Page 79 of Shelter
Her eyes widened at my gaze, and Ava shook her head, brushing my hands away. “Don’t look at me like that.” Her words were light, but a frown came to her brow. “It’s embarrassing.”
She gave me her profile, but I grabbed her by the elbow and turned her toward me. “Why? Because I think you look healthy?”
She scrunched up her nose as a little shudder passed over her. “Yeah, it’s weird.” Her eyes scanned the airport with a wary cast. “Being here is weird.”
My gut tightened. “Being here? As opposed to New Orleans?” I heard the dip in my voice and knew she did too. We weren’t going back to New Orleans. I’d told her as much when she finally came around in the hospital after OD’ing in our apartment. I pushed the memory of that choking panic away.
We werenotgoing back to New Orleans. No way. I wasn’t going to let her near her dealer or her heroin friends. Lafayette was a little more than a two-hour drive, but in the ways that mattered, it was worlds away from the French Quarter. I knew her old crowd wouldn’t bother coming here to find her. They’d only ever been interested in her money. Our money.
None of them had shown their faces in the hospital before she was released. None of them had come looking for her in the weeks before I moved us out of the apartment.
Ava shook her head, a pained expression flattening the corners of her eyes. “No, being out.” She rubbed the heel of one hand against her opposite forearm, again casting her eyes around the airport in suspicion. “There’s so many people. I feel like they all know about me.”
My shoulders softened as did my voice. “They don’t know about you. Let’s get your bags, and then we can head to the house. It’ll be quiet there.” I started to stride forward toward the escalators, thinking she’d fall in step with me, but Ava stayed rooted to the spot. I halted and looked back at her. I tried to keep my expression patient, but I had no idea how to help her feel more at ease. I just wanted her to move so we could get home, but I knew that barking at her would just make her shut down.
“Ava?” I asked when her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
She looked up at me, tension and suffering clear in her eyes. “I need to get to a meeting,” she said finally.
Relief coursed through me. “Right. Sure.” We’d talked about this, as I had with the family liaison counselor. I’d identified seven different locations in town where she could go to a meeting. One of them would be held at six-thirty tonight at Lafayette General. “There’s one at the hospital in a couple of hours. We can go together.”
I watched her eyes. They remained open but shuttered as though she’d drawn blinds over them.
She took off for the escalators.
“Is that okay?” I asked, following.
Ava clutched the handrail as we began our descent. She wouldn’t look at me. “I’d rather go by myself.”
I sighed. “Ava, I don’t know if that’s—”
“I’m not going to get high,” she said, whipping her gaze to mine. The force behind her words almost set me on my heels. I felt the stares of strangers settle on us, and I my skin prickled beneath them.
I lowered my voice. “I didn’t think you would—”
“But you don’t trust me to go on my own, either.” She hit me with a no-nonsense glare.
How could I trust her on her own? It had only been twenty-eight days since I’d had practically wrenched my arms free of hers in the Hazelden lobby. She was only staying, she’d told me, because I wouldn’t let her come home.
I couldn’t let her come home.
Not after I’d almost lost her. Keeping her safe was the only thing that really mattered, and I’d failed. Again.
So maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. Maybe I didn’t trust me.
I let go a heavy breath. “I’m just worried about you.”
Ava closed her eyes in a long, pained blink. She focused on me again. “I’m worried about me too.”
Her words triggered a whirlpool of dread in my stomach. Then she crossed her thin arms over her chest, and again, the no-nonsense glare was back. “But I have to prove to myself that I can do this. And not because you’re shadowing me.”
I bit back the refusal that lunged to spring from my lips.
“Cole, Iwantto do this.”
The look she gave me wasn’t the desperate, pleading look I’d seen so many times. When she’d wanted money. When she’d wanted me to stop asking questions. When she had wanted a fix. No, this one looked tired. Mature. And a little scared.
It was the hint of fear that gave me hope. The look told me she was afraid she had something to lose. All she had now was her sobriety. If she was afraid to lose that, we might be onto something.
