"What letters?" gritting his teeth as he said those two words.
Those words made me doubt Lizzy again. Had she been lying to me? She had not been honest about who George had been to her throughout this entire time. Anything was possible, I guess.
"Don't, do not do that!"
Glancing up at his face, he looked almost as though he was in physical pain.
"I was desperate to come back here, at the first opportunity I had to get out of that house, I escaped"
"Escaped?"
"I had begged and begged to stay. I didn't want to get on that plane. I screamed and cried the entire flight."
"What the fuck happened?" He was angry now. For the first time since coming back, it didn't feel as though it was directed at me.
"You, you didn't get my letters?"
Staying silent, he gave me my answer.
How had he not received them?
Who had?
My brain was struggling to comprehend this information. If he hadn't got them, could I still hate him for it?
Hate him for not writing back to me?
For not fighting and rescuing me from my own flesh and blood?
"Where?"
"What?"
"Where were you?"
"Some town out in the English countryside."
"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed Europe while everyone else here suffered" his anger was directed to me again, as though the words we had just exchanged had not even happened.
“Enjoyed, you think that I enjoyed being locked inside a house and not being allowed to step foot outside? You think I enjoyed having armed men everywhere in the house and those guns following my every movement? What are you even saying right now, Ashby?"
"Armed men?” I could see him swallowing, almost theatrically as my words sunk in “You didn’t, just, leave, stay there?”
He looked down at me with hate in his eyes. Was this a lost cause?
Even if he had gotten my letters, I don't think there would have been a different outcome from this anger and hate towards me. Would there?
"I could have helped!" He growled.
"I wrote to you," there was physically nothing else that I could have done, not in the situation I had been in at least. If things had been different…. "Tell me what happened," turning my body fully to him, "what happened to you that made you as cold on the inside as people thought you were on the outside? Who did this to you?"
"I…." The words died on his lips. The struggle was evident by the expression on his face.
"What happened when I left Ashby?"
"Where are you staying? I'll give you a lift."
He was ending the conversation, like this?
We had gotten nowhere at all. He was not listening or telling me anything, either.
"I'm too drunk to ride on a bike Ashby."
"Good job, I have a truck then. Ain't it" he drove the blue truck again?
Did he not have his bike anymore?
I could not imagine Ashby not riding. It was just, wrong.
"You're a fucking jerk now, aren't you?" As he turned away from me, I couldn't stop myself from standing. "And for the record, I liked you better before, when you were my Ashby! Not this asshole who is in front of me!"
Turning to me once again, the look in those blue eyes was unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Yeah, well, he's dead, so get fucking used to it, Nala."
As that last word, my name left his lips, anger flared further in me, and throwing the entire contents of the takeout box at him, the syrup of the pancakes ran down his t-shirt covered chest. Storming away, I could hear him shouting at me in a way I would never have expected.
"Fucking jerk!!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, gaining the attention of a couple of nurses passing by on their break, no doubt, "I hate who you are now!!!"
I was so angry that I made it back to the bar in half an hour. The anger and adrenaline had pushed my feet so fast I would not have been surprised to see smoke coming from the tennis shoes on my feet. I needed to release some of this anger that had built up inside of me quickly, or maybe I just needed to drink more Tequila. Looking up at the bar, I knew exactly what it was going to be. Alcohol.
Only the fucking Dodge Ram had followed me the whole way. I could hear him moving as he turned the Ram's engine off, slamming the driver door shut. Ashby fucking Bronx.
"I'm sorry," his voice was quiet, and if I didn't know any better, I would think it was my Ashby and not the new and unimproved one.
"Are you going to talk about it or just demand answers from me?" Keeping my back to him, I waited for a response.
"I don't want you to hate me."
Unable to respond, I pushed the door open and made my way back inside the bar. Ignoring Luke, who was watching me as I moved through the other patrons. Climbing the stairs, I went straight into the apartment. Not allowing myself to breakdown until I was safely in my own room. Then the tears fell freely, and sobs wracked my body.
How was I still in love with a guy who I had only spent a few days with over five years ago?
And how was I ever going to get over him?
He was not my Ashby anymore.
I should have never come back here.
Claire slipped into my bed and held me as I cried. She didn't say a single word, and I was grateful.
Both of us ignored my cell phone, lighting up every ten seconds until the battery died.
Watching her small frame disappear through the doors of the bar, disappointment filled me. Why did I have to fuck this up?
Damn it.
What fucking letters was she talking about?
My head was screaming ’Turn around, go back to the cabin and forget about her like she forgot about you for the last five years’ But that annoying beat in my chest was singing a different tune. Feelings I had buried were starting to bubble to the surface.
Why would she tell me that she had sent letters if she hadn’t?
To what, mess with me?
Punish me even more than I had already been?
Or maybe she was telling me the truth.
If that was the truth, how had I not received them?
Maybe she had sent them after the clubhouse had burnt to the ground?
There was only one person who I could think of who would know about anything to do with letters. Words that had been shouted at me ran through my head, words that tore me down. Would she have hidden them, kept them? She was not around anymore for me to ask. Marilyn.
She had gone on and on about letting go of Nala. When I had all but ripped this town apart looking for her, when I set my search further. If I wouldn’t have been so stupid to go, been so far in lov…… no.
Molly, she had been involved in everything, and I was betting if Marilyn had taken the letters, then they would be in her shit. If they even existed at all.
I should just turn the fuck around and go back to the life I had been living for the past few years. All alone in the cabin, just how he wanted me to be. Broken beyond recognition.
I didn’t want to fucking be here.
No good would come from this, I knew that, better than any fucking one.
The house was just there, almost mocking me as I sat in the truck. Delaying the inevitable, my curiosity of finding out if Marilyn had hidden these letters from me. I knew deep down that Peaches would never lie to me, not about that. They had to be somewhere, and this was the only place I could guess as to where they would be. If she hadn’t destroyed them as soon as they turned up, of course.
Marilyn and Daryl had moved into a house a mile away from the clubhouse six weeks before….. now her sister Molly lived here with her kid.
Getting out of the truck, I could almost hear the neighbors twitching their curtains, seeing me walking up the path to a house that I hated the sight of.
Knocking on the bright red door, I waited for the one person I did not want to see answer “Ashby?”
“I need to look through your sister’s shit,” I say, avoidin
g actually looking directly at her.
“Do you mind, my son is in the front room, we’re a non-swearing household.”
I had seen this girl go down on three guys in one night. In front of one another. Non-swearing household? Jesus fucking Christ.
“I’m not here to chit chat, Molly.”
“For the love of God,” she rolled her eyes, “The garage, the side door is open, Max was just working in there.”
Several boxes were stacked on one side of the room, all labelled ‘Marilyn.’
Ripping open box after box apart, I was beginning to get frustrated. Until I pulled open the very last one, and my heart stuttered at a small white bundle of letters. Brushing my fingers brush along the edge of them, I felt sick to my very core. They were all addressed to me. Every. Single. One.
The return address on the back was for Surrey, England.
She really did send me letters?
Why the hell did you do this, Marilyn?
You couldn’t let me at least know that she was alright?
All of this pain that had been caused. Everything that happened could have been avoided if she had just let me have them.
No part of me would ever be able to forgive her for this. How could I?
The need to flee was overwhelming. I couldn’t get out of this town fast enough, hiding out in my cabin in the next state. It was one of the only things I had left in this world. Well, that and now these letters.
I spent the next two weeks reading them over and over again. Hearing the words as though she was standing there saying them out loud to me over and over again.
The hate she had for me was as clear as day from that last letter.
Jesus Marilyn, what have you done?
Drinking more and more alcohol and mourning the life I should have had the last few years. Instead, I knew now that would never happen.
I’d lost her.
There is no way she would forgive me, not after reading what had been in those letters, and there was no way that she could love me, not anymore.
No-one ever could.
Fucking Marilyn, you really outdid yourself this time.
As if she hadn’t done enough already.
Just when I thought life could not get any worse, Brandon fucking Matthews walked into the god damned grocery store as we contemplated what type of melon to buy. I wanted watermelon, and Claire wanted honeydew.
I should have been nervous about being out and about, I knew that but it had been weeks since I had been back now, and there had been nothing. I was fed up with living my life scared and alone. If they were going to come and get me, what could I do to stop them? Hiding away was not going to do me any good.
The memory of what my dad had told me about Brandon's father paying for me to marry his son made me feel nauseous. Did he know, was he in on it? The words he had said to me in that high school hall the day I broke up with him, about seeing what my parents had to say about me ending our farse of a relationship. I knew that he must have known. He knew that I was by all accounts his possession. One that had been bought for him. It made me feel sick, just thinking about that transaction.
"Let's just get both?" I sigh. It was only melon at the end of the day, and I suddenly felt like I needed to be back at the apartment and as far away from Brandon Matthews as I possibly could get right now. Luke had been warning me to stay away from the Matthews at all costs. I wanted to keep asking why that was, but I was tired of getting absolutely nothing but warnings. I needed information. I needed facts.
"Oh no," Claire spotted him, and turning her gaze away, she visibly shook “We need to go.”
I hadn't told her the part about being paid for, I had been embarrassed and mortified about it, in every way.
Although with whatever it was that had happened during my absence, she seemed to more than just pale at the sight of him. Maybe she knew that bit too?
"I should never have come back here. Apart from you and Luke, I feel like everyone else in this town has it out for me," our relationship was still strained, but it was getting better each and every day. I think. Hoped.
"Don't be so dramatic," Claire snickered, keeping her face cast down, away from him. As if she didn’t look at him he wouldn’t be able to see her in return.
In all honesty, I was surprised to see he was even still here. He had grand plans to take the NFL by storm when we were kids. As he pushed his cart forwards, I noticed he was walking funnily, limping.
"What happened to him?"
Turning away from me, I knew that it must have something to do with what she wouldn't tell me "He got injured when he was home for Christmas break in freshman year of college, waved goodbye to his football career, and dropped out. Been working at his daddy's company part-time and as the assistant to the high school coach as well."
He was selling cars? I bet he hated that. His dad owned several hundred car dealerships across the United States, well, that is what the public knew anyway. There was something more sinister about him, of that I was certain. He'd been involved with my own dad after all and paid for me to marry his son. Without a doubt, he had other side-lines going on than just the dealerships. Nothing could surprise me anymore with these men. They were all bad to the bone.
As he passed us, his eyes widened for a split second before going down one of the aisles. He didn't even attempt to acknowledge me in any way. Not that I wanted him to. The only good thing about leaving this town when I did is that I had never had to see that boy again, until now. Turning his head back to me as he stood in front of the canned goods, he was just starring, face blank of all emotion. Well, that wasn't odd or creepy at all.
"Want some chocolate? I need some," Claire started to babble. She didn't like being in the same vicinity as him.
"Yes, chocolate sounds good, but American is nothing compared to English" Lizzy had snuck me so many bars of Dairy Milk, just the thought of the stuff was making my mouth water.
"Oh god," she moaned, like a god damned porn star, a couple of senior citizens stared open-mouthed at us "that stuff tastes so good, there is a candy store in Oregon that sells foreign food. I think I came when I ate it. Luke thought I was.. you know."
"Oh my god," groaning at the look on her face, "I think you did just thinking about eating it!"
"Just an FYI, my birthday is next month, and as a forever single woman, I would not be offended by sex toys and candy as gifts. In fact, I would be forever grateful."
"Claire!"
"What?"
"We share a wall."
"Get super quiet ones then, they're all the rage."
"Fucking hell."
Ashby- I read your letters.
Unable to take my eyes off of the screen, all I could do was stare at those four words for what felt like hours, but in reality, it could only have been a few minutes.
It had been two weeks since I had last seen him. He hadn't come into the bar to get his beer, and I hadn't known if I was concerned or relieved that I hadn't seen him.
Did that mean that he had lied?
Had he had them all of this time and just not read them?
When I didn't reply, he sent another message.
Ashby- Marilyn hid them from me. I didn't fucking know.
Ashby- I didn't fucking know, I promise Peaches. I didn't know I would have come. I would have taken you and brought you back here. Where you fucking belonged. Belong.
Tears filled my eyes as my thumb ran over the words on my screen.
Jumping slightly as the screen started to vibrate with an incoming call. His name was staring up at me.
Ashby
Fear filled me, and with shaky hands, I slid to answer, slowly lifting the phone to my ear.
"Peaches?" His voice was slurring slightly. He had been drinking. My Ashby, who didn't drink alcohol because of his own mom and her addiction, was drunk. "I wanna see you."
“Where are you?” She sounded almost breathless, and my natural reaction to her only made me groan.
&
nbsp; “The only place that still felt like you were here when you left me,” dropping the empty beer bottle I had been clutching down onto the floor next to the couch that I was laid across, her last letter on my chest. ‘I hate you’ Those three words were ingrained in my brain.
Peaches: MC Romance (The Unholy Confessions Book 1) Page 17