Chapter 130 THE TRUCE HAS A FLAW

Chapter 130 THE TRUCE HAS A FLAW
KIERAN
The truce had a flaw, and the flaw was this: I had agreed to it while still capable of being rational.
Rationality, I was discovering, had a shelf life.
It lasted approximately four days. Four days of watching Ava move through this house with something lighter in her face than I'd ever seen before, something that looked like relief, like a woman who had finally stopped pretending she only needed one thing at a time. Four days of watching Luca watch her, and Noah making her laugh from three rooms away, and telling myself I was fine, I was patient, I was evolved enough to manage this.
Day five, she walked into my office in a grey dress that did something unreasonable to every rational thought I'd been carefully cultivating, carrying two cups of coffee and a folder I hadn't asked for, and said, "Marcus said you'd been in here since five. I thought you might need reinforcements."
I should have said thank you. I should have taken the coffee and returned to the documents.
Instead I said, "Close the door."
She raised an eyebrow. But she closed it.
"Is everything alright?"
"I don't know." I stood, which was a mistake, because standing put me on the same level as her rather than safely separated by the desk, and the desk had been doing considerable emotional work for the past four days. "I've been trying to be reasonable. I want you to know that I've been trying very hard."
"I know you have."
"It's not going particularly well."
She set both cups down on the edge of the desk, careful, watching me with that particular quality of attention she had that made it impossible to perform anything. You couldn't be anything other than honest under it. I'd hated that about her, once. Loved it now, inconveniently.
"Tell me what you want," she said. "Not what you've agreed to. Not what the truce requires. What do you actually want."
"That question is either very kind or very cruel, I haven't decided which."
"Kieran."
I crossed the room in three steps and kissed her before the sentence had a chance to finish, and she met it without hesitation, the way she always did, the way that continued to undo every careful thing I'd built around myself since Charles died and this house became a battleground and she walked through the gates looking like someone who'd never been afraid of a fight in her life.
Her hands found my collar, my hands found her waist, and for a long moment the documents and the truce and the four days of deliberate patience ceased to exist. She tasted like the coffee she'd been carrying, and something warmer underneath it, and I thought, not for the first time, that there was something genuinely catastrophic about wanting someone this much.
When she finally pulled back, both of us breathing harder than the kiss strictly required, her eyes were dark and her lipstick ruined, and she looked at me with an expression I'd been trying to decode for months.
"You're going to make this very difficult," she said.
"I know. I'm choosing to anyway."
"The truce—"
"The truce says no sabotage and no manipulation. It doesn't say I have to stop wanting you." I let my thumb trace the line of her jaw, felt her exhale against my hand. "I'm not going to lie to you about what I feel to make a handshake easier to keep. That's not who I am."
"No," she said softly. "It isn't."
She stayed. For an hour, two, the documents forgotten on the desk, the coffee gone cold, the office holding the kind of quiet that accumulated slowly between two people who'd spent a long time circling something they'd finally stopped pretending to avoid.
We didn't resolve anything. That wasn't the point, not anymore. The point was honesty, and honesty, I was learning, rarely resolved anything quickly.
But when she finally left, door closing soft behind her, I stood at the window for a long time watching the gardens go gold in the afternoon light, and felt something in my chest that was either the beginning of peace or the end of control, and couldn't entirely decide which one I preferred.
AVA
I walked out of Kieran's office with two empty coffee cups, a folder I'd never actually opened, and the very strong suspicion that my definition of "not making things more complicated" had undergone some significant revision.
Luca was in the hallway.
Of course he was.
He looked at my face for exactly two seconds before understanding settled in his expression, quiet and unsurprised, the way he understood most things.
"I'm not going to apologize," I said, before he could say anything.
"I know."
"I told him the same thing I told you. No choosing. Not yet."
"I know that too." He studied me, that patient, unreadable quality he had that somehow never felt cold. "I'm not angry, Ava. I told you that already."
"I know what you told me. I'm checking what you actually feel."
Something flickered through his eyes, faint, quickly controlled. "What I feel is considerably messier than what I told you. But that's mine to manage, not yours." He stepped aside from the hallway, an unspoken exit offered without conditions. "Go. I have calls."
"Luca—"
"I'm fine." A pause, and then something quieter: "Ask me again tonight. I'll probably be more honest."
I made a note to ask him again tonight.