Ashes to Ashes

by Rebecca Norinne

  “But it is,” I argued. “It is.”

  Rae twisted against me, and leaned back so she could see my face. “Explain to me how Sonia being at work when a terrorist attack hit is on you?”

  “He knew!” I bit out. “That’s why he called to meet her. He was going to tell her he wanted a divorce on the grounds of her adultery.” I looked away, afraid to see her faith in me turn into recrimination.

  “Look at me,” she commanded harshly. When I brought my eyes back to hers, she said, “Regardless, she should have been at work that day. Her playing hooky to fuck you all morning has no bearing on what happened later. She’d have gone into work like every other day, and it would have ended the same exact way.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts, Ash. You did a despicable thing, but it’s not your fault she’s dead. Do you hold yourself responsible for all the others who died that afternoon?”

  “No,” I choked out.

  “Then you need to let go of the responsibility you feel for her. It was a tragedy, but it wasn’t your doing.”

  “It gets worse,” I groaned from between clenched teeth.

  “I want to know everything about you, Ash, but what you told me just now took courage. I don’t need to hear anymore today. You can tell me when you’re ready. All I’ll say—again—is that you’re not responsible for what happened to that woman.”

  Rae giving me a pass for Sonia’s death was one thing, but when she found out came later, I didn’t think she’d ever be able to look at me the same way. That she hadn’t already walked away from me, knowing what I’d done to my own brother, was a minor miracle. She was either the most forgiving woman on the face of the planet, or the most naive. Then again, she’d spend a long time learning to forgive herself, so maybe she was just better at it than I was.

  “I’ve already told you this much, I may as well finish.” I blew out a breath. “Besides, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to talk about this again and I need to tell you. You’ve shared so much of yourself with me and you’re right—if I can’t do the same, there’s no hope for a future between us. I want that Rae. Goddamn, but I want it.” I pulled her in tighter, as I fought to bring the stinging in my throat and eyes under control. I hadn’t cried in years, and I had no desire to start now.

  Her eyes turned watery and she gave me a small smile. “It means so much to me that you’re willing to expose your past like this. I know it’s painful. Trust me, I get it.”

  I dropped a kiss to her forehead. “I know. That’s why I feel safe telling you.”

  “I’m glad,” she answered, curling into the crook of my arm and resting her cheek against my chest.

  It was the best damn feeling in the world, having her support, knowing that she understood how personal demons worked and was willing to meet mine head on. I yet I worried that despite her understanding so far, when I pushed the rest of my demons out into the light of day, she might be tempted to flee. I hoped she wouldn’t, but nothing I knew of Rae’s past was as bad as what I’d done.

  “The next day I went down to help with the rescue efforts. It was mayhem. Oh god, the smell.” I shuddered at the memory. Sometimes I could still smell all that charred flesh on the wind. “I pulled a few survivors out of the rubble, but mostly it was just mangled bodies, mutilated beyond belief. You never forget a sight like that.

  “I didn’t see Ethan for two days, and when I did … well.” I pulled in a deep breath. “Keep in mind, I didn’t know that he knew about Sonia and me. Because he’d never acted like he cared, I guess I didn’t think he actually cared. But that day …” I trailed off, the pain of that encounter as fresh now as it had been all those years ago.

  “The second I walked through the door, he flew at me. I saw then what our affair had cost him.” I shook my head, but couldn’t dislodge the memory of his scorn. “I was bigger and stronger than he was, so I just stood there and took the beating. Eventually, he tired himself out and flopped onto the couch. When I got up, that’s when I saw the gun.”

  Rae’s whole body tensed up and I literally felt her holding her breath. “No.”

  I wrapped my arms around her tighter. “Yeah, and something else too.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “A sonogram.”

  Rae sucked in a gasp and rolled into my embrace. “Oh Ash,” she cried against my chest.

  “Sonia was pregnant. Apparently, that’s what finally set him off. He told me then he’d been fine knowing I was fucking his wife since he rarely did anymore, but he couldn’t forgive me for putting a baby in her belly, too.”

  “She didn’t …” Rae couldn’t get the question out, but I knew what she was asking.

  “No, she never told me. It turns out, the nights Ethan did come home, he’d wake up to find her riding him. Knowing that she was fucking me, he never instigated sex with her. So when she resorted to those types of tricks, he became suspicious and figured out she’d wanted him to think the baby was his.”

  “She was going to pass off your baby as your brother’s?”

  “That’s the conclusion we both came to.”

  “I know it’s not polite to speak ill of the dead, but fuck that bitch!” Rae moved out from my embrace. Standing with her hands on her hips, her rage broke free. “Who the fuck does that? She seduces you literally the first day you meet, then she strings you along for years by crying on your shoulder, and then when she gets pregnant with your baby, she wasn’t even going to tell you?” Rae’s chest sawed in and out as her breath came in quick, angry gulps.

  All at once, Rae straddled my legs and sat in my lap, our faces only a foot or so apart. Placing her palms against my cheeks, she leaned in close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin. Her voice dropping low, she said, “I know you loved her, Ash, but she was a lunatic. I’ve done some pretty shitty stuff in my day, but even at my lowest I always knew there were some things you just didn’t do. Some lines you absolutely did not cross.”

  Her face went soft, her lips began to tremble, and her eyes turned liquid. And then she whispered, “Oh my god. That’s what this is about. You didn’t only lose the woman you loved that day; you lost your baby too.” Her hands slid from my face and hung limply at her side as she sat back on my thighs.

  I nodded. “And my brother.”

  “I assume he’s never forgiven you?”

  “There was no way he could. He killed himself.”

  Rae’s horror was instantaneous. Covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes begged me to explain.

  “The gun I mentioned? After he told me everything, he picked it up and aimed it at me. Then, at the very last second, when I was sure he was going to pull the trigger, he turned it on himself.” I made a pistol out of my fingers and placed the “barrel” under my chin. “I watched his brains splatter all over the wall.”

  With a sob, Rae fell against me and wrapped her arms around my middle. Even as she cried, my own tears wouldn’t come. I’d stopped crying for all that I’d lost a long, long time ago. It wasn’t that I’d gone numb to the pain; I’d just learned to live with it, the way you learned to live with a broken bone that never healed properly. You could be fine for days and then wham! You were laid flat in agony.

  I rubbed my hand over her back in an effort to calm her, but I felt the motion working on me too. There was something about having Rae in my arms that made me feel like all wasn’t lost. That there were still good things in the world, and if I just opened myself up to them, something positive could bloom and flourish out of the ash of my incinerated heart. Out of the burned-out wreckage of a life wasted.

  “I enrolled in the Army the day after his funeral. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  Rae sat up, her eyes rimmed in red. “I’m so sorry, Ash. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I didn’t want this beautiful, strong woman crying for me. I didn’t deserve those tears. I wiped a trailing tear away with my thumb, let it trace the tracks marking her cheeks. “Please don’t cry fo
r me, baby. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “I can’t help it. You lost everything.”

  I nodded and glanced away. I had. I really, really had. And no one had ever truly known just how much—until now.

  From the outside, it made sense when I threw myself into military service. I’d lost my sister-in-law in the attack. Then, as far as anyone knew, my brother’s pain had been so all-consuming that he couldn’t stand to live without her. How anyone who’d truly known them—who had seen what their marriage was like up close and personal—believed that’s what had transpired, I’d never know. Somehow though, the story stuck. And who was I to correct it?

  “In those first few seconds after the gun went off, I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I pocketed the sonogram showing my unborn baby growing in her belly, and then drove straight to a recruitment station. When word finally reached me that Sonia’s remains were identified, I cried for the first time. And then for the last.”

  Rae caressed my cheek. “I get it now. Why you didn’t want to let me in.”

  “I honestly can’t believe you’re still here,” I said. “I’m no good for you, Rae. Surely you can see that.”

  She chuckled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “First of all, where would I go? I’m not really at liberty to go wandering off, am I? And second of all, I’m hardly innocent. We’ve both done terrible things, Ash. But we’re both here now, the wiser for our mistakes. We know what we did wrong in our past, and I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of ever going back to the person I was before. You need to move on too.”

  “I don’t know how,” I admitted. “I’ve held onto this for so long, I don’t know who I’d be without it. I don’t know what that guy looks like.”

  “If you don’t try, though,” she said, “you’ll never know.”

  I sighed and ran my free hand through my hair. “I want to be the man you need—”

  “Then just be you,” she said. “I fell for you, scars and all.”

  “I’ll try,” I promised. It would be harder than anything I’d ever done before, but if it meant I could have Rae, I would have moved mountains. “For you, I’ll try.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rae

  Once Ash opened up to me, it was like he became an entirely new man. Oh sure, he was still reserved and could go through long bouts of silence—I think that’s just who he was at heart—but now he was more candid than he’d ever been before. He no longer avoided certain topics, afraid of what he’d have to reveal about himself, and he’d stopped shying away from discussing his time in the military. In fact, the past few nights he’d shared stories with me about the people he’d known and the places he’d seen. They weren’t always happy stories—more often than not they were heartbreaking—but they were his and for that I was grateful.

  But the biggest surprise was when he picked up my guitar and begin strumming a tune I’d never heard before. He’d been plucking away at it for the past ten minutes or so.

  “What’s that?” I asked, looking up from my notebook with a smile.

  I was putting the final touches on some lyrics I’d written a couple of days before. I hadn’t intended to add any additional music to my album, but with my relationship with Ash growing by leaps and bounds, I wanted to document this time of my life as well. I had enough songs about my heartache, and I liked the idea of ending the album on a hopeful note. There were no guarantees that Ash and I would go the distance, but for the first time in a very long while, being with someone made me happy instead of miserable, and I wanted to honor that through my music.

  After a few more notes, he set the guitar aside. “Just something I was messing around with.”

  “I’d hardly call that messing around. It was beautiful.”

  His cheeks turned pink, and he shrugged off my praise. If I hadn’t just seen it with my own two eyes, I wouldn’t have believed Ash Devereaux was capable of embarrassment.

  Walking to the window, he said, “I miss it, you know?”

  I did know because being without my guitar would have felt as if I’d lost a limb. It was part of me, an extension of all that I was. Knowing that Ash had once harbored dreams of being a professional musician, I was surprised he’d gone this long without playing.

  “I get it,” I said, walking over to him. Wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, I kissed his back and then breathed in his earthy, woodsy scent.

  “Did you just smell me?” He chuckled.

  “Guilty,” I answered, taking another deep, obvious whiff.

  “Come here, weirdo,” he laughed, pulling me around in front of him.

  Time stood still as we stared at one another in the fading coral and violet light of evening. Around us the room glowed and the air felt ripe with possibility.

  “Will you play for me?”

  Ash broke my gaze and stared out the window. “It’s been awhile.”

  “You’re good, Ash. I want to hear something of yours.”

  “I don’t know, Rae. I’m not that guy anymore.”

  “Bullshit,” I challenged, dragging his face back to mine. “You just told me you miss it. So stop missing it.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s exactly that easy,” I answered, laying my palm flat on his chest. “You pick up the guitar and you play the first thing that comes to mind.”

  “That’s the problem,” he responded. “Everything I used to play is all wrapped up in her. The last songs I wrote were about how she made me feel. I don’t want to bring her into this any more than I already have.”

  I dropped my head back and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Has it escaped your notice how I’ve spent every day since we’ve been here? I’m making a goddamn album about my ex-husband—the joy of first love and the agony of heartbreak when he ended it.”

  Ash stepped away and ran his hand through his hair. It was getting long enough that soon he’d be able to pull it back all the way. I didn’t typically find man buns attractive, but with his chiseled cheek bones and rugged good looks, it would work. Hell, not only would it work, but he’d look sexy as fuck.

  “That’s different,” he finally answered. “I knew what I was getting into when we came out here. I was prepared to hear all about Ford and what he did to you. You had no clue you were about to get involved with someone with as much baggage as I have.”

  “And I’ve told you,” I said striding toward him, my finger pointed at his chest, “that your past is irrelevant to me.” I halted my approach. “Scratch that. It’s not irrelevant because it made you the man you are today. And if out of that past comes beautiful music, I want to hear it.” Standing in front of him now, I winked saucily. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

  Ash rolled his eyes and laughed. Then, before I knew what was happening, he crouched down and tossed me over his shoulder. As he marched down the hallway toward his room, he chortled, “Oh, I’ll show you something alright.”

  “On your knees, Rae.”

  The timbre of his voice, dropped low, sent chills skittering down my spine in anticipation. It’d been days since he’d brought out his dominant, commanding side, and frankly I’d missed it. That’s not to say that our sex hadn’t been mind-blowing, but after he’d lashed me to his bed and fucked me six ways to Sunday, he’d gone easy on me. From his ruthless tone just now, it was clear my reprieve was over.

  I dropped to my knees and boxed my arms behind my back just the way he liked. Ash circled me, admiring the view. He stopped in front of me, his bulge looming large in my line of sight.

  Seeing where my eyes lingered, he cupped himself. “Don’t worry baby, you’ll get this, but first …” He dropped into a squat and traced the curve of my neck, down to my nipple. He tweaked it between his fingers and I yelped.

  Ash brushed his thumb back and forth over the tip until the pain was replaced by a warming sort of pleasure. When goosebumps broke out along my skin, Ash smiled savagely at his handiwork. Dragging his eyes fr
om my breast to my face, our gazes locked and held as he continued to stroke me. And then he blinked, long and slow, and when he opened his eyes, a cold, guarded mask had fallen over his features. “I need to be in control right now. I need it hard and rough. Will you let me do that?”

  That in asking for control, Ash gave it to me was a turn on unlike anything I’d experienced before. As a card-carrying feminist, I’d once thought only spineless, subservient women willingly acquiesced to being commanded by a man. But now I could see there was strength in it, too. Submitting to Ash didn’t make me weak. I was strong and powerful because I said what we did—and what we didn’t do. It was my consent—my permission—that allowed anything to happen at all. Ash would say that he owned my pleasure, but the truth was, I owned his.

  “Yes sir,” came my willing reply.

  “Open your mouth,” he said, working his impressive cock through his fist as he stepped closer. He traced the shape of my lips with his crown, coating me with his salty pre-cum.

  I dropped my jaw open and waited to taste the rest of him.

  “Your safe word.”

  “Pumpkin,” I answered without hesitation, my eyes raised in longing.

  He nodded approvingly and said, “Not one more word out of your mouth, unless I tell you to speak. The only thing you’re permitted to say is that. Do you understand?”

  Honestly? I didn’t. I wanted to please him, but I also wanted to understand why he needed my silence. This was something new between us, and I didn’t know if I liked it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand. You used to like it when I told you how you made me feel, what I wanted you to do to me. Has something changed?”

  Ash sighed, and dropped his chin to his chest. He sucked in a lungful of air, and then his eyes found mine again. “No, nothing like that,” he answered, shaking his head. “The truth is, I want to do things to you that will require complete concentration, and I can’t think about anything when you speak. The sexiest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard is the way your voice cracks when you are begging me to fuck you.”