by Aly Martinez
He pointedly glanced over at all of my stuff, which was in a messy pile in the corner of his otherwise pristine room. “I can tell.”
“Oh, shut up! I’m messy, but I’m really good at cleaning. Please, Flint. I need to make some money.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll give you money.” He pulled me down to rest on his chest.
I sat right back up. “I’m not taking your money,” I said, appalled by the very idea.
He laughed. “Says the woman who steals my wallet every chance she gets.”
“That’s not fair. I always give it back. I’ve never stolen anything from you for real,” I snapped as my heart began to race.
The impulse to run overwhelmed me as his words from the past hit me like a hurricane, stripping me bare before blowing away any hopes I’d been clinging to since Flint had walked back into my life.
I am not a criminal.
Who was I kidding?
That’s all I’ve ever been in his eyes.
“Ash?” he said as I started to slowly scoot toward the edge of the bed. “Where are you going?”
The covers fell away, exposing his nakedness, as he pushed up on his elbows. Crawling out of his bed, I etched the sight into my memory.
He’s gorgeous.
Maybe he was right. I was a thief.
Because I had made a million memories with Flint over the last day, and I was taking every single one of them with me when I left.
I pasted on a fake smile. “I’m still hungry. I’m gonna warm up some food. Just go to sleep. I’ll be right back.” I went to my pile in the corner and tugged some clothes on.
“Ash, what the fuck are you doing?” Flint growled, grabbing his crutches to follow me.
Gathering my hair and pulling it from the back of my shirt, I turned to face him. “I’m just getting something to eat. What are you doing?” I teasingly raked my eyes over his naked body as he approached. Then I let out a laugh, but only to cover the quiver of my chin.
I was dying inside.
Completely withering away at the idea of leaving him again. Yet I had to do it.
“Since when do you need shoes to warm up food in the kitchen?” he snarked, catching my arm.
Suddenly, I became frantic. Lying wasn’t working, but I had to get out of there.
I lifted my chin and straightened my back. Very calmly, I demanded, “Let me go, Flint.”
We both knew I wasn’t just talking about physically.
He flinched but then quickly recovered. His eyes narrowed as he dropped his hand.
Freedom—and a lifetime of agony—was only a hundred-yard dash away.
Unfortunately, my body once again unlocked the magic of teleportation, because in the blink of an eye, I was flat on the ground with Flint on top of me. His crutches were still attached to his forearms as he pinned me to the ground.
“You will not take off on me without an explanation of what the fuck just happened. Not ten minutes ago, you were riding my cock. Now, you’re telling me to let you go.”
“Please,” I whispered, turning my head so I didn’t have to see the determination in his eyes.
He’d more than made it clear that he wanted me to stay; I couldn’t be reminded of that as I made my escape.
He shook his crutches off one by one then forced my eyes back to his. “Don’t you dare shut down on me. What the hell is going on inside your head right now? Start talking.”
Flint couldn’t walk very well, but he had mastered the pinning-to-the-ground thing. I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried.
And I definitely tried.
Finally, I gave up attempting to shimmy out from under his bulky body and said, “I want a job.”
“Fine. Get a fucking job. All I said was that I wouldn’t get you one cleaning the gym. My woman is not cleaning up after a bunch of nasty-ass men who can’t even hit a urinal when they are standing in front of it. No fucking way.”
Okay. So that made sense, but it wasn’t the root of the problem.
“I don’t want your money. I might be a thief, but I’m not a beggar.” My traitorous voice quivered at the end.
His tense body slacked in understanding. “You’re not a thief, Ash.” He tried to kiss my lips, but I turned my head, so it landed on my cheek. “You’re not a thief,” he repeated into my ear.
I flipped my head to the other side, wishing I’d preemptively pulled a Van Gogh and cut the other ear off.
“You. Are. Not. A. Thief.”
But words could never be trusted any more than they could be unsaid—or, in my case, forgotten.
“Get off me.”
He was terrible at following orders, because if anything, he got on me more. Shifting to cover me completely, he placed a kiss on my exposed neck. “I made a joke about you stealing my wallet. I didn’t mean anything by it. If you want the truth, I fucking love when you swipe it. It makes me laugh every time. And that’s something I didn’t do a whole lot of while you were gone. If a job is important to you, I’ll help you find one. Maybe you could do some filing for Till or Slate. Their offices are a wreck.
“But please understand that I want to provide for you. I’m sorry. I know we are just starting over and all that bullshit, but I have worked my ass off, and in the back of my mind, it was always so I could have something to offer you if, and when, I got you back. Ash, I’m half of a man who limps through life on crutches. I’ll never be able to scoop you off your feet the way Quarry did today. Even fucking you the way I want is a challenge. I have a lot of limitations in life, but providing for you will never be one of them.”
My heart shattered.
I was hurt, but I wouldn’t allow him to feel that way.
Turning to face him, I cupped his jaw with both hands. After pressing a reassuring kiss to his mouth, I said, “You are not half of a man, and anyone who has ever met you knows that. Especially me.” I kissed him again.
His lips twitched against mine. “Ash, you are not a thief, and anyone who has ever met you knows that. Especially me.”
A megawatt smile formed on his lips.
Son of a bitch!
“Oh my God, you did that on purpose!” I yelled, causing him to laugh and drop his head to my shoulder. “You just made me feel sorry for you to prove a point.”
He continued laughing.
“What kind of asshole manipulates a woman’s feelings just to use them against her?” My voice broke on a sob.
His head immediately popped up, and his laughter fell silent. “That’s not what . . .” he started but stopped mid sentence when he caught sight of my victorious grin. “Oh, you are so going to pay for that.” He began tickling me as I squirmed underneath him.
For several minutes, we rolled around on the floor, laughing and acting like the kids we really were. Finally, when we were both out of breath, we climbed into bed. Flint ordered me to undress then promptly juggled me into our position. It was late, and we were exhausted.
I wished I could stay in that bed with him forever.
I wished I could let go of the past and trust his words.
His smartass joke was only a Band-Aid over the gaping wound that was killing our relationship before we had even gotten started.
Or maybe my doubts were killing us.
As I snuggled into his arms, I breathed in deeply, trying to burn that moment into my memory forever.
I would need it more than anything else when I started over again.
I WOKE UP EARLY THE next morning with my hands kneading Ash’s breasts. She was sound asleep, but my cock twitched between us. I would have given anything to take her right then, but I knew I should wait. She had gone from being virtually untouched for nineteen years to having come at least a dozen times in under two days. That night was our first official date, and I had every plan of ending it with my cock buried to the hilt inside her. So, despite the ache between my legs, I let her rest.
The clock flashed six A.M. but there was no possible way I could have fallen back to sleep.
I shifted, trying to scoot out of bed, but unlike Awake Ash, Sleeping Ash was a cuddler. She followed me as I tried to inch my way out from under her. Then I chuckled when she all but crawled on top of me.
The sun was just starting to light the room, but coffee would have to wait. I’d been starved of her for entirely too long. Wrapping my arms around her, I spent an hour soaking her in as she slept peacefully on top of me. The last two days played on a loop while the previous years faded into nothing more than a distant memory.
We still had so much stuff to work through—the misunderstanding the night before being the prime example—but I was committed. I’d talked a big game about making her fall in love with me again and getting to know the real Ash Mabie.
But the truth was that I didn’t need to know any more about her.
I love her.
Every crazy, quirky bit of her, I undeniably loved.
As I kissed the top of her head, my eyes drifted to my old book she had used as a journal over the years, sitting on her nightstand.
It was probably a gross invasion of privacy, but I had spent the day prior reading every word she’d written inside that Dave Eggers book. It had taken me a little while to figure out what the highlights meant, but I finally came to the conclusion that they were her streams of consciousness written in code. The random pink-highlighted letters all combined into sentences about how she’d been happy. She’d rambled about people she’d met, books she’d read from the library, and the longest of all was when Judy had baked a cake for Ash’s birthday.
The blue seemed to be when she had been sad. She’d written about missing her dad even though she knew she had done the right thing by turning him in. She’d mentioned how hard it had been being on the run, and once, she’d debated stealing food versus being hungry. It was all I could do not to set the book on fire after that.
However, I tried to focus on the green letters. Those were her dreams. There wasn’t an F, L, I, N, or T in that book that wasn’t highlighted in green. She hadn’t been lying. I had been walking in every single dream she’d had. But what bothered me was that I was usually walking out on her.
Her subconscious couldn’t have been more wrong. I was never letting her go.
Some time later, I drifted back to sleep with her still snuggled on top of me.
It wasn’t until I woke up that I realized that, while I might not ever let her go, holding on to her wouldn’t be easy, either.
“Ash?” I groaned, stretching my stiff muscles across the empty bed. Prying my eyes open, I looked at the clock.
How the hell did I sleep to eleven?
“Ash,” I called again, but the house remained notably silent. I pushed to my feet and tugged a pair of shorts and a t-shirt on. Then I headed out to find her.
Wandering around the house, I called her name, but room after room, I came up empty.
“Ash!” I yelled up the stairs that led to the unused spare bedrooms.
I’d bought that house determined to one day be able to navigate those stairs. They were a physical reminder that, while I was up on two legs, I was a long way from full mobility. They both taunted me and drove me on a daily basis.
I started the daunting task of climbing them, but at the last minute, I talked myself out of it, deciding to check the weeds instead.
I checked every possible room in my house, but she was nowhere to be found. My mind began to race with possibilities, stretching the gamut of “She’ll be back any minute” to “She’s gone and I’ll never see her again.”
Heading back to my room, I grabbed my cell phone, panic building with every step.
Surely, she wouldn’t try to run again?
We’d made some great strides the night before, and we were supposed to have a date that night.
When I rounded the corner of the room, relief settled in my chest—her clothes were neatly folded in the corner. They were a mess the night before, so at some point that morning, she had to have folded and organized them. The relief was short-lived, though, because the messenger bag she used to carry everything was notably missing.
She wouldn’t have left her clothes though.
Would she?
There was only one thing I knew for a fact Ash would never leave behind—and unfortunately, it wasn’t me.
My pulse spiked as I slowly turned toward her nightstand, praying with all of my heart that I was wrong.
“Oh God,” I breathed, stumbling back several steps, almost falling to the ground before getting my crutches back under myself.
The empty spot where her book had once lain gutted me.
She’s gone.
“You need to calm the fuck down,” Till barked as I threw the malfunctioning coffee maker against the floor.
It had been two hours since I’d realized that Ash had taken off, and just like all the years before, I was waffling between despair and anger. For the first hour and a half, I drove around looking for her. But with every passing minute, hope of finding her faded further out of my reach.
Out of sheer desperation, I’d called Till, who had, in turn, called Leo.
The search for Ash Mabie was on all over again.
“No, what I fucking need is a goddamn cup of coffee and a woman who doesn’t run away every chance she gets.”
“Well, I happen to agree with you, but right this very second, you have a broken coffee maker and a woman who may or may not be missing. So let’s calm the hell down and try to figure this out.”
Eliza stopped pacing around my couch long enough to ask, “Do you want me to make a coffee run?”
“No, I don’t want you to make a goddamn coffee run,” I snapped at her.
Till quickly corrected me. “Hey! Watch your mouth. She was trying to help.”
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and dropping my chin to my chest.
This was not happening.
Not again.
Not when I’d just gotten her back.
“Chill out. We’re going to find her. Just like we did last time,” Till assured.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “When? In three years, like last time? Just to keep her for forty-eight hours before she runs again? I can’t spend my life trapped inside that vicious cycle!” I yelled without lifting my head.
The problem was that I couldn’t step out of the cycle, either. Not as long as she was part of it.
Till squeezed my shoulder. “What are you saying? You want me to call Leo off?”
“No! I just want someone to fucking find her and make her love me the way I love her. I want her to want to stay with me.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair, completely defeated.
Suddenly, Leo’s voice joined the conversation. “Well, now, you just sound like a pussy.”
My head snapped up to find him and Slate standing behind Till.
Leo took a step forward. “Get yourself together and stop acting like a bitch. Your woman will be here in ten minutes. She was with Liv at a thrift store across town.”
My eyes flashed between him and Slate as I attempted to get my emotional breakdown under control.
Only I couldn’t do that at all.
The sudden rush of relief left me shaky. Leo was right; I had never looked like a bitch more in my life. But I was completely okay with that.
She’s on her way home.
I blew out a loud breath and walked over to the couch, flopping down to hide the effects the adrenaline was having on my already weak legs.
“Awww, she was shopping,” Eliza cooed, joining me on the couch.
I cleared the lump from my throat before announcing, “I’m gonna kill her.”
Till chuckled. “It’s probably easier to buy her a cell phone.”
“How the hell did she end up with Liv?” I asked Leo.
“She called Q this morning and got her number. I’ll be honest. It was just luck that I found her so quickly. I was looking for my keys to come over here when Sarah told me Liv had taken the car to go shopping. Called Liv to tell her to get
her ass back home and she told me she was with Ash.” He shrugged. “I’m still billing you though. And just so you know, Sundays are time and a half.” He laughed.
I didn’t. I was fuming.
I was pissed at myself for having overreacted and assumed the worst, but also at Ash for not at least leaving a note to let me know where she had gone.
But mainly at myself.
“All right. Thanks for coming over, but if she’s on her way back, I need all of you to get the fuck out.”
“Where the fuck have you been?” Flint growled from the couch the second I walked though the door.
I set my bags down on the ground and ran my fingers through my freshly trimmed hair. “I’m starting to sense a pattern forming here. Is that the way you’re planning to greet me every time you see me? Because I have to be honest. It’s not working for me.”
“It is when I’ve spent half the day thinking you took off again.”
“What?” I asked, surprised. “Why would you think that? I just went to run some errands.”
“You couldn’t leave a note?” he asked rudely.
I swayed my head from side to side, pretending to consider it. “I guess I could. I just didn’t think about it.” I shrugged. “Hey, guess what?”
He didn’t ask the obligatory, “What?” He just blinked at me in disbelief.
Finally, I asked, “What?”
“I spent the entire morning worried about you. I destroyed my coffee maker and was about twelve seconds away from a nervous breakdown. And you want me to ‘guess what’?” He threw up some very angry air quotes.
“Well I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s a really good ‘guess what.’” I waggled my eyebrows then repeated, “Guess what?”
He dropped his head back to stare up at the ceiling, mumbling what sounded like a prayer for patience.
Apparently, Flint Page was not a fan of guessing games, so I just went straight to the point. “I got a job! You are looking at the newest shampoo girl at To Dye For. I saw the help wanted sign, went in and talked to the owner this morning. Bam! Ten minutes later, I was employed and getting a new free haircut. Then—oh, this is my favorite part—Liv and I went to the thrift shop and I found the most adorable little black dress for our date tonight. It’s really simple, but it makes my boobs look amazing.”
