I liked hearing him talk about his grandmother. It was one of the times he wasn’t being an overbearing control freak. As we spent more time together, of course, he opened up more and more, but nothing beat the way his eyes softened when he told me stories of his childhood, and how much he enjoyed spending time with her. Whenever she wasn’t busy with that guy.
His face would cloud over then. Every time he talked about that guy. Ash refused to say his name and clearly had some serious jealousy issues when it came to his grandmother’s charge. I personally thought it was a little much, but who was I to tell him how to feel about anything? My family ties were pretty much written on bank notes if I was being completely honest with myself.
“Okay so the room is small, but she likes it that way. Just don’t get weirded out if she forgets your name after I introduce you or seems to ignore you completely after a while. The lucidity comes and goes at a moment's notice. Just don’t be worried about it and don’t take it personally. Also, sometimes she throws things, but don’t worry about that either. Her aim is shit.”
He told me not to be worried about it, but I could tell he couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands as we were walking. He was worried about it. He alternated between swinging his arms as he walked and sticking his hands in his pockets. I finally had mercy on him and grabbed his right hand as we walked, giving him something to focus on whether he wanted to admit he was nervous or not. I’d picked right this time. I could tell as he looked over at me and smiled, squeezing my fingers to let me know he was grateful for the small contact.
We stopped in front of a door with a lovely purple wreath on the front. Between the lilac blooms and wooden wrapped boughs I saw the numbers 302. It looked just like an apartment door. Nothing would indicate it was located in an assisted living facility with on-site health workers. Ash knocked on the door but didn’t wait for anyone to open it. “Gigi,” he called after he opened the door several inches. “Are you decent?”
I didn’t hear any response but Ash must have because he grinned and, opening the door wider, he motioned me inside. I didn’t want to go in first. I mean, of course he was using his best manners and letting the lady lead the way, but in this instance I wished he had gone first. I felt so exposed and uncertain. It was a foreign feeling and I didn’t like it.
I expected something like a hospital? This was nothing like that. It was a studio apartment of sorts.
“Ashley, who is our lovely guest?” the woman sitting in the chair called out to him, but she was looking at me. She was as short as Ash was tall. If he was a giant, she was diminutive in stature. I wondered how he hugged her without cracking her ribs. She wore a flowered housecoat with purple ballet style slippers, but still managed to look as regal as a queen in her high-backed chair.
Instead of bending down to greet her, Ash sank right to his knees in front of her, grabbing both of her hands in his and bringing them to his lips.
“Only you get to call me that, Gigi.” She smiled as he stood and walked back in front of the now closed door. “This is my girlfriend, Caroline. We met at work.” He grabbed my hand and I clasped it like a rope out of hell.
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am, I’ve heard so much about you.” Following Ash as he swept his arm toward the loveseat, I sat down and he followed suit, taking up so much space on the small piece of furniture.
“Caroline, what a lovely name. What brings you all the way down to Ohio, dear? East Coast too rowdy for you?”
How did she…?
“You have an accent.” She smiled like she knew a secret. And maybe she did, I didn’t think I had an accent. At least not one of those cartoon New York City accents depicted in the movies and television. “I’m from New York too, you know. So is Ashley but he’s been thoroughly countrified out here in the sticks.”
Ash coughed into his fist, smiling behind his hand. “Toledo is hardly the sticks Gigi, but I’ll let you have this one. I’ve no desire to have my whereabouts gauged by how funny I sound when I talk. I’ll leave that to you two.”
“Careful, boy, you’re not to big for me to go cut a switch now.” I did laugh then, the thought of the tiny Gigi hiking up her housecoat to go out and cut a switch off a tree to whack the giant Ash was too much to ignore. He was so besotted with his grandmother, he’d probably sit still and let her.
“I can cut one for you too, Miss Missy, if you think it’s so funny.” Her piercing gray eyes whipped over to me and I could see they were the same as Ash’s. Older, wiser, but the same, nonetheless.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I said with sincerity.
“Oh, you can call me Alice, almost everyone does. The only people that don’t are Ashley an—”
“So, Gigi, tell me what you’ve been up to. Have you been eating well? Anything you want me to talk to the staff about? Anywhere you want to go? If you’re feeling up to it, I can come pick you up for a day and we can go do anything you want.” Ash cut her off so suddenly, even I knew what he was doing, and I was a stranger in the room. His grandmother did too, guessing by the thin press of her mouth and the exasperated sigh. She mumbled something under her breath, something about giant babies and tantrums, but I might have been mistaken.
“I’d like to see home again. Just once.” I felt rather than saw the tension in Ash’s shoulders.
“That’s an awful long way away, Gigi.” Ash said carefully, his tone even.
“I know, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen my own home. It would be nice to go and see how things are carrying on now that I’ve moved on. So many people I’d like to catch up with. You know I heard Dex got himself a fiancé. I sure would like to meet her too.”
I hoped that grinding noise coming from my left wasn’t Ash’s teeth, but it probably was. If she was talking about going home, that would mean a trip back to the place and people Ash didn’t really want to deal with. That name. Oh no, that name. Building blocks clicked into place in the span of microseconds. I was certain there were a hundred thousand people on the earth with the name Dex, but given my luck, and the nature of Ash and Alice’s background, the possibility that this was all a coincidence was too slim. No, that name was a red-hot trigger for me, and one I couldn’t even dwell on for more than a second because a knock on the door took everyone’s attention.
All of us swung our heads toward the door, expecting a nurse to pop her head in and ask how we were doing. Instead, the door opened and my literal nightmare come to life popped his head in. I could do nothing but stare in horror as I felt all the blood leave my face and pool at my feet.
“Suge, I didn’t know you were going to have company. Can we come in?”
And then it made sense. If I didn’t make the obvious connection when she said his name, hearing Dexter Truitt call her Suge was the final nail in the coffin of my life. She’d said Dex. Alice Sugarbaker was Ash’s grandmother. And Dexter Truitt’s nanny. And the guy my boyfriend couldn’t stand with every fiber of his being, was my ex fuck buddy.
So much for good impressions.
14
Caroline
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Ash was already standing before I could say anything, and his wide back blocked my view of the door.
“Ashley Sugarbaker, watch your language. There’s a lady present.”
“Caroline?” I could hear the question in Dexter’s voice, and as much as I wanted to disappear behind Ash’s body, I couldn’t. Nothing that was going to come next would be pleasant, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong, really, just been with the wrong person from the wrong place at the wrong time. A shit storm was going to come my way anyway, I just knew it.
I slowly stood and moved to the side so I could see, not just Dexter, but both of the people that had come through the door. Awesome. “Hello Dexter. Bianca.” He’d brought his fiancée to meet his nanny. On the same day Ash brought me to meet his grandmother. Dear God, this was hell.
“Don’t you call ahead? And how do you know Caroline?” Ash
was irritated to see Dexter, and knowing what I knew about Ash, it was only going to get worse from here.
“I did call ahead.” Dexter ignored all of us as he went to Alice and smothered her from behind in a bear hug. He hovered over the back of her chair like a little kid hanging on his granny’s shoulders as she smiled and patted his arm. There was real love there. I knew Ash hated the kid that took all his grandmother’s time and love when he was growing up, but even a blind man could see the affection between these two. “I called and talked to the staff and to Suge, everyone said a visit would be fine.”
Dexter grinned, absolute confidence showing on his face. A face I knew from experience showed no lie. He really was that confident. In everything. Well, almost everything, if the story I heard about how he and Bianca got together was true. Pretty sure he nabbed her by pretending to be someone else completely. And she forgave him for it, which I couldn’t understand at all. “Caroline, you look different. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s good, though. You look good.”
I heard the warning in the low timbre of Ash’s voice. “How do you know each other?” It wasn’t a question, more of a demand.
“Maybe we should go out in the hallway for this conversation?” Bianca was probably the only smart one out of all of us, and I silently blessed her with my eyes for having the common sense to get them out of Alice’s earshot when they had this fight.
“You didn’t tell him? Caroline and I used to date. Sort of. You really didn’t tell him you knew me?” An expression of hurt crossed his face briefly, and I knew from experience it was a mock emotion. Dexter Truitt was never unsure of himself at any time. Never. At least not that I knew of. He was making fun of Ash, and me by proxy. Dex was a decent enough guy, but that cocky attitude could be infuriating.
“How could I tell him I knew you when I didn’t even know you knew each other?” I whisper screamed the words at him, trying so hard not to make a big deal out of what was most certainly going to be a big. Fucking. Deal.
Bianca twisted her hands nervously, and honestly, I felt as sorry for her as I did for myself. Dexter looked just as oblivious and confident as he always had. Ash’s gaze was trying to incinerate everyone in the room and Alice sat in her chair smiling, just happy to have her favorite boys together in one place.
“Church, what the fuck is he talking about?” Oh man, he was rattled. He forgot to call me Caroline. The muscles in his shoulders bunched so hard I thought he’d rip his shirt clean off, and while I probably would welcome the visual in any other situation, all I wanted him to do at the moment was stop staring at me so angrily. Accusatory.
I blinked to clear my head and in that moment, I found myself staring at Dexter’s back. “Hey, man, I know you don’t like me, but that’s a you problem. Why are you talking to her like that?” Dexter was a lot of things, but rude to women was not one of them. Bianca, who’d apparently moved with him, put a restraining hand on his shoulder. I wished I had the confidence to put my hand on Ash’s shoulder with a hope or prayer of holding him back. Most likely it would probably have the opposite effect.
“Answer me. Are you Dexter Truitt’s ex girlfriend?” His thunderous expression said he already knew the answer, and pre hated me for it.
Oh man, it wasn’t even anything as formal as all of that. “Something like that.”
“Were you fucking him?” I’d always found Ash’s size intimidating as well as attractive, but in that moment, he was a mountain of rage. And while he hadn’t moved an inch, I felt him towering over me, ready to swallow me whole and incinerate me with his rage.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t answer the damn question. Never in my life had I been ashamed of anything I did. Or any man I took to my bed. But here, standing under Ash’s accusatory gaze, I was sorry for my whole privileged life. I was everything he hated and now I was outed for fucking everything he hated. I was a shit storm squared and I couldn’t say anything to refute that.
“That’s enough, you asshole.” Dexter took a step forward. So did Ash. Bianca and I met each other’s worried gaze and I opened my mouth to speak, to say anything, but Ash stole the wind from my lungs.
“First you come around acting like the prodigal grandson. I grew up in your fucking shadow, couldn’t get away from it, but now you’re going to tell me I got your leftovers too?”
At first I thought the gasp came from me, but it didn’t. It came from the chair where his Gigi sat, her hand over her mouth and sadness in her eyes. She couldn’t have been shocked for me. Crying for me. Nobody pitied Caroline Gower.
“Shut up.” Not the best way to start a tirade, but it was the first thing I could think of and it worked. All heads swung toward me and four sets of eyes widened in shock. “I would love to say I’ve never been so disrespected in my entire life but, unfortunately, that’s not true, and since I’ve known you, most of the disrespect shown to me has come from you. I’ve had it. Someone needs to knock you out and you think no one will because you are so Goddamn big they can’t. Sorry, Alice.” I paused to look over at her chair, but she just nodded for me to continue. Maybe she thought someone needed to knock him out too, I don’t know.
“Yes, Dexter and I come from rich families. Yes, we have lots of money. Lots of money, Ashley Sugarbaker. I could bathe in cash. So what? Want me to act like I don’t? Why? So you feel more comfortable? Yes, I had a relationship with Dex. Yes, I slept with him. Adults do that, you know? I certainly didn’t ask for a roster of your body count before we started spending time together. Why is it such an issue for me?” Ash’s eyes clouded over the moment I used his full name—but fuck him. Gabe told me to save it for a special occasion, and this was special enough. I was serious, and damn it, he was going to feel exactly how serious I was. He opened his mouth and took a step toward me, but I was having none of that.
“No. I said shut up and I meant it. You are going to listen to everything I have to say, and you know what? Dexter and Bianca, I have things to say to you too. Dexter, I liked you. I didn’t love you, hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever loved anyone that way, but I liked you and I respected you. So when you found Bianca in such a weird little romcom kind of way and ghosted me, it stung. Text messages don’t count. They just don’t. And even though we weren’t anything serious, I would think an in-person conversation should have been warranted.” When I thought of all the dirty texts we used to send each other I cringed. How many dirty texts had I sent him while he was with her? What kind of crazy, dirty broad did I look like to her?
“But you know what? We’ve known each other a long time. Long enough that I can admit that you’ve found a good thing. Good enough that it made me so jealous my stomach hurt to see you together, and I took a massive life cut and moved all the way to butt fuck Ohio so I didn’t have your happiness rubbed in my face.”
Dexter’s eyes softened around the edges, but I didn’t want his pity at the moment. I just wanted him to listen. I wanted them all to listen, because while I had everything I ever wanted growing up, I couldn’t get anyone to just listen. Bianca didn’t move, but her hand was currently holding Dexter’s, and I noticed the faint squeeze of her fingers over his. And for some reason, that choked me up more than anything in this world. It reminded me of how I’d tried to offer that same comfort to Ash as we were walking down the hallway to this very room. It was something you do for someone you care about. Of course I cared about Ash. Why would I be standing in this room embarrassing the hell out of myself otherwise? If I didn’t care I would have just left and never looked back. Because Caroline Gower didn’t give a shit about what people thought about her. Except for the people in this room. I cared. I really did.
“The only two people who’ve ever made me question my value are in this room, arguing with each other. For what? I don’t know what six degrees of chaos brought us all together, but I did not know Dexter Truitt was the person you were talking about when you told stories about your Gigi being a nanny. However, I have known the Truitt family damn n
ear my whole adult life, and I can tell you one thing, Alice Sugarbaker is loved by them. Loved like a family member. Everyone knows that. And maybe you don’t want to see that because of all the things you think they took away from you, but if you took a second to think about it another way, you’d understand something. Maybe the reason she is so loved, is that she loves them too? Maybe the reason Dexter wants to take care of her so much is a direct representation of the care she showed him and his family growing up? Maybe, instead of some stupid macho, jealous competition you two idiots have, you could see how happy it would make her if you could be friends. You don’t have to be from the same economic status to be friends, I should think I’m a prime example of that.”
While I was talking, Dexter and Bianca had taken seats on the loveseat, and he grinned like a lunatic while Bianca leaned into him, a half smile on her face. I don’t know why he looked so fucking satisfied, but while my attention was distracted for a moment, Ash thought he would take a couple of steps forward and grab my arm. I did not think so.
“Don’t touch me. I’m not finished. I know you like to have control over, like, everything in the universe, but I have news for you. I’m Caroline Gower. I’m more than your assistant. I’m more than just someone for you to have fun with, and I’m more than the woman you deeply insulted a minute ago.” Damn it, my voice broke. I had so much more to say, and the tears I held back with sheer anger and willpower burned in the corners of my eyes. I would not let them fall. I. Would. Not. But I couldn’t control the solid lump in my throat that thickened my voice. Or the sob welling up in my chest. It was coming, whether I wanted it to or not, and I had more words I needed to get out before they did.
“I’m a strong, intelligent woman. And maybe I did run away from my problems, but at least I recognized they were problems, and did what I had to do to make myself right again. I don’t hate them for what they have.” I gestured toward Dex and Bianca on the couch. “I want what they have. I want to find someone to be with because I want to, not because it’s easy. I want to feel something in my heart and not just . . . other places. And I thought that person was you, I really did. You want to know why? Because being with you is the hardest shit I have ever had to put up with. You make me nuts, I swear to God. And I certainly feel you in my heart because it hurts. It hurts so bad I want to fall down right now and die from it. I was so excited and nervous to come here, to finally be introduced to someone you care about like I’m important to you too. But instead, the first time you heard something you didn’t want to hear, you treated me like a filthy whore. In front of your grandmother.”
Mister Monster: A Hero Club Novel Page 9