It was all I had, and it was all I deserved.
“My father sent me to live with my aunt,” Ava said.
I sighed as I closed my eyes.
“I got to my house that day and my uncle was pulling up into the driveway to follow me there. He sent me to Spokane to try and… straighten me out.”
It was the way she said it that caused me to open the door. Ava slowly came into view, her trembling body shaking with tremendous force. Her eyes glistened with tears as she focused on my chest, refusing to meet my stare as I stood in front of her.
“Things didn’t work out?” I asked.
“I guess you could say that,” she said.
I gave her body a once over one last time before I threw the door open.
“Go sit on the couch. I’ll make us some coffee,” I said.
I heard her sigh as she scurried into my home. She sat on the couch, her back straight and her legs crossed at her ankles. She fluffed her hair back over her shoulders, giving me just a glance at her hands.
At the bruises and scratches that donned her knuckles.
It took every ounce of energy I had not to erupt. I slammed cupboard doors and tossed around mugs, brewing us a pot of very strong coffee. What the fuck had that woman done to Ava? What the hell was was wrong with her family? When the fuck were they going to understand just how screwed up they were inside?
I poured us each a cup of coffee, fixing it the way I knew she liked before I went to sit down next to her.
“Here,” I said.
She fluttered her eyes down to the mug before she reached for it. I got a good look at her hands. How battered and bruised and swollen they were. I grabbed her wrist, setting my mug of coffee down as I slowly slipped her long-sleeved shirt up her arm. There were bruises ricocheting up her forearms. Lashes and welts that could only be dealt by a ruler or a stick of some sort.
My blood was boiling in my vision as I released her wrist.
“What happened?” I asked.
Ava was staring into her mug of coffee, but she wasn’t drinking it.
“You can have whatever you want here. You know that,” I said.
“I just don’t think it’s wise to be drinking it,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked. “Because your aunt said so?”
“No,” she said. “Because I’m pregnant.”
My entire world slowed down as her words punched me in the gut. Pregnant? Ava was pregnant?
“You’re… how far…?”
“Four months,” she said as she looked over at me. “I’m four months pregnant, Travis.”
The gravity of the situation left me light-headed. Ava was pregnant. With my child. This beautiful young woman who had opened herself up to me and given me a part of her she could never give to anyone else was…
“Pregnant?” I asked.
“I know things didn’t turn out well between us, but I couldn’t get rid of this child,” she said. “I just couldn’t. The thought just… made me cry. I concealed it from my Aunt as long as I could, but once she tried to put me in a corset the secret came out.”
“Where did those marks on your arms come from?” I asked.
“That was just her way of punishing me. Corporal punishment when I didn’t fall in line with what she wanted.”