Settling Ashes: A New Adult/College Romance (The Ashes Series Book 2)

by Gardin, Diana

  “Yeah, I know.”

  When Paige and I arrived on campus about ten minutes later, I squeezed her hand in mine as we walked, just relieved to be touching her again. I had been away from her for less than half an hour, and it made my stomach hurt.

  We walked past a group of students who scattered to give us room to walk by. Paige gave them a strange look as we continued toward her Math building.

  “So,” I began casually. “I’d like to do something special tonight.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, staring at a girl who emitted an audible gasp at the sight of our approach and scurried off the sidewalk and onto the lawn.

  “Yeah,” I continued. “I didn’t get to do a big, romantic homecoming for you yesterday because, well I didn’t know that you were coming home. Oh, and the first order of business was making sure you didn’t hate me forever.”

  I chuckled, but her eyes narrowed as we were sidestepped by two freshman basketball players.

  “Clay,” she said suddenly, stopping our progress and grabbing my arm.

  I turned to face her. “Yes?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  I looked at her, and then looked around us. We were noticeably alone on a sidewalk that should have been filled with rushing students.

  When I focused on her again, she was so angry her hair was nearly standing on end. I smoothed it down and kept my hand on the back of her neck.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said, looking in her eyes.

  “Are they getting out of our way because…because they think...” She was unable to complete the sentence.

  “Yeah, Paige,” I said cautiously. “They think I killed Hannah. So they stay away from me. It’s not a big deal. I don’t give a shit what any of them think.”

  She bristled, her tiny five-foot-three frame standing as straight as she could manage.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Clay,” she said. Her words were staccato as she spit each one out of her mouth. “You were actually a victim that night!”

  I shrugged, moving my hands to her shoulders. “They don’t know that. They only know what the rumors have told them.”

  “So you’ve been treated like this for an entire month?”

  “Yep,” I answered. “But like I said, not a big deal.”

  Her big, green eyes filled with tears and her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s a big deal to me, Clay.”

  I pulled her to me, and she brushed the tears away angrily. “I love you for worrying about me. But I’m fine. You’re here with me. So everything is going to get better. And when I’m cleared, they’ll figure it out and things will go back to normal. Okay?”

  She sniffled. “Okay.”

  “Let’s get you to class. But also…tonight? I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “It’s a date.”

  Nine

  Paige

  At six-thirty that evening, a knock sounded on the door. I opened it eagerly, expecting to see Clay.

  “You’re ear--” I began as I flung it wide. “Beau! What are you doing here?”

  He stood against the doorjamb, looking freshly showered with his light-colored hair still damp. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved Virginia Tech t-shirt, and his boots. I took him in, wondering why he had to be so…so Beau.

  “Just got off work,” he replied with a crooked smile. “I told you I’d be around. Can I come in?”

  I started and moved out of his way, gesturing him inside. “Of course, I’m sorry, I was just surprised to see you.”

  “I thought if I called first, you might tell me to stay home,” he said wryly. “Didn’t want to chance it.”

  He looked at me. “How are you, Paige?”

  “I’m…um, okay. I’m actually getting ready to go out.”

  “Well, don’t let me stop you from getting ready. You’re dressed, though.” He appraised me, letting his eyes run up from my black leggings and boots up to my tightly fitted sweater dress with a deep scooped neck. “You look amazing.”

  “Thanks,” I answered shyly. I hadn’t dressed up once the entire month I stayed at Beau’s. It was all sweats and jeans, and I felt strangely self-conscious accepting his compliment.

  “Hot date?” he drawled casually.

  “Yeah,” I answered cautiously. “Clay wants to go out to celebrate being back together tonight.”

  He took a step away from where he was standing by the front door. “Oh, yeah? And that’s what y’all are now, Paige? Back together?”

  “Please,” I pleaded softly with him. “Don’t do this, Beau.”

  He took another step closer and stopped, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Do what? I’m just asking. I told you I wasn’t going anywhere, so if you’re back to the same old thing with Clay I want to know about it.”

  I sighed. “Yes. Everything was a misunderstanding. He didn’t actually sleep with…with Hannah.”

  I still couldn’t get the image of the two of them out of my head, but I wasn’t going to say it aloud to Beau. I shuddered slightly.

  Beau closed the distance between us and gripped my upper arms, holding me at arm’s length so he could assess me. I kept my gaze aimed at the floor, and he placed a finger under my chin to lift it.

  “You’re still upset about it though,” he observed, looking into my eyes.

  “No,” I shook my head. “It’s not that. I just feel bad that I left him like that. I mean, he didn’t even do anything wrong. But I just ran away, and he was going crazy here without me, Beau. He hasn’t been eating or sleeping. He hasn’t been able to focus on his defense.”

  Beau shook his head. “None of that’s your fault, Paige. Don’t blame yourself for it. You didn’t know what was what. You believed your own eyes, and that’s all you could have done.”

  “I know Clay, though,” I argued. “I should have trusted him, unconditionally. What a horrible girlfriend I am.”

  “Now,” Beau said firmly. “I’m not gonna sit here and listen to that. I happen to know firsthand that you are an incredible girlfriend, I just wasn’t smart enough to hold onto you when I had the chance.”

  I smiled at him. “Thanks, Beau.”

  “Always. Now you said you were still getting ready for this date. You’re dressed. What else do you have left to do?” He didn’t let go of me as he asked.

  “I need to accessorize,” I said with a grin.

  “Oh, Gaw,” he said. “Gillian’s done turned you into her mini-me. What can I do to help?”

  “You can come be my mirror.”

  “Done,” he said, letting go of me and rubbing his hands together. I turned to walk back to my bedroom and he followed.

  “Damn, girl,” he whistled from behind me. “That’s a nice view.”

  I snorted and opened the door to my room, shaking my head.

  Once inside, I spun and noticed that Beau was still standing in the doorframe, staring inside.

  “What?” I asked him, alarmed by the serious look on his face.

  “This…this room is so different from the one you had…before.”

  He was talking about my bedroom in my parent’s house. The one that burned to the ground.

  “Yeah,” I said softly, glancing around the room. “No candles. None of my stuff from back home made it through the fire, either. And I’m a different person than I was then, Beau.”

  This bedroom was simpler than the one I had growing up as a teenager in my parent’s house. A few photos of Gillian and I throughout the years littered the surface of the dresser, and a framed photo of Paris hung over my bed. The walls were white, as was the comforter. Plain, plain, plain. That was the way I wanted it, because the thought of dedicating myself to another room as personally as I did before was too daunting.

  He stared at me as he cautiously entered my room. “No, you’re not. You’re still the same beautiful, funny, sweet girl from back then. You just have a little more emotional weight on your bones, that’s all. Back then, you didn’t have a care in the world. Nothing to wo
rry about, nothing to cry about at night. You were a whole person.”

  “I’m whole again, Beau,” I corrected, feeling tears stinging my eyes. “Clay made me a whole person again.”

  “Guess I should thank him for that, then,” he said gruffly. “But I wish it had been me.”

  This time it was me who was closing the gap between us, throwing my arms around him. His arms came up to squeeze me around my waist, and I planted a kiss on his cheek.

  We didn’t say anything for a long while, just stood there hugging each other tightly until a throat cleared in the doorway behind us. I gasped, startled, and Beau’s arms tightened around me before he finally let go. I spun around, and my eyes locked on Clay’s from where he stood in the doorway.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Am I interrupting something?”

  I bit my lip, ashamed. Clay was going to read this all wrong, I could see it from the look in his eyes. Pain, anger, and a mixture of the two plus something else I couldn’t put my finger on. Jealousy?

  “Nope,” Beau answered easily. “Just came by to check on Paige.”

  “She’s fine,” Clay nearly growled, his eyes never leaving mine. “She doesn’t really need you to check on her.”

  “Okay, guys,” I said quickly. “It’s too crowded in here. Y’all go on out to the living room, and I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Clay moved aside, clearly waiting on Beau to leave first. Beau sidled past me and sauntered off down the hallway. Clay held my gaze a moment longer, and then moved away from the door to follow Beau into the living room.

  As soon as they were gone, I bent over to place my hands on my knees, breathing heavily like I’d just run a mile. I concentrated on getting myself together; between the emotional interaction with Beau that I hadn’t been expecting and the hurt look in Clay’s eyes when he’d found us embracing in my bedroom, I was beginning to crumble.

  This was going to be a long night.

  Clay

  Angry wasn’t the right word. Fuming, maybe. Possibly livid. I focused on Beau’s head as I stared at him from across the room and visualized how it would feel to smash my fist into it. He stared right back, and I knew he could read me like a book. He knew exactly what I was thinking, and he was extremely amused. His smirk told me he wasn’t upset about the fact I’d found him in my girlfriend’s bedroom with his hands on her.

  The dude was lucky Paige was in the next room.

  You could have smashed the silence with a baseball bat, and then Paige walked down the hallway and into the room. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing before; I’d only noticed Beau’s hands touching her too close to her ass. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, because her dress was short and tight, and every curve in her legs was visible through the black tights she was wearing.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I told her grudgingly.

  “Thank you,” she said with a small smile. “Beau just came by to see how I was doing, and I told him we had a date. So, you can see that I’m fine, Beau. Is that satisfactory for you for tonight?”

  He grinned at her, and I wanted to roar. For the night?

  “Yep,” he answered. “Y’all have fun on your date. And I’ll see you later, Miss Hill.”

  He shot a quick glance at me, and then leaned over and kissed Paige on her cheek. As soon as his lips connected with her skin, I was off the wall I was previously holding up and making my way across the room toward him with clenched fists.

  Paige put a hand out to stop me, meeting my chest before I could connect with Beau.

  “Beau,” she said tiredly.

  “See ya, beautiful,” he said, chuckling as he opened the front door. “Clay.”

  Then he was gone, and I let my eyes slide from the door he’d just exited to stare at Paige.

  “Clay,” she said warily. “I can explain.”

  I took a deep breath. It took every decent part of me to let the next sentence escape my mouth.

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” I said in a strained voice. “Tonight is about us. We will talk about him, Paige. Just not tonight. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said softly. She reached out to smooth the back of her hand against my cheek, and her touch did a hell of a lot to calm me down. I almost forgot about Beau and what I’d seen when I came in. Almost.

  I needed to fix that. I reached out for her, and she came willingly. I pressed my lips against hers, walking her backward until she reached the wall by the bar. I pressed her up against it, covering her mouth with mine and pushing against her lips with my tongue. When she opened up for me, I plunged inside, savoring the moist tenderness her mouth always offered. I kissed her long and hard, not taking a second of this feeling, of her, for granted. When I pulled back for breath, she looked at me with wide eyes.

  “That was how I wanted to say hello to you tonight,” I said fiercely.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Hello.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked breathlessly as I towed her to the door.

  “I have something planned for you tonight that should have been our first night together. Let’s pretend that’s tonight, okay?”

  “Okay,” she answered, taking my hand as we wound down the icy sidewalk toward my car.

  I opened the door for her and helped her in, then walked around to my side of the car and climbed in.

  “You look really amazing tonight, Clay,” she said, eyeing me as I slid into my seat and started the engine.

  “Yeah?” I asked, smiling. I looked down at my outfit. Black slacks and loafers, red fitted dress shirt, skinny black tie. Paige was worth dressing up for. “Thanks.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re going to be very hard to resist if we’re doing anything other than heading to your apartment and closing your bedroom door behind us.”

  “Is that right?” I asked, lifting a bow. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward my surprise. I was pulling out all the stops for Paige tonight. An entire night of just us, alone and together. It was long overdue, and I had to take advantage of four years worth of networking on campus to call in a couple of favors in order to arrange the night. The private dining room I had reserved at the nicest hotel in town, the penthouse suite where champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries would greet us after dinner. The Jacuzzi tub, which after a text from me at a certain point in the night, would be filled with bubbles and red rose petals.

  Paige deserved all of this and more. I just wanted to spoil her for a night, take a break from the reality that was about to hit us hard when we began preparing for my trial.

  I glanced over at her as I guided the car onto the main drag that led to the middle of Rutherford.

  “That’s definitely right,” she said, still staring at me appreciatively. “You never dress up. Where are we going?”

  “Not telling,” I told her with a smile. “So no more asking.”

  “Oh, I bet I know a few ways to get you to talk.”

  “You’re an evil vixen,” I retorted. “Don’t you dare.”

  She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned closer, taking my earlobe into her mouth. That hot cavity in comparison with the cold air in the car made my teeth clench.

  “Paige,” I growled as she nibbled my ear. “Stop it. And put your seatbelt back on! You’re likely to make me run off the road with that sort of behavior.” I pulled the car to a stop at a red light and glanced over at her, the expression on my face halfway between a scowl and a grin.

  She leaned back, laughing softly. “You’re no--”

  She was unable to finish her sentence.

  As the light turned green and my foot pressed the gas, bright headlights blazed bright from Paige’s side of the car, growing brighter than seemed possible, and we were suddenly rammed from the side with a sickening crash of metal against metal against glass.

  Ten

  Clay

  I’ve heard people say that life began to move in slow motion, but I’d never really understood it un
til after that car smashed into the side of my own. Because at that moment, life slowed to a crawl, taking its time in moving from one minute to the next. The world as I knew it faded to a dim gray, and a new reality began to take shape, to my horror, right in front of my disbelieving eyes.

  The breath was knocked out of me after the initial impact, and I heard nothing as my SUV was lifted off its tires. It seemed to hang suspended in the air before finally tilting, tilting, and flipping over on its roof. It rolled again twice more before finally settling comfortably on its top, and everything was dark and silent.

  Too dark.

  Too silent.

  The silence was the soul-chilling part. I expected to hear an abundance of sound, not an absence of it. I never lost consciousness, although I felt my shoulder knock repeatedly against the driver’s side door as we rolled.

  When we stopped and the screeching of metal against asphalt halted, there was just nothing. The car radio wasn’t blaring, the engine wasn’t running, and Paige wasn’t talking.

  Paige. Oh, God.

  “Paige,” I croaked. I didn’t recognize my voice as my own, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere very far away, like the bottom of a well, or the end of a tunnel far beneath the sea.

  “Paige, baby,” I said again, panic overtaking my frenzied brain. I reached down for my seatbelt and tried to engage the unlocking mechanism. Nothing happened. I winced as the blood rushing to my head began pulsing in my ears. We were upside down; I looked out my window and saw only blackness. The sound of a siren rose in the distance.

  That was good. Sirens were good because it meant someone was coming who could cut me out of this damn seatbelt so I could get to Paige.

  I reached out for her, grabbing handfuls of empty, black air.

  “Oh, God,” I groaned, needles of pain slicing through my shoulder as I stretched. “Paige? Baby!”

  Then I remembered something, and the thought almost stole my consciousness where the accident was unable to.

  Had she gotten her seatbelt back on in time?

  I reached. As far as I could, wincing from a searing pain in my chest I hadn’t before registered, straining for the opposite end of the car where Paige’s seatbelt should have been. It was engaged, and in the process of reaching for it, I found her soft flesh underneath my fingers.