by K. A. Tucker
Curiosity gets the better of me. “Well, haven’t you asked him?”
A snort answers my question before his words do. “We’re guys, Livie. We don’t talk about feelings. Ashton’s . . . Ashton. I know you think he’s a dick, but he’s a good guy when he wants to be. He’s had my back more times than I care to admit. You remember that story about me in the rowing boat? You know . . .”
“Ass up? Yes, I remember.” I giggle.
Dropping his head with a sheepish grin, Connor admits, “I think Coach would have kicked me off the team if it hadn’t been for Ashton. I don’t know what he said or did, but he bought my pardon somehow. I know I joke about Ash being a lousy captain but he’s actually a good one. A great one. The best we’ve had in my three years here. All the guys respect him. And it’s not just because he gets more action than all of us combined.”
That earns my eye roll. I’m hating the idea of Ashton with anyone—girlfriend or otherwise—more each day, and that comment created a stomach-wrenching visual.
“Anyways, sorry for bringing Ashton up. I love the guy but I don’t want to talk about him. Let’s talk about . . .” He rolls around to grasp my waist with his hands. Leaning down, he slides his tongue into my mouth with a kiss that lasts way longer than anything we’ve ever done before. I find I don’t mind it, though. I actually enjoy it, allowing my hands to rest against his solid chest. God, Connor really does have a nice body and, clearly, other girls have noticed. Why are my hormones only beginning to appreciate this tonight?
It’s probably the beer.
Or maybe they’re finally starting to accept that Connor could be very right for me.
“I did warn you,” I remind her as I stretch my calf muscles.
“You can’t be that bad.”
I make sure she sees my grimace in response. Outside of required track and field at school, and that time Dr. Stayner had me chasing live chickens at a farm, I’ve avoided all forms of running. I don’t find it enjoyable and I usually manage to trip at least once while doing it.
“Come on!” Reagan finally squeals, jumping up and down with impatience.
“Okay, okay.” I yank my hair back into a high ponytail and stand, stretching my arms over my head once more before I start following her down the street. It’s a cool, gray day with off-and-on drizzle, another strike against this running idea. Reagan swears that the local forecast promised sunshine within the hour. I think she’s lying to me but I don’t argue. Things have still been kind of strange between us since her dad’s party. That’s why, when she asked me to go running with her today, I immediately agreed, slick roads and all.
“If we take this all the way to the end and turn back, that’s two miles. Can you handle that?” Reagan asks, adding, “We can stop and walk if you flake out.”
“Flakes are good at walking,” I say with a grin.
She sniffs her displeasure. “Yeah, well, you probably lose weight when you sneeze.”
It takes a few minutes but soon we manage a good side-by-side pace, where my long, slow strides match her short, quick legs well. That’s when she bursts. “Why didn’t you tell me about your parents?” I can’t tell if she’s angry. I’ve never seen Reagan angry. But I can tell by the way she bites her bottom lip and furrows her brow that she’s definitely hurt.
I don’t know what else to say except, “It just never came up. I swear. That’s the only reason. I’m sorry.”
She’s silent for a moment. “Is it because you don’t like talking about it?”
I shrug. “No. I mean, it’s not like I avoid talking about it.” Not like my sister, who shoved everything into a tomb with a slow-burning stick of dynamite. Since the morning I woke up to find Aunt Darla sitting by my bed with puffy eyes and a Bible in her hand, I’ve just accepted it. I had to. My sister was barely alive and I needed to focus on her and on keeping us going. And so, at eleven years old and still half-dead from a flu that saved me from the car accident in the first place, I got out of bed and showered. I picked up the phone to notify my school, my parents’ schools. I walked next door to tell our neighbors. I helped Aunt Darla pack up our things to move. I helped fill out insurance paperwork. I made sure I was enrolled in the new school right away. I made sure everyone who needed to know knew that my parents were gone.
We run in silence for a few moments before Reagan says, “You know you can tell me anything you want to, right?”
I smile down at my tiny friend. “I know.” I pause. “And you know you can tell me anything, right?”
Her wide, cheery grin—with those cute dimples just under her eyes—answers for her.
I decide that this is the perfect time to divert the topic completely. “Like you can stop pretending that you and Grant aren’t together.” I manage to grab hold of Reagan’s arm just in time to keep her from diving into the pavement. When she has regained her balance, she turns to stare wide-eyed at me, her cheeks flaming. “I thought you were impervious to blushing, Reagan.”
“You can’t say anything!” she hisses, her ponytail wagging as she checks to her left and right, her eyes narrowing at the bushes as if someone might be hiding behind there. “No one knows, Livie.”
“Are you serious? You think no one knows?” I watch with great satisfaction as her blush deepens. “I think everyone knows. Or at least suspects.” Connor made an off-hand comment the other day about Grant chasing Reagan around. I’ve even noticed Ty shaking his head at them a few times and if he’s clued in, then the rest of the world must be.
She bites her lip in thought. “Come on. We can’t just stand here.” We start back up at a light jog. “I guess it’s been brewing for a while. I’ve always liked him and he’s been flirting with me for the past year. Then I ran into him at the library one night. There was a quiet corner. No one was around . . .” She shrugs. “It just kind of happened.”
“In the library!” I squeal.
“Shhh!” Her hands wave in front of her as she runs, giggling.
“But . . .” I feel my face scrunch up. “Where?” I’ve been to that library plenty of times. I can’t think of any corner dark and secluded enough to do anything in besides read.
She grins impishly. “Why? Want to get your freak on with Connor?”
“No!” Just thinking of suggesting that to Connor makes me scowl at Reagan.
That doesn’t dissuade her, though. With a quirked eyebrow, she asks, “Ashton?”
I feel the burn crawl up my neck. “There’s nothing going on between us.”
“Livie, I saw you two at Shawshanks the other night. I see the looks you give him. When are you going to admit it?”
“What? That I have a roommate with an overactive imagination?”
I get an eye roll. “You know that the more time passes, the harder this is going to get, right?”
“No, it won’t, because nothing is going on between us!” Remembering, I ask, “Hey, did he break up with Dana?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything, but with him, who knows. Ashton’s a vault.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he could have a dozen brothers and sisters and you’d never know.” Reagan breaks to chug a mouthful of water from her bottle. Wiping her arm across her mouth, she continues, “My dad makes a point of knowing his team. You know—their families, their grades, their majors, their plans after college . . . He thinks of them all as his boys.” Thinking back to the big, burly man from the weekend and all the pats on the back and the questions, I can see what she means. “But he knows very little about his own captain. Almost nothing.”
“Huh . . . I wonder why.” Small alarm bells start ringing in my head.
“Grant thinks it has something to do with his mom dying.”
My feet stop moving. They just stop. Reagan slows to jog in place.
“How?” I ask, taking a deep breath. Meeting other
people who lost their parents always strikes a chord deep within me. Even complete strangers can instantly become friends through that kind of familiarity.
“No, clue, Livie. I only know because I was eavesdropping on him and my dad one night in our study. But that’s all that my dad managed to get out of him. He has a way of evading topics. I mean . . . you’ve met Ashton. You know what he’s like.”
“Yeah, I do.” With a growing pain in my stomach, I also know that not talking about things like that normally means there’s a reason. A bad reason.
“Come on.” She gives my butt a slap and starts moving forward again.
I’m forced to join her, though I don’t feel like running anymore. I want to sit and think. Vaguely remembering what Connor told me at Tiger Inn, I ask, “Have you met his dad?”
“At the fall race. He’s usually there with a woman.”
“A wife?”
“I’ve seen a few different ones over the past four years. Maybe they’re wives. Who knows? Then again, Ashton fell from that tree, so . . .” She turns to give me a pointed stare.
“And what’s he like?”
“He seems normal enough.” There’s a pause. “Though I get a weird vibe around them together. Like Ashton’s very careful about what he says and does.”
So Connor’s not the only one who senses something off . . .
“Anyway, so what if he did?”
“So what if he did . . . what?” I repeat slowly, not understanding.
“What if he broke up with Dana?”
“Oh.” Reagan may avoid awkward situations, but she doesn’t hold back on asking the hard questions. I like that about her. Right now, though, I could do without the interrogation. “Then nothing. I’m with Connor. I think.”
“Yeah, what’s going on with you two anyway? Have you . . .” She raises her brow suggestively.
I only shake my head and mutter, “You’re as bad as my sister. No. We’re taking it slow and easy.”
“Sounds boring if you ask me,” she mutters dryly. ”I’ll bet you’d take it hard and fast with Ashton.”
“Reagan!” I give her a playful shove and she starts giggling. But the thought has my stomach doing cartwheels. What if I were with Ashton instead of Connor? No. Impossible.
“You just seem so different around Ashton. And anything to do with Ashton.”
I snort. “Angry?”
She grins. “Passionate.”
Desperate to get the topic off me, I ask, “So are you and Grant together?”
Deftly leaping over a puddle, Reagan says, “I’m not sure yet. We’re pretty casual. Not ready to throw a label on it. Yet.” She ducks her head, a shy smile touching her lips. “I’m crazy about him, though, Livie. If I see him with another girl, I’ll probably go apeshit and kill them both.”
I frown, trying to picture Grant with someone else. I can’t, what with the way he trails Reagan like a lovesick puppy. And then I wonder if Connor is seeing other girls because we haven’t put a label on anything. What if he is? Does “slow and easy” mean “open to date”? If I saw him with another girl, would I also go apeshit? The girls introducing themselves at Tiger Inn made me realize that Connor could probably have his pick of women, but it didn’t really bother me. An image of Ashton kissing Dana flashes through my head and my stomach instantly falls. I know it’s not right but I recognize that now for what is was, aside from shock. Jealousy. It bothered me. As did hearing that girl at the bar talk about him. And then touching his arm after.
Reagan’s sigh pulls me out of my head and back into our conversation. “Whatever it is, we have to keep it under wraps until Grant is done with school.”
My responding frown tells her I don’t understand why.
“My dad! Aren’t you listening? Oh, Livie.” She gives an exasperated look. “Sometimes I wonder where your head is . . . My dad isn’t crazy about him.”
“Why?”
“He thinks Grant doesn’t take life seriously. Grant’s afraid he’ll kick him off the team if he finds out.”
“But . . . he’s going to Princeton. How much more serious can he get?” I say with a disbelieving snort.
“Serious enough not to do it in the library with the Coach’s daughter,” she mutters, picking up her speed.
Fair enough.
The rain has started up again. It’s a light, cool drizzle and it doesn’t take long to soak through my navy shirt. But I don’t mind it at all. The route Reagan has chosen is a tranquil street through a Pleasantvillesque neighborhood of pretty houses and manicured lawns and large trees, just starting to change colors. It feels good to be away from campus. I feel as though a weight has fallen off my shoulders. Maybe I’m spending too much time there, letting it become a bubble. I let the quiet environment envelop me as I enjoy my escape, focusing on my breathing, surprised that I’m keeping up with Reagan as well as I am.
And I think about Ashton. I wonder about his life, about his parents, about his mother. I wonder how he lost her. Was the cause of death sudden, like a car accident? Or was it an illness, like cancer? Thinking back to our conversation that first week, to his reaction when I told him that I was planning on going into pediatrics and specifically oncology, I have to think that it was cancer.
We haven’t reached the end of the street when Reagan hollers, “Let’s turn around. I’m getting cold and we have almost a mile back home.” She crosses the street to retrace our steps on the other side. “Do you think you can manage a bit faster? This rain sucks.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t trust that weather station anymore,” I call out wryly, sucking back a mouthful of water. My mouth is so parched that my tongue hurts, but I don’t want to overdo the liquids for fear of cramps.
“What weather station?” She glances over her shoulder to give me an impish wink as I speed up, trying to catch her. That only makes her run faster. Too fast for me, I decide, keeping a few paces behind, gazing out on the quiet road ahead. It’s long, with bumps and dips that we’ll need to navigate through, and I need to direct my focus or I’m liable to trip over my own feet.
On the opposite side of the street—the route we were just on—I spot a lone figure jogging. Another insane person out in this weather. My eyes flicker back and forth between the road and the silhouette as I continue. Soon, it’s close enough that I can identify a male. Even closer, I see dark, shaggy hair.
It’s Ashton.
With evenly paced steps, sleek movements, and a stony face, Ashton runs like a well-trained athlete. One in a drenched white T-shirt that clings to every ridge of his chest. And I can’t peel my eyes off of him. My heart is already pounding from the run but now I feel an adrenaline rush coursing through my body, giving me a boost of energy. I feel like I could run ten miles today, like I could leap over cars, like I could—
My hands just barely stop my face from smashing against the sidewalk.
I guess I made enough noise in my fall to alert Reagan, because she screams my name and rushes back. “Are you all right?”
I wince as I pull myself up, a sharp pain shooting through my ankle, a sting in my palm. “Yeah, I’m—” My words end in a hiss as another pain jolts me. “I must have tripped over that ridge in the sidewalk.”
She walks over to inspect the concrete and frowns. “You mean this small, imperceptible hairline crack?”
With a curse under my breath, I mutter, “I warned you.”
“You did. Now what are we going to do?” Biting her bottom lip in, she slides her phone out of her hoodie pocket. “I’ll see if Grant is around. Maybe he can pick us up.”
“That was impressive, Irish!” Ashton calls out between breaths as he crosses the street toward us. Reagan looks up at him in surprise—as if she hadn’t noticed him running this way. I watch as her eyes drop slightly and widen. Exactly. How on earth could you not have noticed that running down the stree
t, Reagan! She fixes me with a knowing stare, telling me that her dirty little sex-in-the-library mind has connected the dots that led to my tumble. “Hi, Ashton,” she offers with a playful lilt, still looking at me.
He gives her a quick nod before crouching down on one knee. While he inspects my ankle, I listen to his ragged pants and swallow the sudden pooling saliva in my mouth. How is there pooling saliva in my mouth? A minute ago I was parched! The pressure from his fingers, though gentle, makes me flinch, bringing me back to reality.
“Can you stand?” he asks, those gorgeous brown eyes full of concern.
“I don’t know,” I mumble, and struggle to get to my feet. His hands are at my waist in an instant to help me. It’s immediately obvious that I’m not going to be jogging or even walking home. “I think it’s sprained.” I’ve sprained my ankle enough times to know the feeling.
“I’m calling Grant,” Reagan announces, holding up her phone.
Suddenly I’m off the ground, cradled in Ashton’s strong arms, and he’s walking down the street, his hands somehow searing my skin through my clothes. “I’m not standing out here in the rain, waiting for Cleaver to show up,” Ashton throws back.
“Where are we going?” I ask, knowing that our dorm is a mile back in the opposite direction.
Focusing straight ahead, he murmurs, “I’m taking you back to my place, Irish.” By his crooked lip, I know that the innuendo is intentional. But it quickly slides away and he murmurs in a softer tone, “Put your arm around my shoulder. It’ll make this easier.”
I obediently lift my arm and drape it around the back of Ashton’s neck, resting my hand on his shoulder, my thumb settling next to a tear in his collar. I can feel his muscles strain under my weight. I wonder how long they can hold me.
Reagan must too because she runs up beside us to exclaim, “It’s far, though!”
“Half a mile, tops. Go.” He jerks his chin forward and then winks at her. “You don’t want Grant seeing that ass get fat again, do you?”