Chapter 4 Chapter 4

The Painful Memories 

Ava's POV 

The world outside the arena was too bright, too loud. My head ached with it. I had nowhere to go. My apartment was a crime scene. My car was still in the parking garage, but the thought of driving, of being alone in that small space, was suffocating.

I started walking. No destination. Just movement. The city was a blur of faces and noise, a place I didn't recognize anymore. Every siren, every shout, made me flinch. I was a raw nerve, exposed and flayed. I walked for hours, until my feet ached and the sun began to dip toward the horizon, painting the buildings in hues of orange and purple.

I found myself in a park I used to go to with Dylan. We'd sit on a bench and watch the kids play, and he'd talk about his future, about opening a sports camp for underprivileged kids, about a life beyond the flashing cameras and screaming crowds. 

I sat on that bench now, the wood cool against my jeans, and tried to summon his face. Not the dead, vacant stare from the bathroom floor, but the laughing, vibrant man I loved. The image was blurry, distorted, like a photograph left out in the sun.

A shadow fell over me. I flinched, my whole body tensing, preparing for a fight or a flight. I looked up.

It was Jace. He stood there, not looming, not threatening, just... present. He had two paper cups in his hands. He held one out to me. It was hot. Tea.

"You shouldn't be out here alone," he said. His voice was quiet, not accusatory, just a statement of fact. I took the cup, the warmth seeping into my frozen fingers. "How did you find me?" I asked.

He sat down on the other end of the bench, leaving a careful space between us. "This was Dylan's favorite bench. He told me once."

The casual reference to a conversation I'd never known they'd had sent a fresh pang of grief through me. I didn't want to share Dylan with him. I didn't want to share this memory.

"Why are you here, Jace?"

He sipped his coffee, his gaze fixed on the playground in the distance. "Because Dylan asked me to look out for you."

"You made that clear."

"No." He turned to look at me, and the setting sun caught the intensity in his eyes. "I didn't. What I said back there, to the detective... that wasn't the whole of it."

I waited, my heart a nervous drum against my ribs. "He didn't just say 'look out for you,'" Jace continued, his voice low. "He said, 'Protect her from her ghosts, Jace. And protect her from mine.'"

The words hung in the cooling air. Ghosts. Plural.

"What did he mean, 'his ghosts'?" I asked. Jace shook his head. "He didn't say. But he was scared. I've never heard him like that."

I looked away, toward the emptying park. I didn't want to believe him. I didn't want to trust him. He was the enemy, the guy I spent my life trying to beat. But there was a sincerity in his voice, a rawness that cut through the noise in my head.

"The detective thinks I killed him," I said, the words barely audible. "She thinks you don't remember," he corrected. "There's a difference."

"I didn't."

"I know."

"How?" The question was a desperate plea.

He studied my face for a moment. "Because the man who was investigating a conspiracy to protect you isn't the kind of man you'd kill over a simple argument."

My eyes burned. "How do you know he was protecting me?"

"He didn't say it, not directly. But the questions he asked... they were all about you. About your past. About Ethan."

A cold dread slithered down my spine. "Dylan knew Ethan was back before I did."

"I think so, yes."

"Why wouldn't he tell me?"

Jace leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Maybe he thought he could handle it. Maybe he was trying to find proof before he scared you. Maybe... he didn't want to admit that the monster you escaped was real, and he was sniffing around your life again."

His words were too close to the truth, a truth I didn't want to face. I had built a fortress around the part of my life that included Ethan. Dylan had never been allowed inside those walls. I thought I was protecting him. I thought I was protecting myself.

"There's something else," Jace said, pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He didn't hand it to me, just held it. "When I was at your apartment building this morning, before the police arrived... I found this taped to the inside of the mailbox in the lobby."

He unfolded it. It was a photograph. A grainy, long-lens shot of me and Dylan leaving a restaurant a few weeks ago. We were laughing. We looked happy. Scrawled across the bottom, in red marker, were two words.

"Almost there."

The blood drained from my face. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know." He refolded the paper. "But it wasn't there yesterday. I checked."

"You were at my building yesterday? Why?"

The question hung between us. He looked away, back toward the playground. "Because Ethan was seen in the neighborhood. Dylan called me. He was worried."

"Dylan called you," I repeated, the words feeling foreign. "About me."

"Yes."

The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken history. Five years of animosity, of rivalry on the court, of carefully constructed dislike, all built on a foundation I was just now realizing was a lie. Or at least, not the whole truth.

"Why?" I asked, my voice cracking. "Why would he call you?"

Jace finally looked at me, and the raw honesty in his eyes was a punch to the gut. "Because five years ago, the night you left Ethan, I was the one who drove you to the emergency room."

My breath caught. The memory slammed into me, a chaotic blur of pain and fluorescent lights and a deep, steady voice I hadn't been able to place. I remembered a black car, not my own. I remembered a stranger's jacket draped over my shoulders. 

But I had been so fractured, so consumed by pain and terror, the face had been lost. I'd assumed it was a kind stranger, a Good Samaritan whose name I never knew. It was him.

"You," I whispered. "It was you."

He nodded. "You don't remember. You had a concussion. You kept asking if he was going to find you. I told you he wouldn't. I promised."

The world tilted on its axis. My rival. My enemy. The man whose face I saw on posters opposite my own was the one who had been there on the worst night of my life. 

He was the one who had made a promise I never knew existed.