by A. P. Moraez
They stayed like that for one or two minutes, enjoying each other’s warmth and the feelings of acceptance, forgiveness and hope circulating all around them.
Martha and Tom took a step back first, then Lauren. Jeff, always the tactile big idiot he’d always been, didn’t let him or Cass go for a full minute after that, and when he finally did, it was with a sloppy kiss to his right temple. And this time — only this time — Ash didn’t have the desire to tell him off for drooling on him like that.
When the hug finally ended and Soph was tugging Jeff upstairs to check on little Trav, Ash found himself under Tom’s warm gaze. The man looked at him for a few seconds, then hugged him quickly one more time, then took a step back and, for God’s sake, wiped a few stray tears off his face. Ash had rarely seen the man crying. Ever.
“I only wish your life had been different,” Tom said. “I wish you’d had a father that loved you, and I wish you had grown up in a community that didn’t have people that made you wanna run away.” He coughed. “Nobody should have to go through something like that, let alone a kid who’d already lost his mom so early.”
“Oh, Tom—” Ash started, but Tom cut him off.
“But then we wouldn’t have you.”
Ash laughed, even as the words finished melting his heart. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Had things been different, then I probably would never have met any of you.” Ash looked at all of them. He cleared his throat. “And I wouldn’t have Logan, either. And he’s, like, one of the best things that ever happened to me. If I had to live through all that hell again, from my childhood up to the point you found me, just so that I could meet him, I would.”
Tom and Martha were smiling at him. Like, huge smiles.
“Right,” Martha said. “Grace, dear, do you care to help me check stuff out in the kitchen? We should make ourselves useful and start thinking of what to do for lunch, since we’re probably gonna be stuck here ‘till morn—”
Martha finished her sentence on a little cry, turning sharply to the general direction of the kitchen, where, by the sound of it, something — or rather, several somethings — had just been destroyed.
AFTER SIGNING FOR his family to wait where they were and be quiet, Ash ran to the kitchen. Logan’s house was monitored all around the clock and it had a hell of a security system, but those things didn’t matter much to the evil they were dealing with. He wouldn’t let it get to his family before going through him first.
With care, he moved to the corner of the entrance and took a peek around, to see what was up. When his eyes finally registered Logan, on his knees, face buried on his right hand while his left one lay bleeding at his side, Ash cried his name and rushed to his side.
“Logan! What happened?”
Logan didn’t reply, though. He was sobbing uncontrollably.
Desperate, Ash took in his surroundings. Glass shards were scattered against the wall right in front of him, the one that contained the white cabinets with the gazillion types of seeds Logan gobbled every morning with his fish and yogurt and vegetables. The top half of the bottle of scotch had survived intact, while the bottom had exploded against the wall. The pungent smell of alcohol was flooding the whole room, but all Ash could see was the blood.
When he tried to grab Logan’s hand to access the damage, though, the man pulled his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” he sneered. “I don’t deserve it. Let me feel the pain, Ash. Let me feel it.”
“Logan, what the hell are you talking about? Why did you do this to yourself?”
He tried again to go for Logan’s hand. This time, he let him touch him. Logan’s broad shoulders were shaking in tandem with his sobs and he just wouldn’t look at him.
“Logan,” Ash tried once more as his heartbeat picked up when he saw the gash running across Logan’s palm. There were little shards of glass embedded on his flesh. Just looking at it made pain cut through Ash too; that’s how bad it was. “Logan, please, talk to me.”
With wobbly words, Logan more hiccupped than said, “I was just getting myself a drink. Then I overheard what you said to them,” Logan gestured to their left, where only now Ash realized Martha, Lauren, Tom and Grace were watching from the entrance to the kitchen.
“Logan?” He was so confused. What could Logan have heard that would prompt him to lose his temper and hurt himself like this?
When, after another eternity of avoiding his eyes, Logan finally shuffled around on his knees to face him, the vision of his beautiful eyes surrounded by redness and brimming with tears made Ash hurt. Like, full body pain. Logan’s eyes weren’t made for sadness, let alone if the reason they were like that had anything to do with him.
“Logan.”
The confusion in that one single word must have been apparent, for Logan brought his good hand to cup Ash’s cheek and said, in trembling words, “How can you still think I’m the best thing that ever happened to you? How can you think that when it’s my fault you ended up in the hands of an animal?”
Ash gasped. Logan really believed that. After all he’d told them, explaining all the darkest parts of his past, the only thing he’d apparently took out from that was the only thing that would never be true: that it was his fault.
“Logan, no,” Ash said as he kissed the hand warming his cheek. “Absolutely not. None of it is your fault.”
“It is,” Logan cried, shaking his head. “If only I hadn’t feared my father so much. Had I only been stronger that day, you’d never had left and none of those—” He coughed, having difficulty breathing such was his distress. “Those horrible things wouldn’t ever have happened to you. And this wouldn’t be happening now and Morgan would still be fucking alive.”
Logan retrieved his hand and tugged at his hair, “But I was a coward. I caved under my father’s threats and I didn’t listen to my heart. I didn’t follow my instincts. Look what happened.” He brought his hand to Ash’s chest then, palm gliding slowly across the length where he now knew Ash’s scar ran. “Look what happened to you.”
This dumb, impossibly sweet man. Ash had been there, shitting bricks, thinking Logan would never see him the same way; that the man he loved would never be able to forgive him and accept those parts of him. Meanwhile he’d been beating himself up, blaming himself, for reasons that only existed in his head.
“That’s not true, Logan, and you know it, okay?” At the back of his mind, Ash knew this was no moment for smiles, but he couldn’t help it when his lips turned up a little. How could he just not smile, when the sweetest human being in the whole planet happened to be kneeling right in front of him, burying himself in unwarranted blame.
Logan wouldn’t acknowledge him, still hiccupping and having a full-on break down. So Ash did the only thing he could think of and kissed him.
It was a mellow, extremely wet and salty kiss, with just a little tinge of the taste of alcohol, probably a remnant of whatever Logan managed to swallow before overhearing the tail-end of that conversation and screwing up his hand as he smashed the glass against the counter and the bottle against the far wall.
When he backed up, Logan was looking calmer, his breathing more even and the constant stream of tears running down his face had somewhat diminished.
Ash smiled at him.
“I won’t hear any more of that garbage, okay? We both know now what were the circumstances that led to us being torn apart all those years ago. And it was not you, and it was not me. If anything, if it makes you feel better, you can put my dark years on your late father’s tab.”
Logan’s expression soured and his eyes darkened. “And I thought I hated him before,” he sneered.
Ash smiled a rueful smile and kissed Logan’s cheek, trying his best to get rid of all the stray tears. Most of them had disappeared somewhere in Logan’s beard.
“You should probably take care of that, son,” Tom said from where they were still all standing at the entrance of the kitchen. “Before he gets an infection or something.”
Ash nodded. “Yeah
, you’re right.” He rose and tugged Logan up by his not-messed-up hand. “Let’s get you fixed. I have supplies in our room. It’ll probably need some stitches.”
“You know how to do stitches?” Logan asked, befuddled.
Ash tried to be patient. It’d take a while for them to realize he knew way more than he let on. Living in the danger zone for more than four years of his life had thought him a lot of things.
He gave Logan a small smile of reassurance before he grabbed him by the hand and started on their way upstairs. To the others, he said, “We’ll take a while. The sedative I’ll give him for the pain will probably knock him out for a few hours after I clean the wound and stitch him up. Can you guys deal with lunch?”
“Yes, dear,” Martha said.
“Great.
“And please, if something else happens, let me know. Anything else. Anything weird, you let me know, okay? Even if you think it’s insignificant.”
The four of them exchanged looks, but agreed, nodding.
“If we don’t come down for lunch, feel free to eat without us.”
As they agreed with him once more, Ash leaned up and brushed a kiss on Logan’s lips before dragging him upstairs by his good hand.
LOGAN WINCED FOR the hundredth time as Ash finalized the last touches of the stitching job. They’d mostly kept quiet during the whole process, aside from Logan’s occasional groan when the needle punctured his skin.
He knotted the end of the final stitch, pulled Logan’s hand to his lips, and kissed it.
Logan was back to being quiet. But it was different from the quiet from before, in the living room; before the whole scene in the kitchen.
This time, differently from before, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of Ash. He liked when Logan looked at him, but this was getting on his nerves this time, for some reason.
“What?”
Logan didn’t reply. Instead, he gazed intensely right into Ash’s eyes for one more moment, then his gaze traveled down to the hand Ash had just kissed.
“I was just thinking… thinking of how much about you I probably still don’t know.” He paused and brought the hand closer to his face, examining it. “Like, how you know how to stitch wounds better than an actual doctor, and I had no idea.”
This was territory Ash wasn’t feeling like exploring with him. Not right now. It wasn’t even midday yet, and the day had rendered him exhausted already. He just wanted to snuggle in bed and maybe take a nap. Ash tried to dismiss the moment with what was probably the tiniest plastic smile. “You should probably take a shower,” he started, zipping the first-aid bag, “it would really help you relax and—”
“Wait,” Logan said, warm hand enveloping Ash’s forearm gently.
“Yeah?”
For a moment, Logan just stared at him, his mouth opening, as if he was going to say something, but then it closed again. The corner of his lips twitched and then pulled down. He started rubbing circles on Ash’s forearm, as he’d done since they were kids.
“I—” Logan exhaled sharply and rose from the edge of their bed, where he’d been seated while Ash patched his hand up. He pulled Ash closer, then clasped both his hands, wincing at the sting the movement probably caused him. The sapphires were so intense, Ash shivered. But he also shivered because he knew what was coming. “I was just wondering… what else do you know that I have no clue that you know?”
“Logan…” Ash tried to take a step back, but Logan didn’t let him, hands tightening around Ash’s just a little.
“Tell me,” Logan insisted, “please.”
Ash snorted a dry laugh. “Believe me, you really don’t want or need to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s just—”
“We promised, remember? That day on the club? No more lies or anything between us, Ash. Never again.”
Logan’s pleading eyes, so intense, but also vulnerable, were melting his defenses. He wanted to argue and to claw his way out of his arms and run. Anything but stain Logan’s opinions of him even more than he’d already done that morning, with every revealing word that’d left his mouth. On the other hand, Logan was right. No relationship could exist with lies and doubt in the middle.
Ash nodded, more to him than to Logan. “Let’s just say that if you’re ever shot or stabbed somewhere non-fatal, I can probably patch you up.”
“You did a lot of that while you were… there? Patching people up?”
Ash nodded. “After Lazarus… initiated me, I went under training for a few months. I learned basic self-defense and how to use a gun, at first. At some point, he realized I had a pretty good brain for the… business, so he started training me on negotiation techniques, and also intelligence stuff. You know, how security operated, what were his enemies, what kind of leverage he had on each and every one of them, and what kind of dirt he had on some of the more prominent figureheads in Tompas.”
Logan’s grip on his hands had tightened slightly as Ash spoke, but he seemed to realize that, and stopped, resuming the rubbing of circles on his skin.
“So you know basic self-defense too?”
Ash snorted. “That was just the first few months. My lessons never really stopped until well into my third year in service to Lazarus.”
Logan’s eyes had widened. “So, what? You’re kinda of a ninja? A spy or something?”
Ash smiled under Logan’s innocence. “That’s a waaay more charming way to put it.”
Logan’s forehead furrowed and he tilted his head slightly to the side.
Ash sighed.
“The men Leonardo hired to teach me weren’t there to teach me how to just defend myself, really. I only say self-defense because it’s less of a scare-show that way.”
“Tell me,” Logan growled. “You promised Ash. I wanna know.”
Ash stared right into those sapphires that had always gotten their way with him, rendering his own will useless. There was no fear there, only pure obstinacy. Why? Ash didn’t know. He couldn’t see what was the point of filling Logan’s head with even more ugliness and fear than he’d already done today.
“C’mon,” Logan insisted, “tell me.”
Ash sighed heavily. “They taught me how to defend myself from the average attacker, sure; how to disarm an attacker and escape from the most common dangers in the open field.” He paused, scanning Logan’s eyes again. He hadn’t even flinched. “They also taught me how to inflict the most pain. How to torture, both physically and psychologically.” Logan’s hands had an iron grip on his now, but he had asked for it, so Ash continued, “Through the years, I learned just about every way you can kill a person, Logan. Leo was a chemical engineer before he entered the crime world. He’s a psychopath, a little cocky and impatient, yeah, but he’s smart. He personally taught me about poisons and chemicals, venoms, and how they react in the body… what I should mix to make a person suffer unbelievable pain without passing out or dying, so that they would be fully awake while under torture.”
Logan was silent crying again, seeming to have given up on not hanging on to Ash’s hands for dear life.
“Logan,” Ash started, heart smashed at seeing Logan like that again, “if this is too much… if it’s starting to scare you… we don’t need to do this. There’s no point in you knowing this.”
Logan shook his head, wiping at his tears with his good hand. “No, it’s good for me to know.”
“How can any of this be good for you? You must think I’m a freak.”
Logan shook his head again, good hand back at cupping Ash’s face. “The only thing I think,” he said, voice shaking, “is that you’re the strongest fucking person I’ve ever met.”
And it was then that all the pressure he’d endured all morning fell down on him, and Ash broke down.
“Shh, don’t cry.”
He didn’t want to. They didn’t have time for tears. Not when there was a psychopath out there gunning for their heads, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t deserve this man cu
rrently pressing him tight against his warm chest.
“I was so scared, Logan. So scared,” he confessed, tears running free and mixing with the wool of Logan’s sweater. “Every word that fell of my mouth this morning… it was like I just knew they were pushing you away from me.”
“No, Ash, never…”
“But I just had to. I can’t just let that monster get to my family; get to you. I can’t.”
“Hey,” Logan murmured, bringing Ash’s eyes up with a finger under his chin, “stop with that nonsense right now. He’s not getting to anyone.”
Ash snorted, trying to wipe away his own tears at the same time. “You don’t get it, Logan. I told you. That man is sick, but he’s smart. Didn’t you hear a word I said today? We’re in danger. All of us.”
“I know, but now you have something you didn’t have back then.”
“What?”
“Me.”
Ash barked out a hysterical laugh, taking a step back from him.
“You’ve had a sheltered life, Logan.” Logan made as if he was going to retort, but Ash lifted his right hand to stop him right there. “And I’m not telling that as criticism, just as a matter of facts. You traveled the world, you modeled, you got famous. You probably ruled Hollywood in the last decade, having to worry about nothing but your job, with a full team of security on your tail all the time. Tell me I’m wrong,” Ash finished with an eyebrow up in question.
Logan’s jaw flexed for a second, before he acquiesced with a little nod. “You’re not.”
Ash nodded repeatedly. “So what exactly can you do? What can any of you do, uh?” Ash took a small step forward and grasped Logan’s bicep, squeezing it, as if his message could somehow have a better chance of registering in his brain if he did that. “When death comes knocking at your door — and it will, at some point or another, if I know that man at all — what will you do?”
Logan smiled smugly, covering Ash’s hand on his bicep with his bigger one and squeezing it. “To knock at my door,” he said, “he’ll need to get to the damned door first.”
