Her Independence Day

by Victoria Belle

  And the way she leaned into me didn’t contradict that thought.

  I spun her around and she laughed. Her ponytail slapped across my neck, and I inhaled the scent of her shampoo. I caught her mid spin and pulled her back so I could dip her. She was smiling brightly and looking right into my eyes.

  I pulled her back up, and she braced herself with both hands on my chest. She was out of breath, and her lips were slightly parted. She must have painted them with pink lipstick earlier. The only color that remained was on her cupid’s bow and the outside of her lower lip. Her eye makeup was minimal but a little smudged. Inside the bar was hot and muggy, and I assumed makeup didn’t hold up all that well to heat.

  But she looked damn beautiful. As always. Cripplingly, deadly beautiful.

  There were so many things I wanted to say to her, and it felt like we were the only two people in the place as she threw her head back and laughed as I twirled her again. I wanted to tell her how I had felt about her all this time. How every passing day only got worse, not easier, and how her engagement had ruined me.

  That was why I had been so forward with how I felt about Nick. It had been a desperate, last-ditch effort to get her to leave him. Not to leave him and come running to me, but just to leave him and find someone better for her. Someone worthy of her.

  I kept my mouth shut and settled for watching her dance, which was a reward in itself. She was a bright beacon on the middle of the dance floor, and every man in the place was aware of her. She radiated joy and youthfulness and fun. She had since she was a young girl. And I’d been drawn to her positivity and held captive by it for most of my life.

  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than on this dance floor with her, though, regardless of how big it made the hole in my chest feel.

  8

  Jesse

  Dean and Ashley came stumbling back to the table after they’d been on the dance floor for a good twenty minutes or so. She was flushed, giggling, and breathless, and there were little beads of sweat on her upper lip. She wiped it away and grabbed her drink from the edge of the table, which I’d been standing guard over since Dean pulled her away.

  Ethan was chatting with Lulu, and the two were laughing obnoxiously. Dean leaned against the table and joined in on their conversation as Ashley tightened her ponytail and caught her breath.

  I tipped my head to the door. “Fresh air?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  I took the lead, and she followed behind with her fingers pinching the back of my shirt. This was common. Usually when we were in a crowded place, she’d hold on to my shirt to prevent us from getting separated. I liked how it felt having her need to be close to me. It echoed my need for her to be close, too.

  I pushed through the front door and went around the side of the building where there were less people and less cigarette smoke.

  Ever since joining the military, I’d had to give up smoking. As a teenager, I’d been a rebel who pushed the envelope every chance I got. So, of course, I smoked like a chimney. My lungs had suffered for it and trying to keep up with the physical training for the first few months of my joining the military had been brutal. But in time, my lungs healed, and I regained my endurance. The cravings abated, and I started craving protein instead of nicotine. But walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke after I’d been drinking brought the cravings back tenfold.

  “You want one, don’t you?” Ashley asked as she pressed her back up against the side of the building. She was looking up at me from beneath her blonde brows, and a curious smile played on her perfect lips.

  “More than air.”

  Ashley giggled and shook her head. “They’re cancer sticks.”

  “I know.”

  “But you still want one?”

  “I want a hundred. It defies logic. You were smart never to try one in the first place.”

  Ashley smiled and bent her knee to press the sole of one sandal against the wall behind her. She crossed her arms, which pushed her cleavage up. I looked and internally cursed myself for doing so. If she noticed, she didn’t let on. Instead, she took a deep breath, and her cleavage swelled even more, and exhaled slowly. “Well, I would have, but I had provoked my mother enough by telling her I wanted to be an artist. Adding cigarettes to the mix would just be stoking the flame, and she would have changed my curfew to nine o’clock instead of ten. Maybe even eight if she was feeling particularly malevolent.”

  I snorted. “Your mother had it easy with you. She just had no idea.”

  Ashley shrugged.

  I moved to stand beside her and stood with my shoulder almost touching her arm. She was staring ahead, lost in thought, and I let her stay quiet for a little while before clearing my throat. “So, what’s new, Ash? It’s been forever since I saw you. And you’re all quiet. That’s not like you.”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t an Ashley smile. It was an I’m-expected-to-smile-now sort of smile. “Things have been… rough.”

  The tightness in her voice had me concerned. “What happened?”

  She glanced up at me. She was so small. I towered over her. Then she flashed me her bare left hand. It took me a moment to register that there should have been a diamond on her ring finger. “I called the engagement off.”

  I stood there like an idiot, trying to think of something to say besides, “Fuck yeah,” and throw my fist in the air in victory.

  Ashley spared me having to say anything and sighed. “Things were getting really bad for months, and I kept giving him chance after chance, and then last month, I walked in on him with another girl in our bed.”

  Bastard. Bottom-feeding piece of shit bastard.

  “He tried to justify it, which made it so much worse. So I made plans to come back here. I packed up my bag three days later and gave him the ring back.” She looked like she was seeing the memory playing over in her mind. And the expression on her face was worried or frightened. That didn’t sit right with me. She blinked out of her reverie and looked at her bare hand. “It’s all still really strange to know it’s over.”

  “I’m sorry, Ashley.”

  “You don’t have to be. It’s not your fault. I should have listened to—” She broke off and shook her head. “It’s over now.”

  We stood quietly together for a minute. I knew what she’d been about to say. She should have listened to Dean. I let it lie and only spoke up a few minutes later. “How’d he take it when you told him it was over?”

  “Badly. Really, really badly.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “He scared me a little.”

  My chest immediately puffed up and my hands clenched into fists at my side. “Did he hurt you?” I blurted out.

  She shook her head once. Slowly. “No, but… but there were a couple minutes there where I thought he was going to. I was sure he would. But he didn’t. He let me leave. And I ran, Jesse.” She looked up at me with glossy eyes. “I ran. And he’s been messaging me almost every day since, and I can’t bring myself to answer him. I just want all that time we spent together to disappear. I want to be able to forget it all, but I can’t because it follows me around like this dark, nagging, ruthless fucking cloud. And I just can’t shake it and—”

  I wrapped my arms around her and drew her to my chest. She stood paralyzed for a second, and then her arms were wrapped around my waist, and she was nuzzling her face into my shirt. She didn’t sob, but I knew she was holding it in. I could feel it in the tightness of her shoulders and the way she held her breath.

  “Ash,” I said gently. “You’re here with us now.”

  She took a shaky breath. “I know.”

  “And you’re safe with us.”

  “I know,” she said again.

  I rubbed her back and rested my chin on top of her head. I’d held her like this before. Once, in high school, when she had come home from a date with a boy who stood her up. And once when her mother told her that she would not be paying to send h
er to art school because that was no way for a grown woman to make a living and support herself in the real world.

  This time felt different, though. This time felt raw. This time was pain instead of disappointment.

  “You know, we could tell Dean all this shit and he’d fly out to New York City and beat Nick into the pavement.”

  Ashley laughed into my chest and sniffled. She pulled away and looked up at me. I wiped her tears from her cheeks with my thumbs and didn’t think of how intimate the gesture was. It didn’t seem to bother her. “I’m sure he would.”

  “In a heartbeat. Ethan and I would be there cheering him on.”

  Ashley’s smile broadened, and she sniffled again. “Sorry for the waterworks. I think I’ve been carrying this around with me a lot, and I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Ashley leaned back against the wall and turned her face up to the starry night sky. “My mom told me I should have stuck it out with him.”

  “She what?”

  Ashley smirked without humor. “Yeah. You heard me right. She told me that sometimes in life, you have to compromise and make sacrifices to get the things you need. She says Nick was good for me because of the financial support he offered. She said it would have been the right decision in the long run; that he could provide what I needed most.”

  “Except for the important shit like happiness and trust. And a teammate.”

  “Exactly.” She chuckled.

  “Your mom,” I began, and then I paused. I had to tread carefully. “Your mom wants what’s best for you, Ash, but I don’t think she’s ever had a firm grasp of what that is.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you have a firm grasp of what’s best for me?”

  She was looking at me in a way that made my knees feel weaker than they had after days of rigorous combat training. After hours of crawling through mud under live wires. After holding a squat for an obscene amount of time in competition with my SEAL unit.

  I wanted to kiss her, among other things. I wanted to press her up against the wall and ravage her body with kisses until she came undone and bared herself to me. Damn the consequences. Damn the things people might think or say and damn the taboo. I wanted her. And the way she was looking at me had me thinking she might want me too. She just wasn’t ready to admit it aloud or to herself. Then again, I might just be imagining things.

  I had to control myself.

  Kissing her would be crossing a line much too soon. She might hate me if I tried. She might not forgive me. And I couldn’t bear the weight of that.

  So, I answered her question with a casual shrug as she inched closer to me against the wall until our arms were touching. “What’s best for you is just going after what you want, Ash. That’s what’s best for everyone. And only you know what you want. Don’t you?”

  Her hazel eyes flicked back and forth between mine, and she swallowed.

  Maybe it wasn’t my imagination. Maybe what she wanted was exactly what I wanted. And time was the only way to find out whether or not that was true.

  And I was a man who had always been good at waiting for the good things. The things that were worth waiting for.

  9

  Ethan

  “Where’s Ash and Jesse?” I called to Dean over the chorus of a rock song that had the Lamp Post thumping with feet stomping out the rhythm on the dance floor.

  Dean tipped his head to the front door. “They haven’t come back inside yet.”

  “Who does he think he is, keeping her all to himself like that?” I grumbled as I put my beer down. I marched around Dean, but he caught me by the upper arm.

  “Jesse has always been the one she talks to, Ethan. Just give them a few more minutes. Patience—”

  “Is a virtue. Yeah, yeah. You keep telling me that.”

  “Because you don’t listen the first time.”

  I cracked a crooked grin and swept my beer back up from the table. I opened my mouth to give a snarky reply, but Lulu appeared out of breath and dishevelled from dancing. Her hair was coming loose from her braid, and she swept some of the stray strands off her forehead. She reached for my beer to wet her palate, and I held it out to her. She took a few grateful mouthfuls and nodded her thanks. “Sorry, dying of thirst.”

  “None of us want that.” I chuckled.

  “Where’s Ash?”

  “Outside with Jesse,” Dean and I said in unison.

  Lulu looked back and forth between us and then glanced down at the table, chewing the inside of her cheek. Dean and I caught each other’s eye. I turned my attention back to Lulu. “Everything all right?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “It looked like you might want to tell us something,” Dean said.

  Lulu shook he head. “No.”

  “You’re sure?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “I’m sure. It’s not for me to say.”

  I put my beer back on the table. “Well, on that note, I’m gonna go check on Ash and Jesse.” I didn’t wait for permission this time. I turned and slipped away through dancing bodies and then out through the door, where the cool night air washed over me and helped clear my head a little.

  It was later than I thought it was. Time had passed quickly in the short amount of time I’d had with Ashley before Jesse came in like prince charming and whisked her away. I looked left and right and scoured the parking lot but couldn’t see either of them. So, I marched away from the clusters of smokers near the entrance and looked down the right side of the bar.

  And there they were, leaning up against the brick wall, shoulder to shoulder, looking like quite the cuddle duo. I slipped my hands in the pockets of my jeans and approached. “Looks like the two of you found a nice intimate spot to catch up.”

  Ashley slid to her left so that she was no longer pressed up against Jesse, who glowered at me from beneath his thick dark eyebrows. I grinned at him as Ashley pretended to be focused on a pebble at her feet. She rolled it under her sandal and pressed her hands behind her back against the wall.

  “Where’s Dean?” Jesse asked.

  “Inside with Lulu.”

  Jesse nodded but didn’t say anything, so I went to stand on Ashley’s other side. “I tried to wait for you guys to come back in, but I got impatient. I’ve missed you, Ash. I didn’t want to spend another minute in there without you. Jesse had the right idea.”

  Ashley gave me an innocent smile. “I’ve missed you too. All three of you. I thought New York City would be a big enough distraction, but it hasn’t helped. I was just telling Jesse that I’m not going back.”

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up toward my hairline. “At all?”

  Ashley shook her head. “No. I’m moving back here for good. My stuff is already being shipped over. Lulu is going to keep me up until I can find an apartment. And then it’ll be a clean slate, I guess. Starting over. Again.”

  I looked up at Jesse. He was watching her. He pressed his head back against the wall and sighed. “Starting over is never a bad thing. Look at me. I’ve done it dozens of times, and I turned out all right.”

  “That’s subjective,” I muttered, and Ashley giggled. Then I asked her the question that had been burning inside me since she said she was moving back. “Is Nick coming back with you?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “Nick and I are over. Donezo.”

  “Donezo?”

  “Yep,” she sighed.

  Jesse gave me a look that suggested he’d already been over all this with her, so I should let it lie. Dean was right. She did talk to Jesse. She always had. There was something about him that made her confide in him first. He was the most perceptive of the three of us and probably the most in tune with how he felt, even though he’d deny that to the day he died.

  So, I left it alone and instead pushed myself off the wall to stand in front of her. She was still pushing that pebble around with the toe of her sandal. I looked down a
t the rock and then let my eyes roam up the length of her bare tanned leg. She had slender ankles, but voluptuous calves and thighs carved with lean lines of muscle. She was strong and firm all over. Her thigh disappeared beneath the short and frayed hem of her white shorts and, like a very weak man, I found myself wondering what sort of panties she had on.

  Jesse cleared his throat, and I glanced up. Ashley was looking at me. She’d seen me checking her out—well, more than checking her out. I’d been ogling her. But she didn’t look upset. I was pretty sure the curl of her lips was a smile, and the pink in her cheeks was fresh.

  “You look good, Ash,” I told her.

  Ashley blushed more fiercely and looked away this time. She looked at Jesse. He simply nodded. “My brother is an ass, but he’s never been a liar.”

  “It’s criminal for you to show up looking like this, knowing we would be here. Some might call it torture.”

  “And what would you call it?” Ashley asked me.

  Was she flirting with me? It sure as hell felt like it. She was playing coy. She wasn’t pulling away from my minor advances. In fact, she was meeting me halfway, shot for shot, with a twinkle in her eye that dared me to do something bold.

  To kiss her.

  But a kiss was a really big move. There was a chance she might hate me for it. She’d just been vulnerable and admitted to me that her engagement was over. What kind of guy would that make me if the first thing I did was put the moves on my ex-stepsister? The kind of guy who takes advantage of a newly single woman, or the kind of guy who sees the first chance he’s had in four years to show the girl he’s had a crush on all this time how he feels about her?

  “I’d call it inhumane treatment of the male species.”

  Ashley tossed her head back and laughed gleefully. Jesse chuckled too, and both of our eyes were locked on her. When she had her laughter under control, she wiped the corners of her eyes and shook her head. “You two flatter me too much.”