“Why was he hugging you for so long?” John ran his fingers over Ava’s soft skin. He loved the feel of her against him, naked and pliant from their lovemaking. She felt so damned right in his arms.

She lifted her head and looked at him. “Why was who hugging me for so long? What are you talking about?”

“The accountant guy? In the store?”

Her eyes went round and filled with a sorrow that shocked him.

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about that,” She said, laying back down and wrapping her arms tightly around him. “It’s horrible.”

John tensed. “What’s horrible, Ava?”

“His friend was killed. One of the boys that started the business with him. He was killed in a mugging gone wrong, they think.” She sat up again, looking at him. “Oh, it might be your department looking at it. I don’t know. I’m not sure where it happened, but I assume it happened in the city.”

John frowned. It could be anyone, but it sounded like it was possibly the case Zaragoza and Nate Ryder were working. They’d ID’d their victim, and John thought he remembered them saying it was an accountant.

“Could be,” was all he offered her. He didn’t know if his unit had caught the case, but even if he’d known anything about it, he couldn’t share it with her.

She squeezed him again as she spoke. “Anyway, it’s horrible. Corey said they thought they’d start their business and spend half their time skiing as the money rolled in. It might have, too, if they hadn’t picked such an expensive place for their office. I think they just got a little too ahead of themselves.”

John ran his hand up her arm and back down again. He could feel the sorrow in her voce for these young men. For all of them, not just the one who’d been killed.

It was something John wished he still felt. As a detective, he did his best to find justice for the victims of crimes like this and for their families. But doing his job meant he had to shut off his feelings sometimes. If he thought about the life each of the victims left behind, of what had been cut short for them, of the dreams they’d never realize—he’d lose his mind. So, he thought of all of that for each of them, but more on a generic level.

It let him maintain the kind of distance he needed to do the job. To stay on the job.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. He hated she was hurting. He hated for her to have anything happening in her world that made her sad.

She was quiet for a long time.

“Life’s too short, you know?” she said. “Those boys deserved some happiness. Everyone does.”

“Lucia said something like that to me yesterday.”

“You don’t sound like you believe it,” Ava said, sitting up to look at him with anger flashing in her eyes.

John shrugged. “I don’t. Not the kind she was talking about, anyway.”

She poked him hard in the shoulder. “Explain.”

“Ow,” he laughed, rubbing the spot with his bandaged arm before holding it up. “I’m injured. You’re supposed to be good to me.”

She threatened him with her poking finger. “Then talk. What does that mean, you don’t deserve to be happy?”

He sighed and pulled her back down against him. Talking wasn’t easy for him, but it would be easier if she wasn’t looking at him.

“Not in the way she means, honey. She means I deserve to find someone and be happy with them the way she is with Carlos.”

“The man she’s marrying?”

“Yeah.” He let his hand start its pattern up and down her arm again. “They’re having a baby.”

His voice cracked on the words, and he almost didn’t get them out.

Ava stilled. “That must be hard for you.”

John’s laugh was bitter and filled with the ache of what he had to tell her. “We tried to have a baby for so long. We tried everything. Three rounds of in vitro almost killed us financially, but when one didn’t get her pregnant and the other two resulted in miscarriages, I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t watch her go through the treatments, the heartache. I asked her to stop.”

“Oh, John.” There was so much pain in her words for him. This was why he didn’t like talking to people about things. He didn’t want to share this sadness. There was no reason for her to carry this with her, too. “But why does that make you think you don’t deserve happiness? Any man would have a hard time watching their wife go through that.”

He lay without answering for a long time. She didn’t rush him, and he loved that about her. She would push him to talk, but she’d wait for him to be ready to get it out.

“I couldn’t give her a baby. She says her doctor doesn’t think there was anything wrong with either of us. That maybe we can have children with other people, just not together. But, I’ve always felt like I should have been able to give her a baby. And then I gave up on it. On us. When she wanted to keep trying, I just couldn’t. I moved out of our room and slept on the couch. I refused to make love with her. What kind of a husband does that?”

Ava let out a weighted sigh. “A husband who’s hurting. One who experienced the losses of those babies the same way his wife did, but who was dealing with it differently. And yes, maybe you could have dealt with that differently. Maybe she needed you to do something different, but who’s to say you were the bad guy there? Maybe she could have given you more time to process things?”

“She gave me months. I just couldn’t watch her go through that again.”

“John,” Ava said, with the patience of someone who clearly thought she was speaking to a Neanderthal, “when were you talking to Lucia?”

“She came to the precinct yesterday. She wanted me to know about the baby before the wedding.”

“And she told you she wants you to be happy? That she wants you to find what she has?”

“Yes.”

“And she told you her doctor said you might be able to have a family with another woman even though you and Lucia weren’t able to?”

Ava sat up and looked at him again, the exasperation in her gaze as evident as it was in her tone. “Does that sound like a woman who blames you for anything? Who thinks you alone were at fault for your divorce or for the fact you guys weren’t able to have a family?”

John felt a little like he did when he was on the stand and a defense attorney was using him as a punching bag. Only, with them, he had his defenses up and was able to fight back. With Ava, he felt stripped bare.

“No?” he said, but damn if it didn’t come out as a question.

She took his face in her hands. “You’re a good man, John Sevier. Just because you and Lucia weren’t able to make your marriage work doesn’t mean you aren’t. And it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to have a happy marriage with someone else down the road, whether that includes children or not.”

John couldn’t stop the flash of an image of he and Ava married and happy together. Still, just because she was saying that didn’t make it all true. And it didn’t mean she’d changed her mind about what she wanted from this relationship.

What it did mean was that he was confused as hell about what he wanted and what he was feeling. But part of him wanted to believe what she was saying. Part of him wanted to believe that he could be as good a husband as she believed he could. That he could have the life and love he had given up on. Because giving up on dreaming for it had never meant he’d given up on wanting it.