“You’ve been free to go from the second you stepped over here,” Ash said.
And he didn’t mean his house either.
He meant BFH.
I shut my eyes and swallowed hard. “You never know what I’ll do then, Ash.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he said. “I just know what I’m going to do.”
I bit my lip and grinned.
I pushed the notebook and the pen out of the way.
By the time I turned myself around, Ash was already reaching for the nightstand drawer.
* * *
Ash was sleepy.
I was not.
We were in the dark, together in his bed, and the night just felt perfect.
There were the obvious reasons why the night felt so perfect.
And then there were the ones that were unseen… or kind of unknown…
The words and thoughts and whatever else that decided to bubble inside of me.
The reason why I kept turning my head to look at Ash.
He was really next to me.
And he wasn’t going anywhere.
All this lingering stress of making a choice.
Which really wasn’t all that big of a deal to begin with.
Right?
“Fucking hell, angel,” Ash groaned in his sleep. “Turn your mind off.”
I froze in place. My cheeks became warm.
“Ash…”
I had the sudden urge (or the hidden urge finally coming forward for good) to know everything about East vs. West. And how to make it all stop. At least for now. Because I needed to figure some things out. I was… homeless.
My heart sank into my chest, threatening to chase away all those good feelings Ash had given to me. I quickly shut my eyes and replayed all the good parts.
Hint: they were all good parts.
Ash slowly slid his hand up and skipped touching my hand.
Instead, he stuck his hand into the front pocket of my hoodie.
That was all that I had on in his bed.
And all he had on were a pair of jeans, unbuttoned.
It was our perfect night.
“I don’t know the truth, Belle,” Ash said. “And that’s the truth. The truth of the truth I don’t know.”
I turned my head again and Ash was looking at me.
It was just silhouettes, but I could still see the amber in his eyes.
No, I can’t, but I’m going to say that I can because it turns me on to think his eyes could shine in the dark.
“I don’t think anyone really knows the truth of anything, Ash,” I said.
“You know what I’m talking about, angel. Don’t twist the subject.”
“Right.”
“I don’t want to believe that my mother died in a bad way as a bad person,” Ash said. “That shit fucks with your head. Fucks with my head all the time. Because I know the true ending. Which is the one I told you. That piece of shit driving drunk could’ve killed us both. And it started a war.”
“A war?” I asked.
“Lawyers fighting each other over bullshit terms,” Ash said. “His lawyers argued that it was my mother’s fault for her own death. That she didn’t know how to drive the large SUV. And they were right. In a sense. My father never let her drive that SUV. He didn’t trust her with it. She took it that day just to be a bitch to him. They were in another endless argument. He told her to leave. Take me with her. He had things to do. My mind…”
I slipped my hand into the hoodie pocket too, over Ash’s hand.
“The thing about a person’s mind, angel, is that it never rests,” Ash said. “It never sleeps. It never stops creating. You know that. You’re going to make people happy with that.”
“There’s ways to silence the mind,” I whispered.
“No shit, Belle,” Ash said. “I do what I do.”
I swallowed hard.
Him hitting someone… starting a fight… finishing a fight… getting control of any situation…
Better yet… being a tattoo artist.
Or getting tattoos.
All of it was part of his attempt to shut his mind up.
There was a lump in my throat that wasn’t going to go away.
That much I knew for sure. That was one of the real truths for the night.
“So it all happened, angel,” Ash said. “And it didn’t matter who fought who or what legally, it was done. She was never coming back. And in a way, when that SUV went over the cliff, so did all the truths. I’ll never know. Maybe she’s happy with that ending. Maybe not. And when I think about it… it’s hard to see it anymore. Time erases it. Little by little, Belle. The scar is the only part of it that won’t go away.”
“I think the scar is sexy,” I said.
Really, Belle?
“You and five hundred others,” Ash said.
That fired up the old jealousy factory in my stomach.
“You’re so worried about the ending,” Ash said. “I love and hate that about you, angel.”
Love? Hate? Same sentence…
“I have no choice, Ash.”
“Why not?”
“In every story and show and movie, the more things get worse, the better the ending,” I said. “So why wouldn’t I look for the ending?”
“Because you really believe in that happily ever after bullshit?”
“No. I just believe at the very least no more getting hurt.”
Ash turned and touched my face with his other hand. “Sorry to ruin your ending, angel, but that’s not how it works.”
“No shit,” I said.
Ash paused. Stared.
I waited.
“My father met Vanessa,” Ash said. “And in a way it was like the slate was wiped clean. Their connection was instant. Deep. And…”
“What?” I asked.
“I always wondered if they had something going on before,” Ash said. “That’s never left my mind. And there’s no way I’ll ever know. Because of what they have.”
“And because you got stuck with Hil.”
“Fuck Hil,” Ash said.
“You love him, Ash.”
“There’s variations of that word, angel,” Ash said. “I’ve said enough tonight.”
“It’s okay, Ash,” I said. “Everything you think and feel. Everything you’re worried about. Maybe it doesn’t matter to anyone else but it matters to me. I’m sorry you won’t get your ending or your truths.”
“That’s the entire point, Belle,” Ash said. “Maybe that is the ending and the truth. What you don’t get. What you don’t see. What you don’t know. So you just say fuck it and roll with what’s right there now.”
“Like next to you?” I asked. “In a really big bed? Trying to piece it all together still?”
Ash sighed. “And this is the shit I have to put up with for the rest of my life now?”
He leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.
Then he moved to his back but kept his hand in the pocket of my hoodie.
“So you think telling me all of that is going to help me sleep?” I asked with a laugh.
“Nope,” Ash said. He took his hand out of the pocket of the hoodie. “But I know other ways to help…”
His fingers found bare skin and I shut my eyes.
I bit my lip.
My heart raced even faster.
I didn’t think this was going to help me fall asleep either.
But I wasn’t going to complain for one second.
* * *
Okay, I finally fell asleep, slept all night, didn’t have a single dream, and woke up in such a daze that I almost thought I was drunk. When I lifted my head off the pillow, my hair was in my face, messy and smelling like a good sleep. I looked around and needed a few seconds to gather up my thoughts.
That I was in Ash’s house. Or cabin. Or cabin-slash-house.
But it was his.
All his.
No sneaking around a house, hallways, worried about creaky doors and floors.
He could do whatever he wanted.
I climbed out of the biggest bed I had ever been in and dug through my bag for something to wear on the bottom half of my body. The best I could come up with without dumping the bag was the bottoms of a bathing suit. A dark red bikini bottom with green and orange flowers.
It was better than nothing, right?
Ask Ash that…
My face was already hot as I put the bottom of the bikini on and hurried out of the bedroom to find Ash.
I smelled coffee and food and all my senses shut down.
It was just the sense of smell.
And I followed that smell down the hidden steps, to the left, and into a kitchen that rivaled Uly’s mother’s beach house kitchen. To me a cabin kitchen should have had a small stove - two burners tops - and the sink and counter and table that were all crammed together or even all the same or something.
But this place had a real kitchen.
As though I expected something different.
On top of the beautiful kitchen, there was a beautiful guy standing there - shirtless - flipping pancakes, one by one.
Did I mention he was shirtless?
When he flipped the pancakes, the rippling effect of the muscles of his back were enough that I put my hand out to touch the doorway so I didn’t fall.
The perfectly round edges of the tattoos that ended at his shoulders… like a magical door opening to give way to the cascading colors of the tattoos that consumed his arms…
The colors, your eyes
Not so much as you do think,
The ink, tells the truth
I cleared my throat and Ash shook his head.
“I know you’re there, angel,” he said.
“You do?”
“You make a lot of noise,” he said. He looked back at me. “You suck at sneaking around.”
“Who said I was sneaking around?”
“Good point then,” he said. “Take a seat.”
“Nothing like pancakes and commands in the morning,” I said as I walked toward the table.
It was a perfect little table too.
High off the floor.
Sitting against a big window that looked out to nothing but trees.
Giving the illusion that maybe we were hidden somewhere else.
Ash walked to the table with pancakes and coffee for me.
I had no choice but to lift my eyebrow at him.
“Ask away, angel,” he said.
“I’m not going to.”
“She used to make them in the morning for me,” he said. “After I was sick. Or after I had a bad day. A good day. On Sundays. Blah, blah, blah. And after she died, I didn’t want to lose that. So, I did it myself.”
Shit… like I needed my heart to be messed with any more than it already was.
In that exact second I decided to hate Ash’s father a little bit. Even if he did lose his wife, he still had a son to raise. And his father, did he know about this pancake thing? Or did he just not care enough?
On top of that, Ash was the guy who beat the hell out of anyone he felt like. Reason or not. And now he was the sexy, shirtless guy serving me pancakes?
“Do you do this for all your sleepovers?” I asked.
“Sleepovers?” Ash asked. “That’s what you want to call it?”
“What do you want to call it?”
Ash put his hands to the table. I loved the way his muscles flexed through the ink on his arms. He was annoyed with me already this early in the morning. And I was okay with it. My annoyance to him was him flirting back at me. And his flirting was the same broody anger he always had, except now…
I sighed in my heart and head.
“Just eat the fucking pancakes and stop writing stories,” he said.
He walked away and I helped myself to the pancakes and the coffee.
That’s when my list grew even longer.
The scar on his head.
His eyes.
Steel cut jaw.
The tattoos.
Hello, tone muscle.
Can cook pancakes and make coffee.
There were other things I could love Ash for, but none appropriate over a plate of pancakes.
When Ash came back to the table, he had a thick notebook with him.
It was leather-bound and looked beat to hell and back.
He spun it around and slid it toward me.
When he flipped it open, I saw the drawings… and I smiled.
“Knew you had one of these,” I said.
“It got me through a lot,” he said. “That’s all I’m going to say. It was my escape.”
I lifted my eyes to his.
He curled his lip. “Hil and I had to come to terms with some shit in our lives. I knew all along about his father and kept it quiet. My show of respect. He and Uly had their music. I wasn’t left out.”
“Just not included,” I said.
“Had no desire to be included,” Ash said. “I had this.”
“And this turned into that,” I said, pointing to his arms.
Ash looked at his arms. “I guess you could say that.”
I put my hand flat on the open notebook. “And what about this? Is this, us, going to turn into that?”
“Depends on what that is,” Ash said.
He leaned down toward me.
A good morning kiss that smelled of fresh coffee and sweet, buttery pancakes… and the stickiness of syrup.
Whatever cologne Ash used, it had the lingering power to be on his skin even the next day.
Our lips touched and I shut my eyes.
The front door to the cabin-slash-house opened.
“Good morning, motherfuckers,” a voice called out.
“Do I smell pancakes?” another voice added.
I pulled away from Ash.
“Sorry, angel, but we all have to talk now.”
twelve
Hil grabbed the other chair and jumped up on it. He ran a hand through his already (and forever) slicked back hair. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and grinned at me.
“Morning, beauty,” he said to me.
“Hil,” I said. “How did you sleep last night?”
“Very well,” he said. “Yourself?”
My cheeks warmed up and I knew I was going to give it all away.
Not that it mattered.
Right? Did it matter?
I turned my head and watched as Uly grabbed two pancakes at once and started to eat them.
“Did you lose your shirt, Ash?” Uly asked him.
“Fuck, I did,” Ash said. “Didn’t even realize I was missing it.”
I felt Hil just staring at me.
Making me feel uncomfortable.
I slowly turned my head to look at him again. “Something wrong?”
“Are you naked under that hoodie, beauty?” Hil asked.
“Hil,” Ash growled.
Protective…
“Of course I’m naked under this,” I said. “Everyone is naked under what they’re wearing.”
Hil took a drag of his cigarette and then dropped it into my coffee.
“There’s no smoking in my house,” Ash said.
“Fuck off, Ash,” Hil said. “I’m talking to Belle for a minute.”
“Yeah, he’s talking to me for a minute,” I said to Ash.
Ash curled his lip and turned around.
I caught Uly staring at me next.
Shit.
I kept my attention on Hil.
“You know what I meant,” Hil said.
“Which is?”
“That hoodie is it,” he said. “There is nothing under that hoodie.”
“What makes you say that?”
Hil leaned back and grinned. The kind of grin that made me blush harder. The kind of grin that…
“Let’s just say there’s a positioning of things,” Hil said. “You can tell when someone is wearing a bra and when they’re not. Not to mention… I think someone’s trying to say
hello to dear old Hil here.”
I covered my chest with my right hand.
“You’re an asshole, Hil,” I said.
“Agreed,” Uly called out.
“Just pointing out the obvious,” Hil said. “I mean, technically Belle is the one pointing…”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re so cliché, Hil. Why would I expect anything else?”
“Don’t know, beauty,” he said.
“I’m not just wearing a hoodie,” I said. “I have something else on. Part of a bathing suit.”
“Oh, what color?” Hil asked.
He pushed away from the table and leaned down to look under the table.
I let out a small cry and stood up.
“Fuck, Hil,” Uly said.
“That’s enough,” Ash bellowed as he charged at Hil.
Everything moved fast.
Ash pinned Hil again the window.
I thought he was going throw Hil through the window.
Ash had his forearm to Hil’s throat.
And Hil just smiled.
I bit my lip.
Ash looked even hotter, shirtless, ready to fight…
Ohgod, Belle, what is wrong with you?
“Stop it,” I said.
“Oh, baby,” Hil whispered. “The tension in this room…”
“Let’s just stick to what we came here for,” Uly said. “Belle and Tinsley.”
I snapped my head to the left. “What?”
“Sorry to interrupt the fantasy world here, beauty,” Hil said with Ash’s forearm against his throat.
I shook my head and looked down.
Hil’s cigarette gently swam in my coffee mug.
Amazing how fast heaven could be replaced with hell, huh?
* * *
“Here you go, doll,” Uly said as he brought me another mug of coffee.
When he offered me a cigarette, there was no way I could pass that up either.
Ash let Hil go and stood across the kitchen, leaning against the counter.
Hil had his forearms on the back of the chair he had been sitting in.
“Everything is ready, beauty,” Hil said. “You just need to show up and sit next to her. Talk to her. Make friends. Shit, become more than friends even.”
“Keep it in your pants, Hil,” Uly said.
“You tell me that wouldn’t get you-”
NOT SO Special: a bay falls high novel Page 12
