“Whoa. Hold up a minute. Let’s go back a few sentences.” Karen’s blond brows nearly disappeared in the fringe of her bangs. “Do you not notice the way he looks at you?”
“Like he feels sorry for me? Yeah, I see that sure.” I blinked rapidly as my eyes started to stupidly burn. I didn’t want to mess up the smoky liner Simone had skillfully applied.
“Uh, news flash,” Simone chimed in. “I’ve known Ash since we were in high school, and I’ve never seen him look at any girl the way he looks at you.”
“His eyeballs practically came out of their sockets when he saw you naked, Fanny.” My sister volleyed in that bit of jaw dropping information.
“He saw her naked?” Simone stepped closer. “How? When?”
“I slipped coming out of the shower.”
“He broke down the door when she cried out. I was here in the bedroom, but he still beat me to her.”
“I wondered what happened there.” Simone’s eyes went to the door that was propped up against the wall then back to me.
“Damn,” Karen decided. “Those are not the actions of a disinterested man.”
“Have you seen him touch her? He’s so focused, like she’s fragile and precious, and he can’t believe his good fortune that she allows him the privilege to caress her.” Simone fanned her face with her hand. “It’s sexy as all hell.”
“Yeah appreciation and tenderness are the best kind of foreplay.” Karen’s mouth curved, and a dimple peeked out. “Lucky me. Ramon is a master at those skills.”
“Stop it, all of you.” My hands fluttered in front of me and the long silver necklace with tasseled metal ends swished against my skin. “Please. I’m happy for you, Karen. Ramon sounds great. But no more about Ash. I have a crush on the guy. One I’ve had since he was just a one-dimensional dream taped to my bedroom wall. Now he’s a living, breathing, temptation strutting around the penthouse with all that devastating hotness 24-7.” Karen and Simone nodded at each other as if my words were confirmation of something. “You guys need to help me get over my crush not foster it. Ash isn’t leading me on. He made it clear that we’re just friends.”
“Friends can grow to be more.” Karen captured my hands. “But I’ll leave you alone about it. I understand the way you feel right now. Totally I do.” Her light sandy brown eyes brimmed with empathy as they searched mine. “One day when you have some time I’ll tell you all about Ramon and me and how we got where we are today. But for now, I just want you to know. Simone and I just want you both to know,” she stretched one of her arms wide offering her free hand for Hollie to take, “how happy we are to have you in our circle. Whatever the reason, Fanny,” she refocused on me, “you’ve gotten Ash, a confirmed recluse, out of his solitary confinement. And for that miracle, even if Simone and I didn’t already like you, which we do, we will be forever grateful.”
• • •
Ashland
“City of stars…”
The guys and I glanced toward the stairs as the singing continued.
“Is that who I think it is?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Ramon nodded. “The girls are doing some kind of Pitch Perfect thing to the theme song from La La Land. And my surfer girl’s taking the lead apparently.” He cringed as Karen hit another off-key note.
“At least it’s a joyful noise,” I assessed generously.
“That’s one way of looking at it.” Ramon moved to intercept his woman as she emerged, and Linc slipped in front of me to snag his as well. When the couples stepped aside, I saw Fanny. My first glimpse in hours, and it was telling how long and empty those hours had felt.
Pretty?
Yeah, Fanny was always that. The tomorrow today girl exuded beauty. And though adversity might have dimmed the spellbinding fire within her what remained continued to outshine them all.
I stalked closer. Surrounded by my friends, she wasn’t in any danger. Yet my first instinct was protect, and my second was to take her somewhere private where only my eyes could gaze at her looking like that.
“Hey, little rose.” She stiffened for a moment before she turned my way as if the memory associated with that endearment had sharp thorns.
“Ash,” she acknowledged. Her breathy voice spilling from those glossed up ruby lips kindled my imagination. And when her eyes hit mine, she sparked the rest. The bigger fire. The heat of it nearly knocked me backward.
Her body was a sexy lure, no doubt. But the source of who she was, her soul, the irresistible part to me, could be seen in her gaze. And for a brief moment she poured it all out, her goodness, pure and unadulterated. And it confirmed what I had already realized with Linc earlier. Fanny could do it. She could make me forget him. Fill the empty spaces. Light up the darkness in my own soul with her flame. Burn away the marks on my psyche if I dared to expose them to her. That irrepressible hope of hers was the pretty red ribbon that tied all that she was together like a gift. A priceless gift. One that I had to refuse because of what she didn’t know about me. But damn it, how could I with her looking so fucking gorgeous? The conflict rippling through the center of me rumbled out of my voice.
“Don’t you think you should go back downstairs and put some fuckin’ clothes on, darlin’?”
Someone muttered something.
Someone else cursed me under their breath.
But I only registered her.
Her gasp. The immediate flash of wet in her eyes. The hurt that snuffed out her flame before she whirled around and ran to the stairs.
Way to go, asshole. You can’t have what you want, so you lash out like a spoiled child.
I started after her to apologize, wincing with each step, as if the ground were littered with sharp shards, broken pieces of expectations, hers and mine.
“Ash.” Linc grabbed my arm. “What the fuck?” I glanced at his fingers on my skin and lifted my gaze.
“Let go, Linc,” I growled. “Stay out of it. This has nothing to do with you.” He released me and took a step back, his eyes wide. Later I would reexamine the validity of that last part and how it revealed how utterly Fanny Bay had altered the course I had plotted for my life.
But at the moment I just needed to get to her.
• • •
Fanny
I ripped off the velvet jacket. Threw it on the ground stumbling over the bags of clothes in my haste to find something to throw on. I knew it. I had absolutely known not to go up to see him all made up like that. I had practically thrown myself at him. With predictable results.
“Fanny.”
“Shit!” I whirled around, the black shirt I had selected clutched in front of my breasts. “Go away, Ashland! Please, please just go away.” Adding insult to injury, the tears I had so far managed to hide spilled humiliatingly onto my cheeks.
“I can’t.” He took a step closer, and I couldn’t help but notice things I hadn’t had a chance to on the roof. How fine he looked with his platinum hair tied like a sailor at his nape. No not an ordinary seaman. He was too well dressed. More like a captain in a navy Tom Ford button down shirt with mitered barrel cuffs and light beige straight fit jeans. A dashing rogue, the garments flowed with his movements accentuating his muscular frame. Yeah, I remembered how handsome the drummer of the Dogs looked dressed up and how nice he looked in those GQ spreads. Like it mattered to him what I thought.
“I tried that nearly two years ago. It didn’t take.” His gaze melded to mine, he continued to plow straight through the clothing debris field. I wanted to retreat from him. Protect myself from further harm. But there was a madness in me when it came to him that didn’t care about the damage he could do.
“I didn’t notice any trying.” I lifted my chin. “The way I remember it sitting in that coffeehouse and texting you, I don’t know, at least a half dozen times, you had absolutely no trouble at all staying away.” I fostered my rising indignation, better to unfurl it than surrender to some foolish fantasy. “You were being more direct and honest on the roof moments ago than you’
re being right now with your revisionist history.” I pasted on what I hoped was an amalgam of haughtiness and indifference. “I get it. There’s nothing I have that you want to see. Right? So go on back to the party. I’m doing what you want. I’m putting some clothes on.”
“I don’t know what got into me up there. I spoke without thinking. I know that I hurt you. That wasn’t my intention.” He plowed right over my protests and got to the heart of the matter as effortlessly as he had plowed through the clothes. Stopping in front of me, his gaze dipped, a moment of regard that made me note that he was very much a man, and I was very much a woman, a half-naked one. I drew in a breath, and I held it. My breasts swelled, my nipples tightened and my heart hammered inside my chest. My body, every part of it, ached for more than just his regard, a familiar hollow feeling when it came to him. How reckless was I to continue to expect him to return my affection?
“But when it comes to you, Fanny I can’t seem to act in a rational manner. Logic doesn’t seem to factor in.” Ocean blue eyes clouded by regret lifted to hold my showery grey ones captive. “It didn’t when we first met. It barely dictates what I do in the present. It certainly did jack shit to filter what came out of my mouth a couple of minutes ago.” He lifted his hands, a silver linked TAG Heuer sports watch glinting as he framed my face. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.” His tone softened. “I did because you looked so incredibly sexy, and I didn’t want anyone but me to see you. You’re sexy right now attempting to hide those perfect tits behind that shirt you’re holding. You are sexy to me no matter what you wear or aren’t wearing.”
“Ash,” I exhaled. “I don’t understand if you think I am why…”
“Shhh,” he soothed, his gaze delving deep, so deeply into mine. “Give me this one moment before I have to let you go.” Slowly he smoothed his palms through the wetness on my cheeks and spread his fingers wide at the base of my skull. My head now cradled, he gently tipped my face into a position where he could see all of it. Peering down at me, his gaze searching mine, his moment stretched meaningfully longer before he shattered it. “I’m sorry. Sorry I hurt you back then. Sorry I hurt you the other day. Sorry I keep hurting you.” There was a plea, a request for sympathy now within his gaze. “I have so many regrets, so many things I would change if I could. But there’s no changing the past no matter how much I wish it could be so. I’ve been selfish to let things go so long like this. I just wanted something normal. Wanted you to know my friends. To be a part of my inner circle. I thought that while you were here maybe I could enjoy having you close as a friend without having to tell you the truth. But that was a lie in itself. A self-serving one. And you sweet, sexy, beautiful Fanny deserve the truth.” He inhaled a breath and exhaled words I could never have imagined. “The truth is that I’m HIV positive.”
“What?” My gaze widened, registering the shock first. “No,” I whispered, feeling like the ground trembled beneath me, but realizing it was only me shaking.
“I had testing done right before the Oscars.” His hands slipped away from my skin. Cool nothingness replacing them. The warmth in his eyes turned cold, just like they had when I had revealed my identity to him.
“The crossroads you mentioned.”
Why? Why him? Why us? Was the beginning I always wanted us to have already at an end?
“Yeah. I had started feeling run down. I kept catching colds one after another and recovering slower each time. I hoped for the best but suspected the worst. I knew I was at risk. Sharing needles. Having unprotected sex. Lots of unprotected sex.”
I felt the blood rush from my head.
“You followed the band. I think you were well aware of my reputation.”
I nodded numbly. I did on one level, but at a distance. Back then at least. Back then he was a picture on my wall. A symbol of rebelliousness. I don’t know if the consequences of that lifestyle ever crossed my mind. I wondered if that’s how it had been with him, too.
“Other people I knew had similar stories. I knew I needed to get checked out. I got the bad news a couple of days before I was supposed to meet you.”
“Do your friends know?” I whispered, guessing the answer before he gave it. Too many things they had said now made sense.
“Of course,” he confirmed. “Yes they do. All of them now know…including you.” Right before my eyes, I watched him transform. The tender openly affectionate man retreated into himself, becoming a one-man island, hiding behind his diagnosis like I had been concealing my identity beneath my disguise. We had more in common than I had realized. We were each afraid to reveal to the other what would make us the most vulnerable.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
Fanny
“Is everything ok?” Hollie asked. Coming into the bedroom only moments after Ash had stalked sullenly out of it, she dropped down on the bed beside me.
“Hardly.” I hadn’t even begun to process all of the emotions spinning inside of me. Unfortunately to Ash my initial shock plus my hesitancy seemed to have equaled a condemnation of him in his mind.
“I didn’t think so. Ash took off. Linc followed him. Simone and Karen are still out there in the living room with Ramon. Do you want me to ask them to come in?”
“Not right now.” I took her hand and cradled it to my chest. “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah, I love you, too. But now you’re scaring me. What’s going on? Ash was a jerk, but this is something else, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “He’s HIV positive, Hollie. He just told me.”
“Oh no! That’s awful. I’m so sorry. When did he find out?” Her brow furrowed.
“Right after he met me. It’s why he didn’t show at the coffeehouse, I’m pretty certain, though he didn’t specifically say so.”
“That would totally make sense. I mean, I can see that throwing him for a loop, making him reluctant to start something new with someone.”
“You think?”
“Yeah,” she answered like it hadn’t been a rhetorical question. “But it’s not the death sentence that it once was.”
“What do you know about HIV?” I latched onto her words like a life ring.
“It’s not uncommon in my profession. People talk about it pretty openly. Ernie has it. It was an adjustment for him after he was diagnosed. For him and his partner.”
“Oh.” Ok maybe things were not quite as dire as I imagined.
“It can be controlled with antiviral medication. One pill is all that’s needed these days. There are risks, sure. Ernie has to take his medicine at the same time every day. He has to have his T cell count monitored. He can’t have unprotected sex, of course, since the virus is spread through bodily fluids. But if he stays fit, eats healthy and takes his meds then the fact that he’s HIV positive won’t keep him from living an otherwise normal life.”
“Truly?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
My gaze returning to the doorway I remembered how Ash had looked when he had left, how he had acted. Had that been just a reaction to my reaction?
“But knowing Ash, how he is, so protective of you, I wonder.” Her brow crease deepened. Following the vein of her thought I started putting pieces together.
“He’s usually very reserved physically according to what his friends have told us. Is there any risk from casual contact?”
“No. None. I’d tell you to look it up on your phone, but since we don’t have one…” She shrugged. “I’d say you’re on the right track, though, by thinking he’s being overly cautious.”
Overly pessimistic and irrationally cautious would be my guess. It had been a huge step admitting his diagnosis to me. Making himself vulnerable like that must have been very difficult for him to do.
His friends knew. But I didn’t think anyone else did. His retirement. The band calling it quits at the pinnacle of their career.
A picture was beginning to form in my mind about how everything must have gone down.<
br />
I could call Karen and Simone and ask them for more information to complete it, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to talk to Ashland himself. He had let down his guard to tell me the truth. Now he needed to tell me the rest. And he needed to see that he could trust me with the information he had shared.
• • •
Ashland
“Ash! Wait the fuck up!”
“No, Linc. Go away. Leave me alone.”
“No way,” he said, catching me at the pier. He didn’t listen any better than I had when Fanny had told me to go away. “You told her, huh?” Alongside me now, he gave me a careful look. “It didn’t go over well.” He could tell by just looking at me, but I shook my head to confirm. “Then fuck her. I like her but if she doesn’t get it then she’s not who I thought she could be for you, and she’s not worth it.”
Eloquently stated. Almost lyrical. Another time I might’ve gotten paper and a pen, and we could’ve worked it out in a song. I might’ve even smiled except I was crushed by Fanny’s reaction.
“You wanna get drunk?” he asked.
I was tempted to. Alcohol had become a crutch in the past. Something to numb the rejection of not being who Linc wanted, and to escape from all the other crap. But I knew the numbness would wear off eventually and the pain would still be there. Only I would have a hangover to go with it.
“No.” I shook my head.” I’m just gonna sit on the pier for a while. Get my head together. Can you…”
“Yeah,” he cut in. “I’ll go check on her and report back.”
“Thanks, Linc.” That had been exactly what I had wanted him to do. “Love you even though you’re a pain in my ass.”
“I love you, too, dude.” His reply drifted back to me on the breeze. I turned to tip my face into it.
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 71
