The Ultimate Chance-Chapter 102

"An order was messed up. Guess who specifically handled everything to do with it?" Mina confronted her when they arrived at her office.

"Is it Katy’s order?" She asked, since that was the only order she had handled specifically and Mina was implying she had something to do with it.

"She was overjoyed to be among the first Vaille users but you packed all the new user freebies and forgot the phone." Mina pointed at the unsealed box she had brought earlier and placed on her desk.

"Oh God," Avery sighed and rubbed her temples. She had wanted to test the phone and ensure it was working perfectly before sending it off to Katy, but ended up forgetting to pack it.

"You should thank him for the fact that the messed up order just happens to be Katy Blanc’s—she is the kindest woman on earth and her parents are your friends. If it were someone else, you would be finding a way to deal with hundreds of negative reviews. You berated me before for letting my feelings come in the way of my work but who the fuck is thinking with her pussy now?"

"Don’t be so mean, okay? This was a mistake." She snapped back.

"A mistake that could have been avoided if you had listened to your gut and settled the tension between you and Damon. But no, you chose to let it drag for long enough to affect your performance at work." Mina crossed her arms. "Listen, I’m not ready to lose my job, okay? So you better wear your bossy big girl pants and face your feelings."

"What a way to speak to your boss." She tried to make Mina shut up, but the latter scoffed.

"When you start acting like one, your favorite darling employee will treat you as one. Now if I were you, I would start drafting a lengthy letter to express my feelings for Damon.

"I don’t have that kind of time in my hands. I already used up too much time going to Angel’s school." She retorted.

"I wouldn’t touch any work until this is out of the way if I were you. You’d be signing ’D’Aboville’ on every official document."

She rolled her eyes. Mina was making it sound like she was a teenager with no control over her feelings, but she couldn’t put it past herself to do that. Hence, she decided to have a word with Damon the next time she saw him.

____

The weekend rolled by sooner than she hoped and the closer she was to the swimming pool, the more nervous she felt. She had decided to talk to him today but seeing him playing in the water with Angel, she suddenly didn’t know how to face him.

"Does anyone want apple juice?" She announced as she placed her tray with three glasses and a bottle of cold apple juice on the table. She pulled the chairs around it knowing they would want some, adjusted her cover up and sat down. As she thought, it didn’t take a minute for them to leave the swimming pool. Damon was a step ahead of Angel as the latter chased him, only to slip. Her heart lurched into her throat as she shot to her feet but she sighed in relief when Damon caught him in time.

"Are you okay, buddy?" He asked, and she noticed him let out a sigh of relief when Angel nodded. He held Angel’s hand protectively until the latter was wearing his flip flops, making Avery inwardly gush at how cautious he was with Angel.

They raced the short distance to her and when Angel won, he got to hug his mother first, which had become some kind of competition between the father and son. Damon was obviously faster than Angel but knowing how important it was to Angel to get he first hug, he had been letting the boy win every time and Avery couldn’t help smiling at the thought.

Damon sat opposite her and looked right into her eyes. "You are hiding something."

"No I’m not." She looked around for something to talk about and remembered Angel’s school.

"They found a teacher specifically for Angel. Can you imagine?" She briefly talked about it, wishing Angel was playing and taking his father’s attention from her instead of focusing so much on his juice.

"This is why everyone says Monarch Academy is a good school." He played along.

He wouldn’t admit having done anything to do with it. She would have fallen for his facade if she didn’t know how fast he evaded her gaze when he was hiding something—not that she was complaining. The fact that he secretly did this and didn’t expect acknowledgment for making his son’s life better made her reevaluate her opinion of him. She was wrong before when she assumed he was trying to prove himself as a good father on purpose.

When Angel saw Chloe come in through the swimming pool gate, he ditched the glass he was holding in preparation to ask for more juice and ran towards her. Damon used the chance to openly gawk at Avery.

"You look sexy." He looked her up and down, igniting her skin with his gaze.

She instinctively looked down at herself. What she was wearing could barely be called a swimsuit. The tiny, red bra didn’t leave much to the imagination and neither did the little piece of fabric meant to cover her crotch. She had a feeling it might be transparent once she entered the water, hence the cover up and her reluctance to swim.

"Thank Chloe for that." She chuckled. He didn’t look like he was paying attention to what she was saying, his eye twitching instead. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." He made a mental note to order the latter’s favorite food later, but studied Avery curiously. "Why won’t you swim?"

"Are you an idiot? Our son is here." She scolded him. Things might just turn pg-rated.

"Our son? Where is he?" He shrugged and she glanced behind her at the gate where she knew Angel had run. He was nowhere to be seen and Chloe had disappeared too. That explained Damon’s eyes a moment ago. He was shooing Chloe off and she took Angel with her.

"Our son has way too many friends to care about his parents swimming on their own. Come on." He tugged on her cover up and when she let it slide off her shoulders, he sucked in a breath. Swimming was the last thing they would be doing in the pool.

"I’d be lying if I said I never thought about being with someone else." She remarked when they were in the water. He let go of her waist that he was holding. "Why would you say that?" Why was it suddenly about someone else?

"Is there someone else?" The words felt like poison when he said them out aloud.

"No." She laughed to ease the awkwardness and had to explain. "What I meant is, I have always dreamed of having someone who would love me and my son. He’d have to treat Angel as his son and if we ever had kids, he’d treat them as full siblings because Angel would be his son too. I know, the only place that kind of person can ever be found is in fairy tales." She looked up and met his gaze. "...or right before me."

He frowned as he figured out where she was going with this and when he realized what she meant, he agreed with her. "The two of you are my life."

"It took me way too long to realize this." She held his face and kissed his lips gently. "I was so focused on assuming the kind of man I just described wouldn’t be Angel’s biological father that I didn’t see how much you treasured him."

He was a little confused. "You have loved me all along but you didn’t think I ticked all the boxes in your mental checklist, so you stayed away?" When she nodded, he pushed her against the wall of the pool and kissed her. "Time to get that useless checklist off your mind."

She giggled when he tickled her, acknowledging the relief she felt now that it was off her chest.

....

When the drained duo finally made it to the house, Chloe followed them with her naughty gaze.

"I know that look." Avery called her out for probably doing something she knew she shouldn’t.

She looked down at Angel in her arms. "He’s asleep."

Avery gently picked him up and took him to his room to put him in bed. Chloe tagged along to ask for gossip. "Did you finally say it?"

"Say what?" She feigned ignorance.

"Don’t give me that. We both know why I took Angel out of your hair." Chloe crossed her arms. Once Avery had put Angel to sleep, she grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room. "Come on. Tell me all about it over the movie."

She nodded and returned to the living room with Chloe, sitting in the spot Angel had been before. "Wait. You guys are not watching the boss baby?" This didn’t happen every day.

"He wanted to watch Vampirina today. I wonder who told him about it." She pretended not to know.

Avery crossed her legs and pulled a throw pillow over to place on her lap for support. "I told him how I feel and the idiot said nothing about it, and right now he is in my cellar probably drinking. What’s wrong with men? Why do they say nothing and expect us to assume that means something?"