by Bright, Sera
“She hurt you and I didn’t even know.” He closed his eyes, the shadows of his lashes giving his face a haunted appearance. “I knew something was wrong that night. But when you told me you didn’t love me, I was so pissed off, I couldn’t think. I had to get out of there before I lost it.”
“You were supposed to be angry. I did it on purpose so you wouldn’t ask any more questions.” I sniffled, sounding pathetic. I hated crying in front of him. It showed weakness.
He rested his forehead against mine. “I should never have left you alone that night. You shut down and avoid when you’re terrified. I should’ve stayed with you until you felt safe enough to tell me, and instead, I walked out on you. The next morning, I had calmed down, but it was too late. You were gone and wouldn’t return any of my calls or texts.”
I hadn’t wanted him to know where the scars came from because I’d known he’d blame himself. He had been hurt enough.
I turned my head away, but Ash held my face in his hands, making me witness firsthand his remorse. “That night, all I cared about was how I felt. It destroyed me to think that you didn’t love me as much as I love you. I didn’t fight for you. I let you go. I left you alone, and I’d sworn I would never do that. And then you totally disappeared…and I had no idea… You didn’t trust me to keep you safe, and you were right—I couldn’t even be trusted to know you were safe.”
“You would’ve fought for me. I believed it so much, I was convinced I had to leave the way I did. You would’ve lost everything. And I wanted—” My voice cracked and more tears flowed out. “I wanted you to be free more than anything else. But I ruined it no matter what I did.”
“I’m free when I’m with you.” He kissed the wet tracks running down my face. “I love you. That will never change, I swear. But you have to go.”
“What?” He loved me but he didn’t want to be with me anymore?
“I’m an asshole for even contacting you here, in town. Let alone wanting you to stay. But I didn’t know how else to find you, other than coming back.” He traced the scars with his thumb. “She’s sending Trevor after you. She’s not going to stop.”
I hadn’t told him any of my suspicions yet. “How do you know that?”
“Because I think she’s already done it. When she ran his dad’s campaign, I caught Trevor coming out of her bedroom one night. The rumors started about you within the week. She’d known how I felt about you for years.” He looked away to the burnt-out shell of the farmhouse. “She used to taunt me that if anything happened beyond friendship, she’d find a way to make you vanish. It’s why I made it seem like I fucked anything that offered senior year, so she’d think I had moved on from you.”
“I’m an asshole, too. Every minute I spend with you is another minute she could be arranging to take over your life. You have to leave, too. If she’s going after me, she’ll—”
“She won’t risk her precious career over me.” His mouth twisted. “I’ve heard she’s telling people how proud she is of her famous artist son. She’d sooner slit her own throat than be proven wrong.”
Leaves of clover chilled the nape of my neck. “Why does she hate us being together so much?”
“She’s the queen of mind-fucks, that’s why.” He swallowed and glanced down at my face. “That’s not it, though. She hates us—no, she hates you because of who you look like. She hates me for who I look like, too.” He moved a lock of hair out of my eyes, his forearm dusted with fine, dark hair.
Numbness spread from my fingers and up my arms, reaching into my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I looked so much like my mother. He resembled his father. A long-standing riddle came together.
Ash read my face and confirmed it with his words. “My dad had an affair with your mom, and it has to be the reason she left.”
I shut my eyes. It always came back to her. I couldn’t outrun my mother’s footsteps, no matter how hard I tried. “You knew the whole time?”
He nodded. “I overheard them fighting about it the first night I came into your room.”
My eyes opened wide. In the picture from the truck, the man in the photo had been wearing a wedding ring. “The affair didn’t end after she left, did it?”
“I don’t think so.” He drew in a deep breath. “I think it ended when she died.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s around the same time my dad started drinking,” he said. “I didn’t want to ever tell you, because you’d feel guilty about it when you did nothing wrong. I never wanted to hurt you, either.”
I stared past him at the stars, my vision blurring with more useless tears. All of the shit in our lives was because of them. Because they all couldn’t just grow up and move on from the past.
My father lied because he couldn’t handle my mother leaving him. Later, he couldn’t handle staying around because he didn’t want to be reminded of her when he looked at me. Ash’s father couldn’t get over my mother’s death. Ash’s mother’s psychotic brain couldn’t take the idea of us being together, couldn’t stand the idea of us re-creating a mistake she couldn’t allow to happen again in her warped imagination. And my mother? Who the hell knew what she couldn’t handle? Probably life, judging by the chaos she left in her wake. I hated all of them. But I never hated the one thing their complete dysfunction brought me.
I knew with absolute certainty what I wanted. A life and a future away from the past. Ash started to let go of my wrist. I grabbed his hand, and laced my fingers through his. I wanted to be free, too.
Ash said in a low, urgent voice, “Katie, you have to go so I can make sure you’re safe.”
“Too late.” I held on tighter. “I need you just as much.”
“I’m the last thing you need.” His words didn’t stop him from burying his face in my hair.
“No, I need someone who doesn’t let me hide or lie, someone who sees me.” My voice trembled. “The real me, just the way I am. And you do. I didn’t know how much I needed that until I left.”
“I didn’t last summer. I knew you were lying, and I still left you alone.” His shoulders and back lifted with each breath. “And I almost lost you.”
I didn’t know any other way to convince him except to show him. My fingers wound in his hair and I brought his face up to mine, and tasted the salt of my tears on his lips. He stiffened, and then a low sound of surrender came from his throat. He plunged his tongue into my mouth but his hands were reverential as they caressed my body. He was my true secret, someone to call my own. And I was his. Always his.
The heat of desire spread with his every touch. I tugged at his t-shirt and he understood. He sat up, and I stripped his shirt over his head. And then he helped me slip off my tank. We slowly undressed each other. In the veil of the moon and stars, Ash was even more heartbreakingly handsome, his body a work of art made of sharp silver planes and lined shadows.
“So very beautiful.” He wiped the drying tears away from my cheekbone with a sweep of his fingers.
I smiled softly and pulled him on top of me. I was beautiful whenever he looked at me. The grass cooled the skin of my shoulders and back. He pushed my legs apart with his knee, and I angled my hips up. He slid inside, stretching me and filling me completely. The worshipful gentleness brought the tears back to my eyes. I loved him and he loved me. Why did it have to be so complicated? It didn’t, that’s why. Loving him with my whole soul was all I knew how to do.
He stilled, alarm warring with arousal on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much it scares me sometimes.”
“I know.” He braced his hands on both sides of my head. “But the idea of not loving you scares me more.”
He rocked back, his torso gliding against my breasts. I let him make love to me this time. The last remaining bit of fear had dissolved. We found our rhythm together. Moans came out of my mouth unheeded as he leaned down to drop soft kisses all over my face after each one, until he was gasping, too. We f
it together perfectly because we were perfect together. I arched into him, wishing I could permanently imprint myself on him. My building orgasm sped up from that tiny change in position. He used his lips to trace the outline of my ear. I shivered in sheer pleasure.
“You’re finally mine,” Ash panted in my ear.
I licked my lips. I was so close, and he knew it. “No.”
“Why not?” His eyes glowed in the moonlight.
“Because—” I raised my hips, cradling him closer. “You were mine first.”
Our gazes connected. Seeing right through to my secrets, seeing right through to my heart. The naked intimacy was almost unbearable. Almost. I’d die before I’d turn away. A climax unraveled, and then seemed to never end, leaving me lightheaded. He came after me, thrusting into me, a hoarse shout escaping from his mouth.
Together we clung to each other. Foreheads touching, hearts beating as one, our legs tangled. The air took its sweet time to return to my lungs. Ash continued to shelter me with his body, lifting his weight off of me but not losing the skin-to-skin contact I craved.
I’d told him I loved him and nothing bad happened. The sky didn’t fall to pieces, the ground didn’t shake and tear asunder. Maybe we really could figure out everything else together, the way we should’ve done in the first place. I looked up at him. The stars glimmered above us, the moon rising over the trees that surrounded the open meadow.
“You’re not getting off that easy.” He picked a blade of grass off my shoulder. “What do you mean I was yours first?”
“Do you know what my first memory is?” I ran my hands up and down his back. He was still shaking from the aftershocks. So was I. “We were maybe four years old, playing in my backyard. The babysitter had gone in the house. You were chasing me and I tripped—”
“You cut your eyebrow open.” He touched the corner of my eyebrow. “Right here.”
“And you picked me up off the ground, looking like it hurt you more than it hurt me. You hugged me so hard, and I thought, ‘He’s mine,’ and from that moment, I thought of you as mine.” I lowered my lashes with a faint blush. “I think I loved you even then.”
“It doesn’t change the fact you were mine first.” He nuzzled my cheek and I stretched beneath him. “Why do you think I was chasing you?”
“Practice?”
His shoulders shook with laughter as he lay on his side next to me. I snuggled into his chest. The cool air dried the sweat on our skin. We would have to get up and leave soon, but for now, the real world and the past didn’t exist. It was just us under the night sky, bathing in the light from the stars. The same sky I’d watched all those lonely nights, wishing I could just go back in time and do things differently. Now I could actually see myself looking forward to a future.
“I can’t let you go again.” Ash drew his hand from my shoulders to my waist to my hip, like he imagined sketching the curves of my body from memory. “Earlier in the car, I was trying to convince myself I could, but I can’t.”
“Good.” I yawned. “We finally agree on something, because I’m not leaving you again, either.”
“You’re still not safe staying, Katie.”
“Neither are you.” If his mother was already targeting me, he would be next. “We both have to go. Besides, there’s nothing holding us here. Not really.”
Except each other.
He blew out a light sigh. “I have to stay until the gallery show next week. There’s no way I can get out of it, but I can end my internship early.”
“I should stay long enough to confront my father, too,” I said, despite my doubts he’d give me a straight answer on anything after a lifetime of lies. But I had to try. “And then what happens?”
“Then I’ll follow you to the stars and back.” He pointed upward. A shooting star painted the indigo darkness above us, its light painting the sky.
I leaned over and studied his face. “I think you would, too.”
He responded with a small, enigmatic smile. The smile he only gave me, sharing a secret only known to both of us. I loved that smile so much, almost as much as I loved him.
Clouds ringed the sky over the lake as we put our clothes back on. A storm was blowing in off the water from the west. We walked back to Ash’s car hand in hand, flickers of lightning reflecting off the surface of the glass. He took the keys out of my pocket and we climbed in.
I curled up in the passenger seat. He drove out of the meadow to the old country road, the headlights lighting up the enveloping darkness as the moon and clouds disappeared behind the storm.
“I love you,” I murmured. “I really love you.”
He looked over with an arched eyebrow. Rain sprinkled the windshield.
“Just testing. Seeing if I can say it out loud without freaking out.” I smiled teasingly. “I think it’s going to take some time.”
He grinned, that adorable dimple appearing in his cheek.
On the highway, a downpour erupted, deluging the car and the road. Ash handled the car easily and soon we were flying on the open road.
“I was thinking,” Ash said. “If we stay out of Havenwood and hide out in my apartment, we should be fine for the next few days. Then, after the exhibition, we can leave this hellhole forever.”
“I like that plan.” I closed my eyes, resting my head back on the seat. “That way, I won’t find any more pictures of my mother.”
“Pictures?” Concern tinged his voice. “You found more than that one?”
“Hmm. There was one in my glove box yesterday. Our outfits could have matched, like whoever left it wanted to compare us.”
The drumming of the rain, the tempo of the windshield wipers, the smooth movements of the car all lulled me toward sleep.
“It’ll be okay.” He took my hand and squeezed it tight.
Everything was more than okay now. I was happy. In love and being loved. I didn’t have any more secrets to hide. So this was what normal was like. Not bad. I could get used to it. I drifted off, his hand strong and warm in mine.
* * *
Ash shook me awake, his hand insistent on my shoulder. I blinked to clear the sleep from my vision. He glanced up at the rear view mirror. We were pulling into a parking lot I vaguely recognized it as the one for Ash’s apartment building.
“Katie, you need to wake up,” he said urgently, his gaze continuing to dart up to the mirror.
Instantly alert, I sat up and looked over the seat to the rear window of the car. All remaining vestiges of drowsiness disappeared. Two black SUVs slowly drove into the parking lot. No other cars were on the street.
Please just be here for a drug deal. Those happened all the time at this time of the night in empty lots across the world. I knew the etiquette of how to handle witnessing a drug trade. We would pretend nothing illicit was going on and look the other way. In return, whoever was in those vehicles would patiently wait and do their business once we were out of sight.
Everyone would be happy, there was nothing to worry about. Ash was probably acting paranoid. I unfolded my legs from underneath me. Except he wasn’t the paranoid type. That was more my thing.
“They followed us here.” He parked the car under a streetlamp next to the entrance of the warehouse. “I’d thought I lost them at one point.”
I flipped down the vanity mirror and looked at the SUVs in the reflection. Their license plates didn’t seem right. The colors didn’t match the standard Ohio issued ones. I squinted and made out the backwards letters. Those were federal government plates.
My heart throbbed in my ears, and I could feel my defensive walls that had crumbled over the last few days re-assembling. I was certain this had to have something to do with my father, giving context to his crazy ass phone call last night. I was also certain I wanted nothing to do with whatever was happening, especially when it involved men in black following us after midnight.
The soft jingle of Ash’s keys as he pulled them out of the ignition halted my racing thoughts. What was I doi
ng? We couldn’t sit here and wait for them to come to us. We had to get inside first. They couldn’t come into Ash’s apartment without a warrant.
Grabbing my bag, I slung it across my shoulders and popped open the door while Ash climbed out on his side. My stomach rolled like a storm tossed ship. The lingering rain did nothing to tamp the acrid scent of wet pavement.
With quick steps he covered the distance around the car and was beside me. “Act relaxed—”
“Walk faster,” I said through clenched teeth.
We were halfway to the door when a car door slammed behind us. And then another one. The hum of engines idling could be heard.
“Katelyn Walker?” a deep male voice called.
I paused mid-step, giving myself away. A memory of a credit card in another name flickered in my mind. Guess my father hadn’t been a thief like I’d assumed. Ash looked questioning at me. I gave a jerk of my head, and kept walking. No time. I’d explain inside.
“Sorry,” I said casually over my shoulder. “You’re confusing me with someone else.”
“We know who you are, Katelyn. We’re U.S. Marshals, and we’ve come to make sure you’re safe.” A woman was talking now. Her voice was sweet but commanding all at once. “Your father sent us to check on you. He hasn’t been able to reach you today and he’s very worried. Could we talk to you?”
Nasty, vile curses hurled around in my head, directly aimed at my father. When I’d purposely forgotten to bring my phone, I hadn’t considered he would send the feds after me. “You checked, and I’m fine. You’ve done your duty—we talked. Have a great night!”
Ash’s phone chirped. He took it out of his pocket and checked the screen. There wasn’t the time for that. We were at the door, all he had to do was unlock it. Once inside, they’d go away and we would be left alone in peace.
“Katie.” He said my name slowly. Cautiously. “Maybe we should hear them out first.”
“No!” I whispered. They were U.S. marshals, I already had an idea of what they were going to say, and there was no way in hell I was going to do it.
“Wouldn’t it be better to actually know what’s going on instead of just ignoring it and hoping they go away?”
