Page 56 of Party Girl: How a Naughty Omega Finds Love
His body trembles. “It is my fault,” he whispers. “Their bullets went wide and hit two little kids playing in their front yard. They died because those guys were trying to shoot me.” Avi falls apart again, clinging to me. All I can do is hold him and try to soothe some of his agony. My shirt is damp from his tears, and my own face is a mess, but I try not to let him know I’m crying too. Deep down, I know this man would never intentionally hurt a child. I think he knows it too, but that doesn’t change what happened.
“Their names were Quinn and Colin,” he says against my shirt. “They were twins.”
“Avi…” I trail off, because nothing I say will change his mind or fix what happened.
He nods. “I fucked up.”
“No,” I rush. “No.” I push him back and force him to meet my gaze. “You did your best. Those jerks killed those kids. You’re not defined by that moment.”
“You want to know the worst part? They got away.” Avi steps back and grabs a paper towel, cleaning his face. “I didn’t even stop them.” He crumples the towel in his hand. “My whole career, I had one priority, and that was to protect people.” Scoffing, he throws the balled-up paper towel onto the counter.
Shifting on my feet, I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well,—” Avi grabs his coffee. “My point was, I was put on leave until the investigation was over. When I came back, I couldn’t keep it together through my first shift. I got put on leave again and I got help. I refused therapy for a while, but Trev finally got mad enough and convinced me to go.”
“He bullied you into it?” I ask, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Sounds like something he would do.
“No,” Avi says. “Asher and Hayden were fucking around last summer with fireworks. All it took was one firecracker to send me into an episode. Post-traumatic stress disorder is the official name. One minute I was in the living room, the next I was back on that street, listening to that mother scream about her babies.”
“Therapy has been helping?”
“Yeah,” he croaks, a stray tear tracking down his face. He bats it away. “I can think about it without breaking down… but apparently, talking about it with someone new is still hard.” He glances at my shirt. “I didn’t mean for it to get so heavy.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m glad you told me, but you didn’t have to.”
“I know,” he says. “But I wanted to. I don’t know what happened to you.” He steps closer, brown eyes searching. “But I know the symptoms of what you’re experiencing.”
Stiffening, I take a step back and paste on a fake smile. “I’m okay.”
He makes a face.
“Really, I’m fine. Trev freaked me out when he ran after me. Asher probably made it sound worse than it was.”
“It’s okay if it was worse than what Asher said.” Avi sighs and grabs his coffee. “Look, you don’t have to tell me or talk about it, but you have to work through your shit. Otherwise, it festers inside of you and you rot from the inside.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Is that why you smell?”
“Brat,” he says with a soft laugh. Letting me win, he lifts his chin in Bob’s direction. “Would you look at that? Thirty minutes and he made a masterpiece.”
Turning, I study the close up of the painting on the TV. “I don’t know, those birds look pretty pissed to me.”
“Bob says otherwise. Come on, the next one is my favorite.” Avi nudges me with his elbow when he passes, grinning at me like he didn’t bare his soul a few seconds ago.
He’s almost as good at shutting off his emotions as I am.
“Exactly how many times have you watched this?” I ask, continuing to ignore the heavy moment where he saw too much of my pain.
I’ve mastered the art of pretending like everything is fine, so the rest of the morning, I spend joking and teasing Avi about his Bob Ross obsession. He doesn’t pressure me to talk about my past or bring up therapy again, but his story plays on a loop in the back of my mind.
Maybe talking to someone—who isn’t Linda—would help… but that would mean confessing everything that my mother did. I’m not even sure I remember all of it; there are some gaps in my memories and I’m terrified to find what lies under the black veil my mind draped over those moments.
