foundation than I’ve allowed myself in my past relationship because this isn’t going to be one I let wither away.

This one will be for keeps.

Forever.