by B. Cranford
You’re getting maudlin, he thought to himself, impressed with his own vocabulary but depressed by the nature of his introspective thoughts.
After pulling on a pair of plain black sleep pants, he surveyed his bedroom. Though it was the room he enjoyed most in his apartment—and that was only because of the bed, if he was honest, and how much he needed sleep—it wasn’t personalized. There was one photo on top of the bedside table and a padded chair in the corner, which Kennedy had asked him to move in there so she could sit and talk to him when he was getting ready or just waking up, or being lazy.
Which wasn’t often. Business and sickness left little time for laziness.
But beyond those two small signs of personality, his bedroom was as bland as the rest of the apartment. It was still mostly decorated as it had been when he’d bought the place—the padded leather headboard and box spring and other staging furniture part of the deal when he closed on the sale. At the time, it seemed smart, because he didn’t want to waste time shopping for things.
But now he wondered if he wasn’t just avoiding getting too attached.
As if he’d known that when Kennedy was gone, he wouldn’t be staying there much longer either.
You need to get out of your head, man.
Settling under the thick grey-and-white striped quilt, resting his head on a flat, firm grey-pillowcase-covered pillow, Duncan closed his eyes and tried to let his mind clear . . .
“Kitten, where are you?” His voice echoed down the hallway of—
Where was he? He didn’t recognize the walls, or the floor, or the one window at the end of the hallway that let in such little light that it was near impossible to see.
“Ashton?” he called, taking one step forward. “Ashton?” Another step. “Ashton?” Another step, but still no answer.
No sign of her, and yet he knew with certainty she was here somewhere.
She had to be. He wouldn’t have let her go, would he?
“Did I?” he asked himself aloud, hearing his question bounce off the walls encasing him.
Were they getting closer?
He tilted his head and watched, trying to see if the walls were indeed moving in on him, but before he could determine one way or the other, a flash of blonde hair, and a loose swathe of grey material caught his eye.
Ashton, he thought. Finally.
“Ash, Kitten, I’m here.” He sounded desperate and he was. He wanted her to come to him, to answer him, to let him . . .
What? What did he want? He couldn’t remember but he knew it was important.
There was something big happening and he was supposed to be helping her, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall what or why. Or the reason that he wasn’t already with her.
Where had he been? “Ashton, come here, please.”
Begging. He had resorted to begging and he didn’t even care. He needed her. He needed to care for her, to help her, to be there when she needed him because that’s what he did.
That’s what he always did.
And he wasn’t about to lose her, too.
“Kennedy!” Duncan woke with a start, his sister’s name on his lips, but Ashton’s face in his mind. His thoughts were muddy and confused—he knew he’d been dreaming but he couldn’t remember about what.
All he knew was he’d fallen asleep lost in self-pity and self-doubt and woken up with a plan.
To go to Madison, where Aaron lived, where Ashton lived.
To see if his home was there because, he thought as he looked around his bedroom, awash in morning light but as still as it had been when he’d closed his eyes, it definitely wasn’t here anymore.
Fifteen Years Ago
“Austin, come on, let’s go.” Ashton slipped her arm through her younger brother’s, trying to pull him back from a confrontation with their irate mother. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”
They’d been arguing since she’d arrived at the hospital to check on her father. A bus ride and a taxi had brought her home after Austin’s phone call, and she was determined to make sure her dad was okay, and then figure out why Austin was staring down the woman who’d given birth to him.
“I’m not the one with an issue, Ash. She is.” The venom in Aussie’s tone surprised her, and she turned her head to look at her mother. Her face was drawn, lines that hadn’t been there when Ashton had cut out a little over a week ago showing her obvious strain.
“Mom?” she asked, waiting for an explanation and getting nothing but a shake of the head in response. “Fine, we’ll deal with this in a bit.”
Turning to her brother, pulling again on his arm to move him away from their mom, she gave him a cool once-over. “Well?”
“He’s in recovery, I think. I don’t know. The doctor only talked to Mom, and I overheard bits. He should make it through, but she won’t talk to me.” His head cocked to the side, an unreadable expression forming on his face.
God, he looks so young, she thought, wincing when she realized that she’d left him to deal with their parents alone while she’d been chasing Aaron and petting Duncan. Shit.
And her parents weren’t talking to Aussie or Aaron. And given the reception she’d received, her mom wasn’t all that interested in talking to her, either. “Explain why,” she demanded, trying to hold herself together even as she could feel her family falling apart. “Please,” she added, gentling her tone.
“I wasn’t supposed to call you. She’s pissed off that I did, and worried that Aaron is going to show up.” His jaw clenched, the words coming through gritted teeth and laced with barely leashed anger. “She said it was his fault this happened.”
Ashton didn’t need Austin to elaborate. Apparently, Aaron’s coming out had caused their father to have a heart attack.
What-the fuck-ever.
“Right, well, I’m going to find out what’s happening and when I come back, you and I are leaving.”
“Do you have a car?” Austin asked, knowing she’d come the long way home from Aaron’s apartment. “Or do I need to get us a ride? I can call Odie.”
The thought of Austin calling his best friend, Odette, to come and collect them gave Ashton the first reason to smile in hours. It was clear to her that Aussie loved the girl, but for whatever reason, they were only friends.
Which was probably a good thing. They were only seventeen, and the likelihood of anything starting now and lasting forever was slim.
Except friendship. She had a feeling that their friendship would last all their lives.
“Yeah, okay. That’d be good.” She let go of his arm only to wrap him in a hug, wanting to feel the comfort of a family member that wasn’t in a hospital bed or off somewhere smiting their oldest child for bringing on a massive coronary episode. “Be back, ’kay?”
Austin nodded, and Ashton moved toward the nurse’s desk to see if she could get any information on her father’s condition. If not, she’d take her brother and leave, figuring out what they’d do next along the way.
There was nothing she could do. Once she’d settled that her father would recover in time, she set out to deal with Austin—or, more specifically, with getting him through the last part of school without stepping on the minefield that had become her relationship with her parents.
“I will not let him leave here with you,” her mother said, bitterness in her voice. “I won’t condone him associating with Aaron.”
Ashton winced at the way Aaron sounded coming off her mom’s lips. Like it was distasteful. They were standing face-to-face in the middle of the kitchen in the house Ashton had grown up in. “Aaron”—Ashton made a point of emphasizing his name, too, but it wasn’t distaste on her tongue, it was affection—“is his brother.”
“Not anymore.”
“You can’t just cut him out of your life, Mom. He’s your son.”
“Not anymore,” her mother repeated firmly, brooking no argument. It set a fire in her chest, hearing the adamancy in those two words. She’s giving up on him entirely.<
br />
“Fine, whatever. That’s your call, fucking stupid though it is—”
“Don’t speak to me like that.”
“Screw you, I’ll speak to you however I want. If you want to disown Aaron, then you’re disowning me too.”
“Austin stays here.” Her mother crossed her arms tightly across her chest, and Ashton knew she was in for an even bigger fight.
Except, she didn’t know what she’d do if she won. She had to go back to school and so did Austin. He was in his senior year, mere months from graduation, and there was no way he’d be able to commute.
Shit.
“Ash?” As if thinking of him conjured him up, Aussie’s voice interrupted her problem-solving session. Although, she wasn’t getting anything solved, so it was more like a problem-gazing session.
“Yeah?” She turned to face him, giving her still fuming mother her back and concentrating on the next words from Austin’s mouth.
“Go back to school. I’m outta here in a few months anyway.” He smiled but it was sad. As if it could be anything else. “Odie’s family will let me hang out as much as I want, you know that.”
She did know that. Odette’s parents loved Austin, and didn’t seem too concerned with their daughter spending all her time with him. But even still, leaving him behind didn’t sit right with her.
“Aus, I can’t just—”
He didn’t let her finish. He just smiled another sad smile at her, shook his head and turned away. And a few short hours later, having called for back-up that was readily given, Ashton shoved boxes and bags into her friend Bianca’s car, and she too turned away.
From Austin, but only for a few months.
From that house, from her parents, forever.
Present Day
Ashton had absolutely no interest in the man standing in front of her. Her feet hurt, her stomach was just this side of roiling and she needed to pee.
Again.
He was feverishly writing his name and number on a napkin, with zero clue that the second he walked out of her bar, she'd be throwing it in the trash can. And probably throwing up on top of it seconds later, to boot.
Come on, dude, be a little original, she thought. A napkin? Really?
All night long, he'd been offering cheesy one-liners and leering smiles, completely oblivious to the fact that Ashton wasn't reciprocating. Sure, she was giving him limp smiles and happily accepting his money for the beers he was downing one right after the other, but otherwise, her lack of interest should have slapped him in the face, it was so clear.
But not to him.
“Here you go, love,” he slurred, unsuccessfully sliding the napkin across the bar top. It snagged on a wet spot—which made Ashton snicker gleefully—and separated from itself. “Ah, shit.”
“Don't worry about it,” she replied, scooping up the flimsy paper and turning her back. It's not like she enjoyed being rude to patrons, but her bullshit-slash-asshole radar was beeping all kinds of craziness when it came to this guy.
Not to mention, now she really needed to pee.
“You'll call me, yeah?” His voice was slightly whiny and definitely thick from the alcohol coursing through his veins, and he seemed happy enough with a flaccid hand gesture, which could have been a wave or even the middle finger, from Ashton before he drunkenly walked from the bar.
“You definitely have to call him.” Ashton turned at the deep voice that, she saw as she swung around, belonged to a dark-haired man sliding into the drunk's former seat. She couldn’t really see his face, the lighting in the bar low and her attention mostly on her overfull bladder, but she definitely heard the humor in his tone. “He looks like a winner to me.”
She offered him a smile as she walked the three steps back to where he sat, looking half over her shoulder to gesture to Odette to come take over for her. “Well, if you really think so, I can give you his number,” she replied, withdrawing the wet napkin from her apron pocket and offering it to him. The brush of his fingers against hers as he reached for it startled her, but as she turned to face him, Odie’s arrival diverted her attention.
“Kitten.”
The nickname echoed in her ears and made her feel strangely like she was in a wind tunnel, air whizzing past her, pushing her to do something, pushing her to turn and take him in. The man sitting at her bar.
Not just any man.
Duncan.
“We're at last call, I'm afraid, so don't get too comfortable,” she heard Odette say, as she tried to decide between her need to run to the bathroom and her desire to see him—look properly at him now she knew who it was.
She heard his response, “Good thing I'm not here for a drink then,” which earned an acerbic kind of snicker from Odie.
It wasn’t the first time a patron had used that kind of line in The Avenue.
But somehow, Ashton believed Duncan truly wasn’t there for a drink.
After all, who flew in from New York City to have a beer in a bar not unlike hundreds, even thousands of others, across the country?
Ashton finally turned, so intense was her need to see if the man who’d been on her mind so much lately was really, truly there.
And when she did, making eye contact with him for the first time in a decade and a half, he didn’t disappoint.
“I'm here for you.”
She blinked her cornflower blue eyes at him, the question clearly on her face. But instead of “What are you doing here?” the question he’d expected, Ashton surprised him. “And you are?”
“Andrew.” He offered his name and a smile, knowing that the dimples forming on either side of his mouth were akin to catnip when it came to his Kitten.
Granted, she wasn’t his and never really had been, but he sure did like the way it sounded in his head.
“Really?” Her voice held enough skepticism to prove that Aaron never had filled her in on his name. He briefly wondered why before nodding, offering his full name for her enjoyment. “Andrew William Duncan the Third, actually.”
“The third? Really?” she asked again, clearly having a hard time processing what was happening.
Duncan knew her last name was Andrews, and both he and Aaron had had a little laugh at the matching names when they’d first met. But the novelty had long since worn off, at least for him.
But apparently not for Ashton, who was just now finally learning it. She smiled, a sparkle in her eye that had been absent as he’d watched her tend bar all night, dealing with dickheads and idiots.
Like the one who’d left his number on a napkin. Smooth. Not.
“Andrew. Your name is Andrew. My name is Andrews—my last name.” She looked straight at him, as if daring him to disagree with her.
“I know.”
“We can’t get married then,” she informed him, startling a laugh from him at her jump in logic. “I’d expect you to take my name, and well, Andrew Andrews would never work.”
He nodded sagely—at least, that’s how it felt to him—and pretended to consider her words. “Or,” he said, leaning over the bar top as if he was about to share a secret with her, “you could take my name, and we wouldn’t have that problem.”
He watched as she lifted a hand to her pretty mouth, trying to hide her giggle before rearranging her face back into a mask of indifference. “No, no can do. Pity that, since you’re so handsome, Andrew.”
He snapped his fingers, trying to pretend at disappointment even as that same emotion coursed through him. Why, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like he was seriously contemplating joining with her in holy matrimony—though he thought joining with her in other ways might be fun.
And didn’t hinge on his apparently unacceptable given name.
“So, what do I call you, then?”
Her question snapped him out of his increasingly dirty thoughts, and he shrugged. “You can call me whatever you want, Ash.”
“What do most people call you?”
“Everyone except my sister calls me Duncan.” The mention o
f Kennedy slid off his tongue before he could think better of it, and he found himself wondering if Ashton knew what had happened.
Knew that he’d lost her.
Lost her, like she was a pair of glasses or a slip of paper with an appointment time.
Her next words confirmed that she did. “Aaron told me she passed away. That that’s why you couldn’t be at the wedding.” She reached over the bar to lay a hand over the top of his forearm and squeezed gently. “Duncan, I’m so sorry.”
He couldn’t form words—the way she spoke to him, the look in her eye, was so genuine he felt a wave of grief crash over him—so he opted for a small lift of the corner of his mouth. Just enough to acknowledge and accept her words; not enough to betray how close to tears he suddenly was.
Andrew.
Andrew.
Andrew.
Ashton couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that Duncan was in her bar and that his name was Andrew. Her last name was practically his first name and she was reeling. Clearly, pregnancy hormones were making a bigger deal of it than it should be, but still . . .
She had waited fifteen years to discover his name and after all this time, he just tossed it at her across a bar. Her bar. And it was so familiar.
She stared at him, hard. Took in the small but significant changes in him that had occurred over the years. Slight greying of his hair at his temples. Crinkles bracketing his eyes that told of laughter and sadness alike. And a heaviness that seemed to be settled on his shoulders, one which only became heavier when he’d mentioned his sister.
Kennedy. She hadn’t known that name either and with a pang in her chest, Ashton realized she would never know the woman herself.
She cleared her throat, the tears that she suspected Duncan was just barely holding back threatening her, too. Instead, she concentrated on changing the subject. Which she did, in typical rambling-Ashton fashion.