She took on a flippant tone with him, hardly sounding like herself, “I said I was sorry. What more do you want?”
“We want you to start making smarter decisions,” I spoke up, causing her grey eyes to turn to me. She was frowning, and the expression did nothing to lessen her beauty. Ash was beautiful no matter what expression she wore, the kind of beauty that could ruin you if you weren’t careful.
Me? She could ruin me any day, any time. In fact, I think she already did.
“You don’t get to decide what I do,” she told us. “I’m my own person, and I have the right to—”
“To what?” Travis cut in, glaring. “To run off in the middle of the night not even a week after you were hit by a car? Ash, if someone has it out for you, they’ll be watching you. They could’ve gotten to you tonight, and neither Declan nor I would be any the wiser. We’d still be out there, looking for you.”
Ash had to look away at that. She stared holes in the floor as she muttered, “If someone has it out for me, I wish they’d just end it already.”
My mouth dropped open, and no words came out. This…this wasn’t the Ash I was used to. This wasn’t the Ash I’d gotten to know these last few months. This was a stranger, and she looked almost scared, frightened in a way I never would’ve guessed Ash could be.
Travis got up from the desk chair, hoisting his leg over it as he sauntered over to her. Even though I didn’t like watching him get so close, I couldn’t look away. This night was not going how I thought it would at all. He moved to her side, sitting near her on her bed. She refused to look at him.
“What is going on?” Travis all but begged. And he wasn’t a beggar. He wasn’t the type of man who’d ever beg a girl, and yet here he was, begging Ash to tell him what was wrong. I’d like to say I was shocked, but after everything, I didn’t think I could get any more surprised.
Travis never acted this way about Sabrina, and he’d been sleeping with her for months behind my back. Here, with Ash? He was hardly recognizable. He seemed like he genuinely cared for her, which made my mind reel. If this was his caring act, did he even feel anything for Sabrina, or was he simply using her just because he could? I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Sabrina had meant nothing to him, or that Ash meant more.
“I can help you,” Travis went on, his voice a bare whisper. I could hardly hear him, and I was a mere eight feet away. I watched him set a hand on Ash’s back, feeling my blood pressure rising. “I can help you, but you need to tell me what’s going on, Ash. The truth. All of it.”
I zoned out. Whatever he was saying, I didn’t care. In that moment, all I cared about was the fact that he was touching her so tenderly, right in front of me. As if I wasn’t even in the room. As if it was just him and her together, a couple ready to fight the odds in order to be together. To that, I had one thing to say.
Fuck that. Fuck him, and fuck this.
Okay, technically, that was three things, I guess, but you get the point.
What I really wanted to do was launch myself at Travis. I didn’t like getting physical, but I could if the situation arose. This? If this wasn’t that situation, I didn’t know what was. There was one thing that stopped me, however, and that was the dejected look on Ash’s face. No, fighting Travis wouldn’t happen. Not tonight, at least.
Maybe later. I wasn’t going to let Ash choose Travis. I wasn’t going to lose to Travis again, but I could wait. I could wait until this thing with Ash was figured out, because even though I wasn’t a fan of Travis, I needed to make sure Ash was alright first. Out of everything and everyone, Ash was my number one priority. Ash and Will. They were all I had, and I’d be damned if I lost either one of them to whoever was trying to hurt us.
I slowly stood, moving to sit on Ash’s other side. While Travis had a hand on her back, I set one on her knee as I whispered, “We can both help you. You know I’d do anything for you.”
Ash turned her gorgeous eyes to me, and then to Travis. She looked at us both in a way I’d never seen her look at anyone before. Dejected, depressed…lonely. “You don’t get it. Neither of you understand…” She pulled away from us, moving to stand between our two beds, leaving both Travis and I on hers. Shaking her head, she muttered, “I can’t…I just can’t. I can’t do it. I thought I could, but…”
“Ash,” Travis pressed her, drawing his hand to his lap. “You know if you don’t tell me, I’m just going to figure it out on my own. And no matter how long it takes, you know I won’t give up and I won’t stop until I do.”
Ash was serious when she told him, “Find someone else to obsess over.” She turned her chin to me, adding, “And you should find someone else to replace Sabrina.”
Her words were barbed, meant to hurt—and hurt they did. I flinched, while Travis only glowered. I’d told her before, and I meant it, one hundred percent, when I said she wasn’t a replacement. She might’ve reminded me of Sabrina at first, but honestly any blonde did. Now, I saw Ash as her own person, and it was because of that that her words hurt me so much.
She wasn’t Sabrina. She wasn’t a replacement for her. She was…she was so much more.
“You’re both better off without me,” she said, sounding…sounding exactly like I did, right after what happened to Sabrina. It was a thought I had on numerous occasions: the whole world would be better off without me. A notion many depressed people had, even if it wasn’t true.
And in this case? It definitely wasn’t true. If I didn’t have Ash, I had no one. I had a brother stuck in the hospital and a dad who constantly tried putting his nose in my business, but that was it. No one beyond family. No one who mattered.
Travis refused to back down, saying, “I decide who I’m better off without, and it sure as hell isn’t you.” I found myself nodding along—yet another thing I agreed with him about. Look at us, agreeing about Ash so often. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think we were friends.
But we weren’t. Not anymore. And we never could be after what he did. Ash was not going to bridge that gap. The bridge between Travis and I had been burned, its ashes dust in the wind. Sometimes there was no coming back from betrayal. You could only dig yourself deeper in the grave already made for you. Travis and I would never be friends again.
Ash looked between us, something unspoken passing behind her storm grey gaze. Her jaw clenched, and her fingers tightened as they hung at her sides. “I wish you would leave” was all she said before moving to the bathroom and closing herself inside, locking herself away from us as much as she could without storming out again.
I glanced to Travis, wondering if she meant he should leave, or me. Or, hell, maybe she was talking to the both of us. Whatever was happening, it was serious—had to be, to get her to act like this. Ash was the most level-headed person I’d ever met, even if she occasionally didn’t make the best decisions. To see her spiraling like this hurt me in ways I never imagined possible.
I didn’t want her to hurt like this. I wanted to protect her, to save her, to keep the world and its atrocities away from her. Was that so wrong? I’d failed miserably when it came to Sabrina, but I would not fail Ash. I refused to. I would fight tooth and nail for her, give up my heart and my soul if I had to. She was everything to me, and I’d do my damnedest to make her realize it.
“I suppose I should go,” Travis muttered, frowning to himself. His blue eyes moved to me, and for a moment, we simply stared at each other in silence. Neither of us knew what to say, because neither of us had ever been in this position to begin with. This was new territory for the both of us: caring for the same girl and refusing to be the one to back down. No secrets this time, no hiding.
He got up to leave, and I followed him out into the hall, shoving my foot at the dorm door to keep it from closing fully. “Wait,” I said, watching as he turned around. He had one tattooed hand shoved in his pocket, fiddling with something. His cigarettes, probably. “You told me why you had Sabrina’s diary, but you never said why Ash had it.”
That was…kind of a non-answer, but it was one I’d come to expect from him. He didn’t outright admit that he and Ash were together physically, and I didn’t know if I wanted to know whether or not they were. Right now, I needed my sanity intact.
“Best be ready for anything,” Travis advised, “because I have the feeling what she’s hiding is something big.” With that, he walked away, his shoulders held squared and his head high. He disappeared around a corner, leaving me to wonder just what it was that Ash was hiding.
Obviously, it was something. Something so huge she wasn’t comfortable sharing it with either of us. I hated that she felt like she had to hide it from me. Didn’t she know by now that I wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what?
I returned to the room, closing and locking the door behind me, deadbolt and all. If only our room had twenty locks—I’d use them to keep whoever it was out, and Ash in. Yes, right now I was more than okay with locking Ash in here with me. It was the only way I could know for a fact she was safe. When she wasn’t in the same room as me, when she wasn’t here, less than ten feet away from me, I wouldn’t be able to focus. Coursework would become a joke until this was figured out.
Everything could fall to the wayside and disappear, but as long as I had Ash, I’d survive.
I’d survived worse.
Chapter Fourteen – Will
The first thing that greeted me from my most recent one-on-one with unconsciousness was the beeping of machines around me. My eyes struggled to open, and I found myself in an unfamiliar room. A hospital room, by the look of it. Private, because it was spacious and I had the space all to myself. I wore nothing but a hospital gown, tubes connected to my wrists, pumping me full of some kind of fluid. If I had to guess, I’d say they were some kind of pain-killers, mixed with water.
I was attacked, stabbed. Who knew how long I’d been out, and being unconscious, I couldn’t exactly eat or drink.
I breathed in deeply, wincing when I felt the bandage on my gut. I was a bit numb still, but I knew that was probably best. How badly were my insides scrambled? And how the hell did I even make it to the hospital? I’d fallen to the floor, and that was the last thing I remembered. I couldn’t see the guy’s face, couldn’t see much of anything. It was dark, and I was drowning in fresh agony.
It wasn’t long before a nurse came to check on me. I supposed I could’ve called using the emergency buttons sitting on the side of the hospital bed, but I needed some time to myself. I needed to gather my thoughts. Things were…a mess, and that was putting it lightly.
This wasn’t just a mess. This was a disaster of epic proportions.
Once the nurse saw I was awake, it became a parade in my room. Doctors and nurses all asking me how I felt and discussing my injuries with me. I might’ve tapped out sometime during it, zoning out while still looking like I was listening. I could feel my toes and move them, and besides a couple organs inside that needed to be sewn together, I was okay. I wasn’t dead, and I wasn’t paralyzed. I was alive, which meant whoever had attacked me had left me alive on purpose. Things didn’t happen accidentally around here, especially not with both Declan and I being attacked.
No, someone had purposefully come after us, wanting to inflict pain but not wanting to kill us. A psychopath, someone who didn’t know right from wrong—or who just didn’t care. I didn’t know who did it, but I knew one thing: whoever was the culprit didn’t deserve to be walking around, free from bars. No, he deserved prison…or a stabbing of his own.
But maybe that was just my vengeful side coming out. After all, it was one thing when you went after my brother, but another thing coming after me. The both of us? Someone had it out for the Briggs family. A pity, because there was just the two of us now, other than our dad.
It wasn’t long before daddy dearest showed up, wearing a suit, obviously having come straight from work. He refrained from hugging me, standing a good distance away as he studied me, motionless in the bed. He looked haggard, tired to the extreme. I did this to him, although I could tell I was not the reason I was here.
No, my Dad was not here to check on my well-being.
“I’m glad you’re finally awake and alert,” Dad spoke, staring at me with an expression I didn’t particularly like. “You had some moments yesterday, but they weren’t lucid.”
I couldn’t remember waking up before this, so I forced myself to give him a smile and say, “Well, I’m awake now, thankfully.” Me, comforting my father, even though I was the one in the hospital bed, not him. The man was a winner, through and through.
Me and Dad didn’t like each other much. We were family, but sometimes having shared blood wasn’t enough. I loved Declan, but did I love him? I…I didn’t know if I would go that far. Growing up with him wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. It was why I wanted to stay away from Hillcrest, and yet, now—after meeting Ash and falling hard for her instantly—I was going to transfer there next semester.
Things were definitely about to get interesting.
“You spoke a lot of gibberish yesterday,” Dad went on, his eyes hard on me. “A good thing that the nurses knew you were high on pain meds.” The door to the room was closed behind him, so it was just me and him. It was the only reason why he must’ve felt comfortable enough to go right out and say it.
Leave it to my dad to make me feel like shit. Like worse shit. As if being attacked in my own apartment wasn’t enough; he had to go add insult to injury, as if I’d suddenly forgotten what happened.
He moved to the chair beside the bed. I spotted a slew of flowers arranged around the room, most of them probably from my dad’s rich buddies. Friends who weren’t really friends who’d heard about what happened to me. Wouldn’t have happened if he would’ve gone to Hillcrest, I was certain they said. Normally I’d say fuck Hillcrest back, but with everything happening involving Declan, I couldn’t.
Plus, someone had to keep an eye on Ash, too. If there was anyone who’d do anything to protect her, it was me.
“Two detectives told the doctor to contact them the moment you’re up and alert,” Dad went on, running a hand down his slender face. His brown goatee was shrouded in stubble. He needed a good shave. Well, now that I was officially up—though I knew I wouldn’t be for too long, thanks to how shitty I felt—he could rest easy. The Briggs name would not be tarnished because of me. “They’ll be coming soon, I bet.”
I would’ve shrugged, but even breathing kind of hurt. “Okay. I’ll be ready for them.”
My dad stared holes through me, as if he thought I’d made this whole thing up for attention. “What happened, Will?”
“I was stabbed in my own apartment,” I bluntly said, refusing to roll my eyes even though I really wanted to. “It wasn’t like I was throwing a party or doing anything fun. I just fell asleep on the couch, woke up and went to bed. Or I would’ve, if the window wasn’t open and someone didn’t stab me out of nowhere—”
“And you didn’t see his face? Or even what skin color he had?”
Okay, at that I rolled my eyes. “No. I didn’t see anything. Before I knew it, I was on the floor, bleeding out, and he was gone.”
“So he came in through the window?” Dad asked, rubbing his goatee again. “I wonder how long fingerprints last…”
Anyone worth their weight in blood would know to wear gloves when committing a heinous act like that, I knew. Not a single part of me believed there would be any fingerprints to find, and yet I knew the police would go searching, if they hadn’t already. My apartment was a crime scene, and I wondered if the
y already tore the place apart looking for evidence.
It was fine, because I knew they wouldn’t find any.
“I doubt they’ll find anything, but they’re welcome to look,” I muttered, wishing Dad would just get the hint and leave. Shouldn’t I be relaxing right now? Focusing on healing or something? With him here, it was hard to do anything but be miserable. Dad was…hard to get along with, sometimes.
Or maybe that was just me. Maybe I was tired of trying to be the perfect son and fitting into his bubble that he wanted both Declan and me to fit in. I was my own person, and if he didn’t realize that by now…what the hell were we doing here?
“There’s nothing in your apartment that would be unsuitable for the police to find?” Dad asked, cocking his head as if he expected me to say I had a mountain of cocaine stashed away, along with undocumented immigrants squatting in my closet.
“No,” I muttered. No, no, and no.
His lips pursed, and he was silent for a while. A long while. “You brought up Ashley Bonds. Do you remember that?”
I blinked, wishing I could take it back. Dad didn’t know she was the reason I was transferring. Well, her and Declan. I didn’t need Dad to know how much I cared for Ash. “Nope,” I said, feigning ignorance. “Don’t remember that—and I don’t know why I’d bring her up. I barely know her.”
Dad gave me a look that said he didn’t quite believe me.
I went on, searching my mind for an excuse to get him out of my room, “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest a bit before the detectives show up.” I had no idea how soon they’d come, but I knew they would, and if using them as an excuse would get Dad out of here faster, then I’d gladly use them to my advantage. I guess, deep down, I was a Briggs after all. All the rich used everyone to their advantage, whether they had consent to or not.
My dad gave me a tight smile, reaching over to pat my shoulder, like I’d done a good job. It was stupid, and it felt like he was talking down to me, even if he wasn’t saying a single word. He moved to the door, tossing a look over his shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Rest up.”
Skank: A Dark College Bully Romance (Hillcrest University Book 3) Page 11
