The Usurper

by Candy Crum

  While she was at work, Ash made it her duty to talk with them while giving showers or helping them with their dinner. It brought them joy to have someone to really listen to what they had to say, even if only for a few minutes as she helped take care of them.

  As she prepared to leave and waited for her replacement to arrive, Ash received the call every third shift employee dreads—her relief was going to be late, and she would have to stay over. Any other day, she wouldn’t have minded, but this day was different.

  It was her first day of the new semester at college, a day she had been working toward for so long. Her past semesters had been for prerequisites, and this would be the first semester in the core courses for her degree.

  Ash and her best friend, Dani, were pursuing similar degrees—anthropology and archaeology—and had made a pact to go through everything together. They planned to travel the world together.

  Class couldn’t wait.

  Not today.

  “I can’t stay over,” Ash told Lucy, the charge nurse. “Not today. I’m supposed to be out of here in ten minutes, and class starts at eight. That only gives me two hours to get home, shower the puke and other bodily fluids off me, then rush to school, find the class, and a seat. I cannot be late.”

  Ash’s pleas went unheard, though, and she was forced to stay, effectively held hostage until relief arrived at 7:30.

  Presumably, she had broken no less than a half-dozen traffic laws during her mad dash home and said thanks to several deities that she hadn’t been pulled over by police. She whipped the car into the driveway and jumped out, ignoring the cold morning air as she ran to the house.

  Ash cleared the first two steps to the porch before something in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She turned to the right and saw the muddy ruts of deep tire marks in the yard. The ground had been soft from the previous day’s rain, but it would have taken an incredibly heavy vehicle to have caused anything that extensive.

  Like a moving truck.

  Dread settled in her as she turned to the door. Silence met Ash as she raced up the rest of the stairs, shoved her key in the lock, and barged inside. All movement halted, her jaw falling open. She gasped at the unnatural emptiness of the kitchen. Even the table was gone.

  Tears filled her eyes as she noted the lack of excited, tap-dancing paw sounds of her Great Dane on the hardwood floor.

  “Harley?” she called.

  Nothing. Only crushing silence.

  Ash’s keys fell to the floor as she began to run through the house, her eyes going wider as she saw just how much her home had changed in the time she had been at work.

  The living room furniture was gone. The bedroom cleared out. A trail of hangers and soaked carpet led her to the master bathroom, where she discovered nearly all her clothes tossed in the tub and the water running.

  Water rose up through the sodden carpet and soaked into her leather tennis shoes as she ran across the room to turn off the water. When she turned around, the letter scrawled on the mirror in jagged lipstick letters made her knees weak.

  You shouldn’t have kicked me out. I said you’d regret it. Harley’s mine now btw.

  Later, Bitch

  She groaned as she read it over again. Rusty.

  The asshole boyfriend she had been with for the last two years had clearly made good on his threat. Ash had kicked him out the week before when a woman showed up on their doorstep wanting child support for the newborn he had fathered. Rusty told the woman—who was awkwardly named Ashley—that he would pay support when she granted a paternity test.

  For a fleeting moment, Ash had hoped those words meant it was impossible, that the woman was full of shit. But then Rusty added, “We only fucked a handful of times. Last time you were huge and never said a word about me bein’ the father. That kid ain’t mine. Not till you prove it.”

  After Rusty kicked the woman and her baby to the curb, Ash did much the same to him—but he sure as hell hadn’t gone peacefully. A fact she was painfully reminded of while standing in the middle of her flooded bedroom.

  Glancing at her phone, Ash saw it was 7:45 a.m. It seemed impossible that her life had been turned upside down so completely in such a short time. Class would be starting soon, but she was going to be late no matter what she did, so she decided to wash the germs and stink of the facility off her body and out of her hair.

  After getting out and making the best of her messy, wet hair, she took several deep breaths in the steamy guest bathroom and forced herself to calm down before gathering her things to leave for school. Being late wouldn’t be as bad as not showing up at all, and she desperately needed something to keep her grounded, so she could come up with a plan for getting Harley back home.

  Harley was her baby. Rusty had zero right to take the harlequin Great Dane, and she was fairly confident she could call the police for help getting her back. She’d had Harley for three years, a full year before she even met Rusty. Aside from Dani, that dog was her best friend, and she couldn’t stand the idea of Rusty having her.

  The only comfort in all of it was that she didn’t think she needed to worry about Harley’s safety. Rusty loved her. In fact, many times in their two years together, she’d wondered if Rusty liked the dog more than her. He had always treated Harley with more consideration, but Ash had overlooked it—for reasons she couldn’t quite think of at the moment.

  Even knowing Harley wasn’t in danger, Ash couldn’t stop worrying. Rusty was doing everything he could to hurt her as much as possible, and she would be damned if he would get the satisfaction of seeing how much it bothered her.

  Dressed and ready, with her blonde curls slung into a wet, messy bun, Ash snatched her keys from the floor and ran out to the car with her backpack over one shoulder. She made a mental note to stop and buy new locks after class so Rusty could never enter her home again.

  Traffic was just as bad as Ash feared it would be, and she let out a frustrated groan as she got stuck at a light for two full rotations. Though the earlier factory rush was over, the retail rush was in full swing. Everyone was trying to get to their retail jobs to set up and count drawers before they opened at nine.

  Ash pulled into the college lot at an impressive 8:30 a.m. and ran as fast as she could, backpack in hand and bouncing against her leg. Without warning, she heard the heart-crushing sound of ripping fabric an instant before the weight of the bag vanished and all her supplies spilled across the pavement.

  She jerked to a stop and ran back to grab her things. You’re here. It’s only a setback. It’ll be fine, she thought.

  She was so focused on getting her things together for class, she didn’t register the low rumble of a motorcycle rounding the corner. She looked up just in time to see the rider distracted and looking away, failing to notice her in his path.

  Ash’s eyes widened as she stumbled from her knees to her feet, nearly falling again. The movement drew the cyclist’s eyes, and he swerved out of the way in the last instant. She had managed to dive out of his path, landing on her backside.

  The rider stopped his bike in the middle of the lane and stalked over to her. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded.

  Ash righted herself, brushing off her jeans before standing tall and staring the man in the eyes. He would have been attractive had she not wanted to punch him in the throat right then. But the pent-up fury from the previous night, and the recent morning from hell was too much to be thwarted—especially when it was his inattention that had almost killed her.

  “Excuse me? Sir, might I point out that you weren’t looking where you were going. And you were going fast enough that you couldn’t possibly have stopped at that stop sign. I don’t know if you’re familiar with traffic laws, but the big red octagonal ones? They mean stop, big boy.”

  One of his brows lifted as he stared her down. “Is that so?”

  His calm demeanor just made her angrier, and she stared back at him incredulously. “Yes, it damn well is. What the hell were yo
u thinking? Are you blind in addition to your complete disregard for traffic laws? Clearly, my bag ripped open, and all my shit fell out. Hoping I might actually make my eight-a.m. class before it ends, I ran. My bag obviously had other ideas.”

  Gathering the remnants of her bag and despairing over the pile of spilled supplies, Ash spat, “Now, if you have no further plans to kill me with your motorcycle, Marlboro Man, I need to be going,”

  His brows furrowed. “Marlboro Man?”

  Ash sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose as her eyes closed. “I’m twenty-four, and I get that reference. You’re, what? Ten years older than me?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched in a half smile. “Older.”

  She rolled her eyes and waved a hand through the air. “Whatever. It’s from a nineties movie, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. You drive a Harley, so I…” She shook her head. “You know what? Jokes and insults aren’t nearly as funny when they have to be explained.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” he said.

  “Fantastic,” she muttered angrily as she turned back to her things.

  The seam along the bottom of the bag had burst open. She’d had the bag since high school and hadn’t had the money for a new one when school started last spring. Now she didn’t have a choice. As she frantically grabbed her things, a shadow loomed over her.

  “European history, huh?”

  Ash looked up to see the motorcycle rider standing over her and sighed. “Yes.” She turned back to her bag and gathered the last of her things. The shadow retreated, and she heard the sound of the motorcycle adjusting to his weight behind her.

  “Good luck getting to that class.”

  She didn’t bother to look up but heard the amusement in his voice. She shook her head and muttered, “Yeah, thanks,” as the engine roared to life.

  Ash fastened the top of the bag securely and carried it upside down. It would look ridiculous, but she was beyond out of options. She could afford to waste no more time and ran into the school. It was nearly nine now, and she worried she would be in trouble for her tardiness. Some professors she knew had completely removed students from class for that—or less.

  Lists that hung near the entrance showed class numbers, class location, and the instructor’s name. Ash was lucky the community college was small enough that she didn’t have to worry about her class being terribly far away. She couldn’t afford the university and had waited too long to start school to take advantage of any of the scholarships she could have received in high school.

  The community college was just fine for her and Dani.

  Dani.

  Among the waves of ridiculousness that had assaulted her all morning, Ash had completely forgotten about Dani. If she had just messaged her about what was happening, it could have helped her smooth some things out that morning. It was too late to worry about it now, though.

  Ash ran through the halls, praying no one would stop and scold her like a child. She quickly wove her way through the school to find the room she needed. Luca Romano’s European History class.

  Taking a deep breath, she quietly opened the door and made her way inside. The professor wasn’t in the room, so she risked a look around. Halfway up the steps, she saw Dani’s questioning look and waved.

  Ash let out a sigh of relief as Dani waved back and hurried up the steps to take a seat next to her friend at the end of the aisle.

  “What the hell happened to you, Ash?” she demanded. “You look like shit. You’re sweating, and what is up with that hair?”

  Dani’s eyes narrowed with obvious concern as she took in all of Ash’s disheveled appearance.

  “It’s been hell. Just count yourself lucky you didn’t have to work last night,” Ash said.

  “Lemme guess… Sara called in again?” Dani asked, a knowing expression on her face. Ash nodded, and Dani shook her head. “Let me put on my shocked face. Is that why you’re late?”

  Ash shrugged her shoulders. “There are so many reasons for that. Work, for one. Secondly, I got home to find Rusty gutted my house, flooded the bedroom and bathroom, and, to add insult to injury, took my Harley girl. Then, when I finally made it here, my bag ripped open in the parking lot, and some dick nearly ran me over with his motor…”

  “Good morning! It’s so very nice of you to join us.”

  Ash’s eyes widened in shock as the voice hit her ears. It was low, but not too deep. Smooth—and incredibly familiar. Her eyes, which had been fixed on Dani, closed as she swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. Slowly, Ash turned her head to the front of the room, where none other than the douche-canoe with the motorcycle stood.

  “Since there was only a single person missing from the roster this morning, I’m going to assume you must be Ms. Mosier.” He smiled and lifted his arms to his sides. “Welcome to European History, Ms. Mosier. I’m your professor, Luca Romano.”