by B. Cranford
“Are you . . . did you . . .” Her voice faded out, unsure of how to ask the question, but in desperate need of the answer. “You and him?”
Another laugh boomed from Aaron, the mattress again shaking her about. Not enough, though, to wash away the thoughts suddenly dog-piling in her overactive imagination.
Duncan kissing Aaron.
Aaron kissing Duncan.
Aaron and Duncan kissing each other.
Oh shit. Oh no.
“No way, Ash. I mean, I admit an appreciation for his looks and his body—and Little, lemme tell you, under those clothes, he has a fucking tight body—but that’s all it’ll ever be. Even if I hadn’t started seeing Simon, Dunk is my best friend and he’s as straight as I am not.” He settled into a more serious tone, before hitting Ashton with his final words. “He’s the best guy I know and there’s no-one I trust more.”
He didn’t need to say it. Ashton could hear it between the lines.
If you want him, and you need it, you have my permission.
Ashton smiled at her brother, her panic forgotten as easily as her brother’s boyfriend had apparently been in the face of it. The weight of the moment they were sharing bore down on her, and she knew it would be one she remembered for a long time to come.
Present Day
It was funny how all these memories were resurfacing. Ashton had thought at the time that she would never ever forget those moments—the ones she shared with Duncan, and the ones she shared with Aaron. But somewhere along the way, they got lost.
Which was fitting, since she’d been more or less lost in the fifteen years since then.
With her older brother on her mind, Ashton grabbed her phone from the nightstand, checking the time to make sure it wasn’t too early to call. The home screen told her it was after nine in the morning, so deciding that if he wasn’t awake yet, he should be—even if it was the weekend—she made the call.
“Little Sister.” The chipper way Aaron answered the call definitely meant that she hadn’t woken him. She was a little bummed about it, if she was honest.
There’s nothing quite like pissing off a sibling to start your morning.
“Big Brother, how are things?”
“I woke up to a blow job, how are things for you?” Clearly, he’d known she wanted to wake him with her call—or maybe he just subscribed to the idea that you should always tease, to avoid being teased. “Morning sickness?”
“Well, before you told me that, no. But now, yes.” She made a gagging noise to emphasize her disgust, and then plowed on, not wanting to give him another chance to gross her out. “Hey, you remember when I came to stay with you and Duncan?”
She tried to say it with nonchalance, but failed. She sounded way too eager when she said “Duncan,” a fact that her brother obviously picked up on.
“You mean the week that you and Duncan made eyes—and Lord only knows what else—at each other?” He laughed. “Of course I remember. How does one forget seeing their little sister get eye-fucked daily by their best friend?”
Ashton didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. She’d known at the time that Aaron had known something was in the air, but to hear him say it so blatantly threw her. Her lips pressed together without conscious thought, a tingle beginning there that made it feel like she’d just been kissed.
By him. By Duncan.
“You never did get his name, did you?” Aaron asked, no doubt enjoying taking control of the conversation she started.
“No. I guess I meant to, but then . . .” She trailed off. She and Duncan had had something together and his mystery name was just another part of the fun and the excitement of it all. The whatever-it-was they shared was unnamed but so hot, so right, that it had taken years for her to settle into a relationship without first wondering what might have been.
Of course, the relationship she settled into was with Nathan, and ten years—and one bitter break-up fueled by infidelity—later, she was back to wondering what might have been.
If only their father hadn’t had that heart attack.
If only she hadn’t rushed home to support not her mother, who refused to let Aaron see his father, but Austin, who needed his sister.
If only she hadn’t pushed aside all thoughts of him with the assumption that their time was up. Was over.
What if it hadn’t been?
“I could tell you, you know,” Aaron said, interrupting her what ifs with a dose of reality. “It’s not like it matters anymore.”
Did she want to know? She wasn’t sure. It seemed like a moot point, a mystery that no longer needed to be. Except something was telling her she was better off not knowing.
Something was telling her the answer would come—eventually.
“No, forget it. Besides, I wasn’t calling to talk about him, I was calling to talk about you.”
“And who could blame you? I am fun to talk about.”
“Yeah, behind your back with Aussie,” she retorted, the weirdness of the last few moments evaporating as she got back into the familiar groove of conversation with her brother. “About what a pain in the ass you are, usually.”
“Actually, when it comes to ass pain—”
“No, no, no. I don’t want to hear it, so stop right there or I am hanging up and making sure my baby knows that Uncle Austin is the favorite.” The laugh that escaped alongside the threat belied her annoyance at Aaron, but she didn’t mind.
There’d been a time when they didn’t get to play like this. And she never wanted to experience that again.
“Please, any child of yours will be smart enough to recognize the superiority of his or her Uncle Aaron.” He hmmed into the phone, causing a phantom tickle in Ashton’s ears. “Though if he or she is truly that smart, they’ll probably love Uncle Simon most.”
And just like that, Ashton was crying. Whether it was simply the hormones of pregnancy or the reminder of how long and hard Aaron and Simon had had to fight for their relationship, she didn’t know.
She only knew that hearing the love in his voice when he spoke of his husband made her sappy, romantic heart flutter.
“You’re probably right. Simon’s definitely my favorite family member.”
“I’m okay with that, honestly,” was Aaron’s easy reply and, with that, they moved on to general talk, updating one another about jobs, the baby—now the size of a cherry, according to Aaron’s research—and tickets to a concert that was still several months away, but one they both wanted to attend.
Ashton thought she was in the clear, her earlier slip when it came to Duncan forgotten, until she began to wind up the conversation. “I’d better go. I didn’t call to waste half your morning.”
“No. You called for a reason—but I don’t think we ever really got to it.” He cleared his throat as Ashton’s breathing quickened.
Was he going to tell her Duncan’s name, even though she’d said it didn’t matter?
Did she even want him to?
“I still talk to him, you know.”
“Who?” she asked, fruitlessly feigning ignorance. She knew as well as Aaron did who the “he” he was referring to was.
“Ashton Marie. Don’t play dumb, you’ll feed into the blonde stereotype.”
“Fine, Sorry. Duncan. You still talk, I do know this. What’s your point?” Her shoulders raised and dropped in a shrug her brother couldn’t see, but that she felt compelled to add in the hopes it supported her nonchalance.
“So, he asks about you. All the time. I don’t know what happened that week—I don’t think I want to know, frankly—but whatever it was, it made an impression. On him, and”—he paused a beat, making her breath come even faster, until she worried she was going to pass out—“obviously on you, if you’re still thinking about him.”
She wanted to deny it. After all, it wasn’t like she’d spent all fifteen of the years since the last time she’d seen Duncan pining after him. But, the more she thought about it, the more she realized how much that period of
her life had shaped the woman she’d become.
From the men she sought out for relationships, to the ridiculous collection of kitten figurines that sat on the single shelf that ran around three walls of her bedroom, to the way she doctored her popcorn when watching a movie, Duncan was there in the details.
What she couldn’t work out—or maybe wasn’t willing yet to truly admit—was why.
The sound of a baby crying echoed down the hallway and off the walls of the room in which Ashton sat.
Empty.
Dusty.
Dark.
“Why am I here?” The coldness of her own voice—coupled with the fact that she couldn’t physically make herself move toward the sound of the baby’s cries—rattled her. “I want to go, why can’t I go?”
“Maybe because you have unfinished business?”
The words came from behind her, but when she turned to see who spoke, there was no-one there. “Hello?”
“I’m here.” This time, the voice was above her, but again, when she searched for the speaker, she was alone.
The cries got louder, more insistent, a hint of hysteria creeping in that Ashton felt in every pore, every nerve ending, every bone in her body. “Baby? Baby, stop crying. Mommy’s here, Mommy’s coming.”
“You can’t get there alone, you know.” That voice, telling her she couldn’t, it was a ghost along her senses. “You need help.”
“No, I don’t. I can do this, you just need to let me out of here.” She walked the perimeter of the room—finally recognizing it as Aaron’s old bedroom—trying to work out why the door was missing. “What did you do to the door? Where is the door?”
“You think you can do it alone, but you can’t even find a door and stop the baby from crying. Maybe it was a mistake, Ashton.”
“Who are you? How do you know me? Why are you doing this?” Her questions became increasingly panicked, but still, no answers came.
She slunk down the wall, letting the cries wash over her until she added her own tears to the mix. “Please, I need . . . I need . . . I want . . .”
“I know what you want.” Startling at Duncan’s voice next to her, Ashton suddenly noticed that the crying had quieted. The baby, nestled in a blanket and cradled to Duncan’s chest, looked content. A flush on its cheeks and some lingering drops on its eyelashes the only sign that it had been crying.
“Why are you here?” She looked around the room again, still seeing no door. Which made her wonder—“How did you get in here?”
“I’ve been here the whole time, just waiting for you.” He looked down at the baby and ran a finger gently across its cheeks. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Ashton startled awake, sweat trickling between her breasts, coating every inch of her skin. She rolled, reaching for her phone where it sat on the nightstand beside her.
3am.
Her mind whirled, trying to bring back all the details of the dream that had terrified her and made her ache simultaneously.
She couldn’t reach the baby. She hated feeling so helpless, so alone.
But then Duncan was there, holding the infant with so much softness and care that her heart wanted to thump, thump, thump out of her chest.
What the hell? She wanted to make sense of what little she remembered, but sleep beckoned her again, her blue eyes losing focus as her eyelids lowered, whisking her back into dreamland.
“Hey, Kitten.” Duncan smiled, handing her a mug, the steam from the freshly made coffee drifting up and disappearing into the air around them. “Did you dream about me?”
“Yeah. Yes, I did.” She cocked her head, taking a sip of the hot drink, holding back a moan as the liquid warmed a path to her chest. “You had a baby.”
He smiled then, and stood to the side, a high chair coming into focus. “We have a baby, Ash. Did you forget?”
The child was . . . perfect. A blend of her and of him, and it made her tummy flip to know that a little piece of them existed in the world. Chocolate brown hair, like its daddy, curled like its mommy. The blue eyes that mirrored her own, filled with the humor and intensity that was so unique to Duncan.
“But I don’t know your name. Or—” she pointed to the child, wanting to smile but feeling the horror of not knowing her own baby—“I don’t know its name. Is it a boy? Is she a girl?”
He laughed. She was freaking the hell out and he was laughing?
What. The. Hell.
“Duncan? Duncan? Duncan?”
“Duncan!” His name blasted through Ashton’s bedroom, a yell that was laced with regret. The sun was rising, light trickling in through the window set high above her bed, making a box of sunshine on the wall opposite.
She stared at it. She blinked. She turned over and over and over again.
But she couldn’t settle.
After fifteen years, he was back on her mind full-time, invading it, even in her dreams.
They had unfinished business.
And it was time to find some closure.
Fifteen Years Ago
“I’ll be spending the night with Simon,” Aaron spoke over his shoulder while shoving a T-shirt into his backpack. “So behave while I’m gone, okay?”
Ashton laughed. “When have I ever not behaved?”
“Oh, about seven, eight days ago, when you snuck into Dunk’s car and refused to get out?” He turned toward her, a smirking look of triumph on his face. “How about then?”
“Whatever.”
“Brilliant comeback, Little. Truly, how can I possibly respond to that?”
“Oh shut up. Don’t you have a boyfriend to bang?” She hid her smile, though it wasn’t easy. Aaron’s face, so often full of stress and strain in the days since they’d returned to his apartment, was finally relaxed.
“Don’t you have a best friend to seduce?” he threw back at her, a cocked eyebrow lending his face a mischievous look. “Specifically, my best friend?”
“What? No. No.” She shook her head emphatically, word vomit spilling forth. “No, why would I do that? That would be a terrible idea, we’re just friends, just like you and he are just friends, you know? He’s nice, I like him, but it’s not like anything is happening or is going to happen or whatever. You know.”
“Actually, no, I don’t. I have no fucking idea what you just said, but reading between the lines, it sounded a lot like, ‘I want to bang your best friend, brother, but I’m a giant ’fraidy cat.’ Thoughts?”
“Pfft.” Ashton released a breath and whipped her hand through the air to emphasize her skepticism. “That’s not—no.”
“Really? No? Are you sure?”
“So anyway, have fun tonight, A. Be safe. Use protection. And all that.”
Aaron rolled his eyes at her less-than-cool attempt to redirect the conversation. “Smooth. You know I’m not going to just let this go, right?”
“You will, unless you want to be late.” Ashton started to move backwards, edging her way out of the room, but instead of successfully completing her bid for freedom, she backed into a solid, hot something.
Someone.
Duncan’s breath was warm against her ear as he whispered, “Gonna let me pet you tonight, Kitten?” and Ashton all but melted against him. To her brother, he said, “Hey, man. You heading out tonight?”
“Yeah, Simon’s birthday.” He smiled, the depth of emotion he felt for his boyfriend obvious for all to see. “Take care of my sister, won’t you?”
A small squeak of surprise escaped Ashton, as Duncan’s chest shook with laughter, the feel of it along her back making her thighs want to clench.
Around him.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that, man.” Duncan ran his hands down the bare skin of both of her arms, leaving in their trail an electric kind of feeling that added to her altogether weakened state.
She was T-minus sixty seconds from collapsing into a lust-fueled heap at his feet.
In an effort to preserve her wits—not to mention, regain control of her runaway hormones�
��Ashton took one step forward, threw a brief wave at her brother, then spun around and skirted past Duncan as she fled the room.
She needed a minute. Or ten. Maybe thirty.
No more than an hour.
Just enough time to plot her night alone with Dunk.
And research more boys’ names in the hopes of solving that mystery.
“Luthor.”
Duncan shook his head, his mouth too full of chocolate-topped popcorn to verbally shut down Ashton’s latest guess.
She was onto “L” names—having blasted through a few examples of each previous letter of the alphabet, but coming up empty. “Llama.”
“Fuck,” he said around his mouthful, eyes widening in surprise, making Ashton giggle. “How did you know?”
“Dunk.”
He raised a hand. “Hey, that’s Llama to you.” He smirked, swallowing the last of his popcorn before adding, “And my brother’s name is Alpaca.”
“You have a brother?” Ashton asked, narrowing her eyes as she tried to recall getting that information from him in any of the other conversations they’d had over the course of eight days.
“What, you’re fine with his name being Alpaca, but you’re annoyed I didn’t mention him before now?” He rolled his eyes, reaching into the bowl that sat between them on Ashton’s temporary bed. “Women. I’ll never fucking understand them.”
“Why do I feel like you’re not exactly being honest about your brother, Alpaca?”
“You’re right, I’m not. You caught me.”
“What’s his real name?”
“He is a she, as in, my sister. And I’m not telling. Once you figure mine out, I’ll let you in on that secret.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, making her giggles return, and she leaned in to push gently against his shoulder.
“Asshole.”
“Nope, that’s not it either. Though, I do probably get called that more than my real name.” He pulled at the neck of his shirt, as if hot under the collar, a look of “oh shit” on his face.
Ashton leaned in to push him again, but this time, he captured her elbow before she could rock back on her butt. They sat, facing each other, eyes locked, his hand gripping her elbow with enough strength to hold her in place—though she felt frozen, like she wouldn’t have been able to move even had he released her—but not enough to hurt.