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Let’s Get Physical: Harris (Steve Burton) and Ava (Tamara Braun) can’t fight the feeling.
After months of lies, separation and pushing Harris away, Ava and the Salem cop finally succumb to passion.
“The way Ava and Harris first make love comes while he’s still healing from his gunshot wound. Isn’t that the way most first times are in the soap world?” teases Tamara Braun (Ava). “Seriously, the lead-up is sweet and light and unlike most of Ava’s sexual firsts. Ava has historically led with sex. This relationship with Harris was different. They were together a long time before they slept together. There was love before sex. I think that may have been a first for her.”
After they hit the sheets, the lovers receive a surprise visit from Stefan, who shows up on Ava’s doorstep. Harris tells Ava that Stefan was the one who shot him, and Ava is horrified to learn that Stefan tried to kill Harris. Reports Braun, “Ava is shocked and beyond livid. How could Stefan do that? [Ava] loses it on him and rightly so.”
Stefan insists that Clyde gave him no choice, noting that the thug threatened to have Gabi killed in prison. Harris firmly reminds Stefan and Ava that they should have come clean about Clyde from the get-go, noting that they could have averted all of this.
“Ava knows that Harris is right about going to him,” says Braun. “She was trying to protect him, but she didn’t in the end and made things worse for herself and Stefan. As far as Stefan’s excuse and her having used it before, Ava knows it’s just that, an excuse. There is always a choice. He made the wrong one.”
A bitter Stefan decides to divert the attention away from his own actions and reveals that he and Ava slept together. “Ava wants to pummel Stefan, because he is being spiteful in that moment,” assesses Braun. Ava immediately attempts to explain herself to Harris. “Ava says that it didn’t meant anything and that they were drunk,” says Braun. “It only happened once, and she regretted it.”
To Ava and Stefan’s surprise, Harris seems unfazed. He says the past is the past, then gives Stefan until the morning to turn himself in to the cops. After Stefan leaves, Ava is overcome by Harris’s support as the two of them admit they love each other.
“In that moment Ava is blown away,” shares Braun. “She never has met anyone like Harris, [who’s] so unconditionally loving and caring. She can’t believe that he forgives her.”
Not to mention, truly loves her. “Ava is overcome with emotion,” says Braun.
