by Lexi Whitlow
“I can’t—” What can’t I do? Save my mother?
“Just walk with me. You can think about it tomorrow.”
“You know I can’t accept this.”
He comes to me and takes my arm, walking me into the night. My apartment has been the place I escaped to since I moved back here, and now Ash is invading that too. We’re quiet as we approach the condos, simple and gray and very different from the big, expansive beach houses that adorn the peninsula. I sigh and hope he’ll disappear into the night behind me—not because I want him to disappear, but because it’s far simpler if he doesn’t stay.
“You think about it, Sunshine. No need to decide anything tonight.” He leans over me and opens the screen door to my condo. My pulse quickens, even though it shouldn’t, and the same tingly feeling takes over my body, just like it did when I was first away, before the horrible day in that hospital when I began to tuck every memory of Jonathan Ash in the back of my mind. But there are old things waking here, emotions at work that I don’t fully understand.
“You don’t need to stay, Ash.” I unlock the deadbolt and step inside, kicking off my sneakers. My attire is far different than it used to be in New York, but the way Ash looks at me makes me feel like I’m wearing my black tube dress and six-inch heels. “Please go. I can’t go there with you. Not right now. ”
He’s standing in the doorframe, leaning halfway inside my apartment. My eyes are drawn to his shirt, his carefully sculpted muscles making the fabric stretch across his torso. “And I won’t push you,” he says. “But I want you to know that I’m here. I wasn’t then—and I don’t know what happened after you left—but I am now.”
I gulp. His steely gaze bores into me, bringing up a surge of old longing. “Nothing happened. You didn’t show up. So I came home, and I left. Like I’d always planned. I was sad then, but I’m not anymore. I’m glad you’re—you’re trying to help. That we’re—” I wring my hands, trying to think of a word for what we are. “Friends?” I try to sound certain, like I’m sure of what I’m saying. But Ash lifts an eyebrow.
“You sure about that, Summer? Friends? Don’t you remember what it was like?” He moves closer, and I’m deeply aware of his presence.
“What what was like?” I put my hands on my hips and stick my chin out, backing a step further away from Ash. Of course I freaking remember. His hands on my body, tracing patterns over my skin, lips brushing against the tops of my thighs, and then buried between my legs until I couldn’t bear it anymore. But it was just sex. This is a friendship, maybe, one that might see us through a separation. But it isn’t anything more. It can’t be. I decided that a long time ago, didn’t I?
Still, I gulp when he steps closer to me. On any other man, the healing wound on his cheek would make him look like a mess. But on Ash, it just looks rugged, sexy. The kind of sexy that makes a woman’s brain cease to function, the kind that makes a woman forget.
If men think with their dicks, hell, sometimes I think with my—
And maybe I should stop thinking that way. If only he hadn’t offered to help, or walk me home. Or if he didn’t exist at all...
“Sunshine,” Ash says with a wry grin. He leans in, gently taking a lock of my hair between his fingers, and draws his mouth close to my ear. His hot breath brushes against my skin, and a shiver runs down my spine. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He touches me on the nape of my neck, the shiver intensifying, traveling through every cell, every pore, and reverberating through my entire body.
Maybe it’s that I didn’t have time to take my fill of Ash. I wasn’t even with him for a full season. Maybe if I’d worn out on him, maybe I wouldn’t be here right now, not moving, not kicking him out, just letting him touch me, whimpering as his knuckles brush against the skin on my chest. Like he used to, he wraps one arm around my waist and pulls me in close. I want to scream, cry, kick him—and all of it for reasons I can’t fully define.
Before I can get my wits about me, he brings his mouth close to mine, his lips barely touching me. Searing heat rushes through my body, and for a moment, I lose myself in his lips. It doesn’t remind me of the first time he kissed me—not quite. That was more desperate, one of those midnight kisses that are greedy and quick. No, this reminds me of the kiss after the wedding, when we drove to the Hamptons and locked ourselves inside. We were just pretending then, but that kiss was still electric, the world slowing down around us for that moment in time, his lips strong and firm and reassuring. I swear the whole world faded out around us when he tilted my head towards his and kissed me like that.
This kiss is like that one—utterly and soul-crushingly real, drowning out all of the pain and all of the history, and all of the anger I held against this man for so long. When he pulls away and brushes that stray cowlick of strawberry hair behind my ear, I almost crumble. I almost grab his wrist and pull him back to my bedroom.
But that’s not who I am anymore. And neither of us should keep holding on to something that happened so long ago. I keep trying to tell myself that, but that’s the thing that doesn’t seem real—the idea that we shouldn’t be doing this. That’s the thing that seems like a lie—not our marriage, not his offer to help, not the pain I’ve been shoving down and hiding for so long.
“You should go,” I say, avoiding his eyes, but still not moving.
“I can go now,” he says, his voice low and gravelly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re friends again. And I don’t plan on letting you go this time.”
You didn’t let me go. You left me, standing in the middle of the street by Macy’s, waiting for you like an idiot.
My pulse quickens. He’s still holding me, his thumb making circles at the small of my back. My legs feel like jelly, my skin fever-hot. But there’s a tightness in my chest too, which I still feel whenever I think of the night he left me. It used to be white-hot rage, but now it feels like an old sadness, a wound that scarred over the anger and never fully healed.
Ash doesn’t know that I cried the whole bus ride home, that I wouldn’t eat for days, that I was lucky as hell I got into MSF, because at least then I had something to do, other than worrying about him and hoping he was alive. That I ended up lucky to be alive, forget employed.
“My decision is final, Ash. Case closed.” I purse my lips, and put my hand to his chest. I can feel his heart beating beneath my touch, and for a second, I remember what it was like to have him inside of me.
It takes everything I have, but I push Ash away. Gently, but firmly.
“Case closed about tonight, or...” He lets his voice trail off, moving no further than I pushed him.
“About... tonight.” I step back and cross my arms tight over my chest, trying to drive away the heat that started to pour through my body the second I saw this man today. I don’t want to think about how good it would be to know his body again, to get to that place he was always able to take me.
Ash nods, considering this. “I can accept that. If you let me take you home again tomorrow.” His steel blue eyes sparkle just a little, and one corner of his lips raises into a lopsided grin.
I don’t want to remember how I felt about him. I don’t want to block out every bad memory every time he shows up looking so irresistible. But with Ash standing here—refusing a divorce, offering to make everything better, to protect me and mine, above everything—well, it doesn’t do much for my resolve, despite every shitty memory that lies between us.
“Go now,” I say, trying to mean it. He shrugs. There’s something intimately familiar about the gesture, like it was there in my consciousness all along.
“Okay. But I’ll be back, Sunshine.”
His old nickname for me hurts every time he uses it, but I bite my lip and fight away the pain. It’s what I’ve done for a long time. I watch him walk away, and then I close my door and throw the bolt.
The thing is, when he’s here with me, it’s like no time has passed at all. It’s like the three years and all the space I put
between us doesn’t mean a thing.
If I’d known he was living here in town, I would have found somewhere else to come home to.
The thought has occurred to me time and time again since I got back.
“Well, Sunshine, serves you right for not reading those damn letters.”
I hear his voice in my head as I fall into bed, scrubs and ugly white socks still on. These aren’t feelings I expected. The memories cropping up in my mind as I try to sleep bring to mind a different Ash than the one I vilified for so long.
I try to focus on that night I boarded the bus, the night he sent me away, but it fades out, like I can’t quite get a grip on it.
The other memories—the feel of his arms, his lips—those all seem clearer and more distinct.
When I finally sleep, the memories wash over me in a flood, and I can no longer hold them back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three Years, Four Months Ago
She looks small in the white sundress she’s wearing. Before we came into the church, she had on a gray UNC hoodie. She’s still wearing her Uggs, since New York’s weather hasn’t quite caught up to the season just yet. When she saw that the address I gave her was a church, she stepped back like it might bite her, but I pushed her in, my hand on the middle of her back. She doesn’t know it, but Cullen told me to go in and take her today. Take her God knows where, but he’s sick of Bianca’s shit, sick of her stiffing him for a hundred dollars here and there, sick of her not paying on time, and sick of her being a bitch. He figures Summer is the only way to get to her, but after today, he won’t be able to get to Bianca at all.
Summer taps her foot as she sits next to me. She’s nervous as fuck and still not convinced that this is the right thing to do. She said that shit when we came in here, and she keeps on saying it. But I’ll be fucked if I let her put her life in danger. And she doesn’t know how close she is to that being the case.
If we weren’t here right now, we’d be on the way to one of Cullen’s safe houses in Queens, and what I’d have to do to her there wouldn’t be pretty.
It’ll be some shit when I explain to Cullen what I did. But every man has his reasons.
Since I quit fighting—and since I quit gambling too—I haven’t thought much about right and wrong. When I joined Cullen’s army, it was about survival, what I had to do to keep on living, to make money and pay off the debts I’d incurred at just about every exclusive gambling club in the city. My life was about recovering from the fight injuries and all that came in the wake of my many fuck-ups.
When you become a man—and I might not be one yet—there’s got to be someplace where you draw the line. Maybe I should have drawn that line a long time ago. And maybe it took the idea of losing something—even something as fleeting as my attraction to this girl—to make me wake up. But an innocent girl is where I draw the line.
Summer jabbers nervously about the decision we made and why it’s not right, why it’s the worst idea, and why we should just reason with Cullen. But I squeeze her thigh and say some bullshit about what a good lay she is, and the priest calls us up to the front. The old guy is probably drunk as shit even though it’s eight o’clock in the morning, but he’s the only practicing priest I could find who would even consider marrying us. He made some rumblings about how he doesn’t like to work shotgun weddings, but the $500 I slipped him seems to have settled it.
Summer, pregnant.
Something inside my chest tightens at the thought. Our marriage won’t last long enough for that, and she’s a woman with places to be. I don’t stop to consider what our lives would look like if she actually stayed, because that isn’t part of the deal. I protect her, she leaves, we move on.
Why even think about it?
“You ready, Sunshine?” Her hair looks like it’s been slept on, a wild mess of waves. I smooth it out and take her hand. Instead of protesting again, she nods and looks at me with clear green eyes that look like the surface of a lake. In this moment, she reminds me of what it felt like to be younger, full of hope and plans and all the shit I left behind when I tore my quad and couldn’t fight anymore.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she says as she squeezes my hand. I walk her up to the pulpit, and the priest reads a few words. Everything seems to flash by in an instant, like this moment is set on fast forward. People say that there are big moments in everyone’s life, things that a person will always remember. Up until now, all that shit had to do with the Family, and with my old fights, the injury, being holed up in the hospital for more than two weeks. None of it had to do with a woman. But as I stand with Summer and hear her say “I do” as the priest looks at us impatiently and waits for someone to produce a ring, I know I’ll remember this moment above everything.
Maybe because this is a stupid and senseless thing to do, and a totally reckless way to take advantage of my boss and his code. Maybe because Summer looks so vulnerable, with dark shadows beneath her eyes like she stayed up far too late. But it seems like there’s something else at work, something beyond my understanding, something that’s searing this moment in time into my memory.
Her mouth drops open as I hold out the plain gold band, then she lifts her hand automatically. It feels natural when I slide it onto her finger, like it’s something that’ll always be there, even after we part ways forever.
“I don’t have a ring for you,” she whispers.
The priest rolls his eyes at us and yells to the back of the pulpit. “Sign this fucking thing, will you?”
Summer nearly jumps out of her skin when another old man lifts his head from one of the choir seats, holding out his hand like he can’t bother to move. The priest brings the marriage certificate over to him, has the man sign it, and rips off a copy for the two of us. “I’ll file this thing this afternoon, and it’s done. Congratulations.” He looks at us like he wonders why we’re not the fuck out of his church already.
I walk down the aisle with my bride, clutching her hand in mine. Before we get to the door, I sweep her off her feet and carry her out of the heavy wooden doors, kicking and laughing, all the way to my car.
In the light of day, it’s easy to forget that that anything’s changed. We can both ignore it for a little while, before things start to get complicated.
I smile and roll down the windows—the day is getting warmer. I drive her straight past my apartment until she’s punching me in the arm and demanding I tell her where we’re going.
I don’t let her know that I’m supposed to be in a safe house, awaiting orders to cut up her face or break a knuckle while her aunt listens over the phone. I don’t tell her that I’ll be in big fucking trouble with Cullen no matter what, so we’re taking a little vacation until I care to face him again.
If our marriage is what it is, then I’m going to give her a good goddamn honeymoon while I can.
Present Day
“I shouldn’t have left,” I say.
Josh swings his punch around to the right and almost knocks me over, even though I’m holding the punching bag close to my chest. The boy has a good right hook, even if he’s gotten good at it in this shithole. I think about my empty-ass gym, Frank’s bullying, the building down the road just asking for a $30,000 down payment. Josh swings again, and delivers a right knee strike, and then another.
“The girl? The girl whose name you won’t give me?”
“Yeah, that one,” I say, shifting my center of balance.
Josh grins and kicks me again. He’s got two fading black eyes, but at least he’s not drinking anymore. “The one with the mother who needs your help?” He comes around to my back and tries to take me down. I might have multiple leg injuries, scars running up and down my side, but I don’t let someone like Josh take me down. I toss down the punching bag and catch him as he comes around, knocking him down to the floor of the cage. The nasty, gray plastic smells like blood and piss. I keep Josh down, and he struggles to get up, laughing hard. “You ginger son of a bitch,” he moans. “This isn�
��t supposed to be part of training.”
I bring my hand close to his face and slap it. “It is if I say it is. I’m your sponsor, remember? This is part of your... amends. For being an asshole.”
He laughs and pushes me up. “For what it’s worth,” Josh says, clapping me on the back, “I’d take that cash and put it where it counts. We’ve got sixty more days until we have to get the down payment sorted on that place.” Josh turns around and winks at me, a smile building up on his face like he has his own secret. “Do it for love, man. I’m going to win that fuckin’ fight. We don’t need your money.”
“Idiot,” I shout after him. The door opens behind us, and I hear Frank slither in. I can almost smell the oil he uses on his hair as Josh disappears into the locker rooms. I crack my knuckles and jump down from the cage.
“I couldn’t help overhearing,” he says.
“I’m sure you could help it.”
Frank strolls over to me, looking like a relic from a bygone era. He was with the mafia in New York, but now he runs a small time fighting ring in North Carolina. A petty criminal, a thief, a guy who has kids beat up for a living. I’d gotten my own gym so I wouldn’t have to be part of this fucking mess, but here I am, trusting that my cocky fighter in the locker rooms will win us $50,000 and a title in the championship fight. And I’m standing here thinking about spending my money—scrimped and saved over three long years working for this asshole—on a girl. Not just any girl, sure. But there’s not even a guarantee she’ll be mine. Not like she used to be.
Was she ever?
“You thinking about leaving here, Ash?” Frank grins greasily. “You probably should have been done with this place years ago.” This place is his girl—but it’s an abusive relationship. He hoards his fighters and hurts everyone who comes through here, clinging to the idea that he’s still a big time criminal in a big time place. Years ago, he might have scared me, but I’ve been through hell with bigger fish than him.