“Do you still hate me?” I cry out, unable to keep it off my tongue anymore, the cruelty of his punishment too steep for me to keep this to myself. “Do you see Larry when you look at me?”
Immediately, he stops as if he’s just been electrocuted, but other than that, he doesn’t do anything else but watch me with unbridled horror in his eyes.
He’s still in my clenching and undulating core, my fingernails digging into the skin at the back of his neck and his broad shoulders, but he doesn’t make a sound, watching me with shock on his face.
“Star,” he starts, his voice strained and hoarse. “Is that what you think?”
I whimper, refusing to open my eyes even when I feel his stare burning into me. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Please don’t, Star. Open your eyes and look at me, baby.” His voice has dropped to a pained whisper, one that I haven’t heard in a while. Not since we grieved the loss of our baby the night he came after me.
Our baby…
There I go again, thinking of what could have been, a future that’s already lost.
Ace sighs heavily, then I feel his cock slipping out, leaving me oddly bereft all over again. The next thing I know he’s holding me tightly to him in a tight hug under the jets of water.
I can feel him making quick work of washing us both and then letting the water rinse the suds, never letting me go.
Then the water is turned off, we’re out of the shower and he’s drying me with one of the large, fluffy towels Ivy got us as a housewarming gift. Then, we’re moving.
The next thing I know, I’m on our California king bed, still clinging to him. As if holding him tight will make him stay with me forever.
Time seems to lose all meaning as he holds me silently, rocking me back and forth, whispering unintelligible words in my ear, over and over again.
It sounds soothing, comforting but pained… like he’s winging it and doesn’t know what to do with me.
I have no idea what to do with myself either.
It’s a long while until I stop crying. He’s hovering over me now, watching me with a dark expression, wild and out of control.
“Tell me what brought this on, baby, because I can never, ever hate you.”
God, when he tempers my inner turmoil with his cruel touch and sweet words, I feel so bereft and vulnerable, I latch on to him like a koala bear.
He hugs me to him. We’re both breathing hard and fast, aroused and confused, in pain but desperately clinging to the rays of hope that we found in each other.
“It’s something you said in your office,” I croak, holding him tightly to me, feeling our hearts fall in sync with each other.
“Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have said that shit about the past.”
“No, you were right,” I rush to say, pulling back now to palm his face in my hand. “We never talk about what happened back then. We just… moved on.”
“What else is there to do other than to move on, Star?” he questions, eye narrowed. “I for one don’t want to visit that shit.”
“And yet you brought it up anyway,” I whisper. He falls silent, his lips forming an angry line. “It’s not a bad thing, you know, to talk about it.”
“Astraea, I do the whole therapy shit for you once every week. So stop psycho-analyzing me. I’m not your trial patient,” he says, extremely annoyed and I giggle.
Ace rolling his eyes is so bizarre but so bad boy, I just can’t help myself.
He groans. “I’m serious, don’t start your psychobabble shit on me.”
I can’t help but laugh because he’s right. When Eli suggested that I choose to study something that would help me like really help me, he subtly pushed me to look into psychology and now, here I am, practicing everything I’ve been learning on him.
“It’s not that,” I say, trying not to laugh.
He gives me a pointed look and I giggle again, feeling all warm and silly.
“Okay, fine, I’ll leave that, for now.”
He sighs, but he’s not gratified. “Star, something’s going on with you.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement. “You hardly eat. You don’t sleep well. You’ve been distant and the shadows in your eyes, baby… it’s killing me that you can’t talk to me.”
He’s right again and I can no longer deny it, so I nod, looking away, feeling ashamed.
“I’m just… well, I don’t really know how to explain it,” I start, my voice so small, the confident girl who’s gone through so much growth in the past year and some months now gone. Like she was never there.
“Just say whatever you want. I’m pretty sure I can keep up.”
“Sure, cause your prowess is so amazing,” I say sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
“You are still allowed to show your awe, you know,” he says, kissing me softly.
I look up into his eyes, my breath catching. His eyes are so blue, sometimes they feel like an endless blue sky, promising warmth, happiness, and peace and then other times, I swear all I see is the icy shards of everything he never talks about. But all that aside, in his eyes, I see everything.
Our entire lives.
Our mean, cruel, dark past.
Our amazing present and hopeful future.
People say the eyes are the window to the soul. For me, Ace’s blue eyes are the gateway to my soul. So, I start talking.
“Around this time of year, London would be decorated in lights and Christmas decorations that I could see from my window in the mental institution I was sent to,” I start, holding his gaze. “And I was a mess.”
Ace literally stops breathing. His eyes dilate right in front of me. They are now pitch black, the blue almost gone.
I knew I shouldn’t have started this but how else can we both make sense of this mess if I sweep it under the rug again only to wake up screaming later?
“Star…”
“Let me finish, baby,” I mumble, running my fingers along the shape of his bottom lip. “Don’t get me wrong, everything was always so beautiful around Christmastime.”
If I close my eyes, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to see the lights that twinkled in the distance when I stood alone on that cold balcony, listening to other patients scream, cry, and yell bloody murder, but I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to experience those horrors for a second longer.
“You could smell the baked goodies in the air, could hear the rush of parents and grandparents rushing to do their shopping before the shops closed and families united to enjoy and celebrate together. This time of the year, every year, for four years, I stood on that balcony and watched from the outside, while dying on the inside, lonely as ever.”
“Astraea, I wanted to…”
I cut him off, pressing a finger over his lips.
“I know, Ace,” I whisper. “You saved my life that night so many years ago. You brought me back from the doorstep of death that night.”
He looks disgusted with himself. “Well, I was the fuckhead who delivered you there in the first place.”
“No, you weren’t,” I deny firmly. “I wasn’t…well.” It’s difficult to admit that, to admit mental illness, but the understanding and love brimming in Ace’s eyes gives me the strength to go on. “I felt this impossible sadness, this indescribable despair that chewed me up daily, brought on by the fucked up trauma of what happened to me, being away from all of you, the icy loneliness… it all got to be too much after a while.”
“Baby…”
“None of that was your fault.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I can see the firm denial in his eyes. I sigh.
“Ace, it wasn’t your…”
“No don’t tell me that,” he grits out, cutting me off. “Star, I took responsibility of you the day you stole my fucking ball and forced me into your world when I was nothing more than six years old, scared shitless of the world, with secrets that made me angry night after night.”
Yes, secrets that no child should have. Secrets no child
should be punished for reporting.
“You were never meant to have those secrets,” I whisper hoarsely.
“Neither were you, baby, but you made it better, baby. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hated that you lured me into your bright world, promising family and loyalty. I hated that when I looked at you, I saw everything I didn’t have and I was… well, conflicted on what to feel but the truth is, it’s always been you.”
Tears well up in my eyes all over again. I have no idea what to say.
“But baby, you were mine to protect. Mine to keep safe and I took that seriously.”
Yes, I haven’t forgotten just how serious Ace takes my safety, even back then. I always thought Ace would keep me safe until… Larry.
“But then, all that hell happened. I burned down that house thinking of how scared you were. I was so ignorant and naïve to the signs that were right there. I was in denial, baby. I could see the state you were in, refusing to believe that what had happened to me, my darkest shame, had happened to you.”
My breath catches as hot, fat tears race down my cheeks.
I can hardly look at him, but I won’t look away from him. We both need this connection. I hold his gaze. He hovers over me, then inches down, bringing his face closer to me and licks my tears away.
“Don’t cry, baby, we’re together now. I have you,” he purrs darkly, licking away my tears. “They tried to keep us apart, they sent you away and I was…” he trails off, looking away.
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down, like he’s trying to swallow the onslaught of emotion this is bringing. When he looks back down at me, I swear, his eyes are glistening with tears. “I was a retched mess, baby. Too young and too fucked up to understand it too. I didn’t know how to process the gaping hole in my soul or the darkness that settled in me for four years, actually it was more than that, but I refuse to acknowledge the time the sperm donor who calls me his son used to beat me so I could man up.”
A shudder moves through me as I reach around to hug him to me, feeling the rough, distended flesh of his back, hidden by the tattoo of my face that he got in the four years we were apart.
My heart clenches painfully. No child should go through what he did and yet…
“I hate that bastard,” I seethe. “I swear if you and Eli didn’t send him to jail…”
“You would what, baby? Beat him up?” he says with a dark smirk. “No doubt, you’d take him on with all those boxing lessons and your Krav Maga.”
“Didn’t I tell you? I quit Krav Maga. I’m too precious to get all bruised up.”
“I don’t know, I like seeing you sweaty with your tough-girl-on-a-mission face.”
I laugh. He does like to see me panting and sweaty. “You’re crazy but still, that won’t take away what I said. You are not to blame for my depression.”
“Star, I don’t see it that way,” he whispers, blue orbs staring down at me.
“What do you mean?”
“I lashed out. I was angry. I blocked the world out. I hated you even more. So, I wrote letters. Letters that I never meant to send you. I regret that shit.”
Oh man…
“Ace, I don’t see it that way,” I murmur softly but firmly. “I clung to those letters with everything I had at the time, which wasn’t much to begin with.”
“Yeah, I caused that.”
“No, don’t you see? You are the reason I held on,” I rush to say, stroking his back, looking into the depth of his eyes. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, those letters, well, they were shitty, but they were so you. It’s as if you couldn’t let me go. And I knew I had to stick around, if not for anything else other than to see your handsome face, and those blue eyes.” Blue eyes that feature in my dreams, in the form of a baby. A baby we lost… “Even after I swallowed all those pills, I wanted to see you and you came.”
“Astraea…” he says, his face strained and clouded. “Sometimes, I jerk awake in the middle of the night, just to make sure what I see in my fucked-up nightmares isn’t real. To make sure that the night George and I found you… isn’t repeating itself in my unconsciousness and now, here you are, withdrawing from me, baby, I… I don’t know what to think.”
I look away, fixing my gaze on his shoulder but he doesn’t let me escape for long. With his deft fingers on my chin, he tugs my face back gently, so that I look at him.
“Tell me, Star, what’s going on here?” he questions softly. “What am I missing?”
“I…” I start, working to swallow the ball of nerves in my throat. “I told you that I was sad around this time of the year, for four years, but what I haven’t told you is that I wasn’t just sad, I was restless. It got so bad to the point where they said I was growing… well, deranged.”
I pause, expecting him to blow up but he doesn’t. He waits, not so patiently, watching me with restless despair that I want to clear but don’t know how.
“Okay, well,” I clear my throat, feeling my insides knot up. “They started, uh, they restrained me and then medicated me during the holidays, especially Christmas, so I could… I don’t know, calm down. But it was more like they wanted me knocked out so I wouldn’t give them any more trouble than I was already causing, but yeah, I’m sure you get what I’m trying to say.”
Chills wreck through me. Goosebumps grace my arms as shame clogs my veins.
He mumbles something so low under his breath that I don’t catch but it sounds like a curse, but I know I have to go on.
“I hated it. I hated the helplessness and the hollowness I felt when the drugs wore off, so I started acting out just so they could give me more.”
“Thus, the addiction to xanny,” he mutters sadly.
I smile sadly, nodding. “Yes.”
“And so now, you remember it all and it’s coming back to you, is that it?”
It’s not really a question, Ace sees me clearly, as he always does, but I nod anyway. I don’t think it’s possible to forget everything.
Sometimes it feels that way, but all it took was watching our new home, NYC decked out in Christmas decorations, for everything to hit me. First in flashbacks and then all at once.
“Residue of trauma,” I mutter. I don’t have to explain it. He gets it. He goes through the same shit. It might not translate the same in him as it does in me, but trauma wreaks havoc just the same.
“That’s why you want that asshole here for the holidays, huh?” he deadpans, and I giggle.
“Well, that asshole is our best friend, Ace. And anyway, I know you can see the stages of depression and anxiety he’s scaling. And Emmett.”
“They’re grown men,” he grumbles unhappily. “They can take care of themselves.”
“Baby, you know they need us.”
He sighs. I smile.
“You know I’m right. I don’t want either of them to feel what I felt. What we both felt, being so closed off, suffering alone at a time where it seems like the world doesn’t see you, everyone enjoying their gifts and family.”
“We have family all right,” he says sarcastically.
I know he’s been receiving letters from his father who’s in jail, but he never opens them—but still has them all. Family is strange.
“We make our own family, Ace,” I whisper. “You, the boys, my girls, we are a family.”
“And you want everyone under one roof?” he deadpans again. “Are you fully aware of what’s currently going on between, I don’t know, everyone? Noah would rather shoot himself dead than be in the same room as your friend, Kim.”
At least he didn’t refer to her as ‘that bitch’. See, progress.
“Aww baby, don’t worry about that. It’s all going to be fine.”
“Who the fuck are you believing in to grant you that wish, Star? Fucking Santa Claus?”
I laugh so hard at the look on his face that I can’t breathe for a moment.
“Yeah, laugh now, baby, I hope you’ll be laughing after this because this, what you want to do, is an invite to war.”
/>
“There won’t be a war, Ace,” I say, trying not to laugh. “It’s Christmas! Everyone will be civil. We just need to go about this the right way.”
He looks at me suspiciously. “And how do you think you’ll do that?”
“WE are going to make sure that we invite everyone and not tell them who else will be there.”
“We?” he scoffs. “What is this we?”
“You and I of course,” I say, eyes wide, trying to look innocent. “You are going to help me, right, baby?” I bat my eyelashes, and he narrows his gaze on me.
“You’re playing with fire, Star. A blazing inferno that will hurt you. And you know I’ll be fucking pissed off if you get hurt,” he says seriously.
Hmm, looks like I have to convince him a bit more.
With a cheeky smile, I reach down our bodies until I reach my destination. He hardens quickly, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Star…”
“It’s going to be fine,” I whisper, heaving my chest up to graze his chest as I pump him, feeling my own arousal awaken all over again. It never left really, and he owes me. Big time.
“Be honest with them,” he says, his voice thick with arousal.
“Sure.”
“Astraea…”
“I’ll be honest. If you’re honest with me now.”
“Really?” Without another word, his fingers thrust in me and I gasp. “You’re greedy with everything, little devil. Your hot slick cunt. Your happiness. Your freaking whining friends.”
“I want it all.”
“You deserve it all,” he counters, thrusting in me, taking my lips in a deep kiss. Then he shifts, lining our bodies so that his cock is rubbing up and down my slick slit, putting pressure on my engorged clit. “You deserve it all but be honest, Star.”
“Honesty is overrated anyway,” I gasp, desperate for him. I grab his firm ass, wrapping my legs around him, trying to force him in and he laughs.
“Impatient much?”
“Someone was playing me in the shower and now I’m a horny bitch, so…”
“So, we need to fix that and get that whole Mary had a little lamb vibe back.”
Frosty Blues: A Westbrook Blues Novella Page 5