by Noelle Adams
When they got into the bed, Ashley automatically scooted over so she could snuggle up against him like she’d done for the four nights before.
But everything was different now. Ethan pulled away from her. Rolled over to his edge of the bed, showing her only his back.
Ashley swallowed over the lump in her throat. None of this made any sense.
So she lay in the dark and tried to sort everything out.
Things had changed only after they’d seen the bad guys in the garage.
They’d gotten into a fight. And then she’d said…
Ashley gasped and darted her eyes to Ethan’s tense back in the bed beside her. It all made sense. Made terrible, horrible sense.
And she knew what was going on. She knew why Ethan had gotten cold and withdrawn at the garage, why he had insisted on getting a motel room, and why he hadn’t let her cuddle up beside him.
She might even know why he had dismissed her so cruelly when she’d wanted to discuss their relationship earlier.
Of course, this was what he would do. She should have expected it a long time ago. It was just like him. He might be a bulldozer, but he was also a martyr.
He was going to get up sometime in the middle of the night, after she had fallen asleep. Then he was going to walk out the door, leaving her alone in the motel room. Take the truck and drive the rest of the way to Sioux Falls by himself. Go off and face whatever danger, violence, or death was waiting for him. By himself. Without her.
Ethan was going to leave her behind.
Ashley forced the panic down and thought of what she needed to do. Then she deepened her breathing. Relaxed her body. Pretended to drift off to sleep.
She was absolutely crazy about Ethan, and no one else had ever infuriated her more.
She made herself stay awake until the end of the seventh day.
Day Eight
the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa
It was two o’clock in the morning before Ethan made his move.
Ashley had been pretending to sleep for hours, going over the situation in her mind. But there was no good in confronting him unless she caught him in the act, so she waited and waited and waited until she finally heard him get out of the bed in the dark.
She didn’t move yet—just kept breathing deeply and evenly. She heard him rustling around and assumed he was putting on his shirt. Then she listened as he picked something up and walked into the bathroom. He shut the door quietly behind him.
It was a few minutes before he left the bathroom again. She let him walk back through the room, put something down on the table, and start opening the door.
Then Ashley popped out of the bed like a Jack-in-the-Box. “I knew it! I knew you were going to leave me behind!”
She heard Ethan grunt in surprise and shut the door again. She fumbled next to the bed until she was able to turn on a light.
Ethan was fully dressed, staring at her in shock and annoyance. “Damn it, Ashley. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I gave you a heart attack? I’ve been waiting since we went to bed. I’m surprised I haven’t had a stroke from the hours I've been holding myself back.”
Ethan tightened his lips and moved like he would actually walk out the door.
“Don’t you dare,” Ashley gritted out through clenched teeth. “Or I swear I’ll tackle you to the ground.”
He shook his head and sighed. “You’ll be better off if you just let me go.”
“Screw that. I can’t believe you were just going to leave me here. By myself in the middle of nowhere. With bad guys who might happen to find me. How could I possibly be better off by myself?”
Ethan was still standing stiffly by the door. “All you would have had to do was call your parents or the police. You would have been fine. The cops around here wouldn’t be in Jones’s pocket, so you could trust them.”
Ashley glanced at the table and noticed a folded piece of paper and a thin pile of cash. “And I suppose you left me all of the cash too. What were you planning to do? Wash dishes at a local diner for a meal? Sing a little ditty on the street and hope someone throws some change in your direction?”
Ethan twisted his lips, but it wasn’t really a smile. “I have the credit card. I can be in Sioux Falls by noon, and then I won’t have to worry about my lack of cash.” There was something strange on his face.
She immediately understood what it was. “Because you’ll be dead!” she cried, feeling her hands start to shake. “You think they’ll find you, take you to Buster, and kill you before you talk to that guy. I’m not going to let you slink off to your death by yourself.”
“The only other option is for us both to slink off to our deaths.” Ethan raised a hand to his eyes. “I thought at first you’d be safer if you stayed with me, but I think I was wrong. Now that we’re out of the county, you’ll be safer away from me. The most dangerous place in the world for you is by my side.”
“Well, in the case,” Ashley gasped irrationally, “I’m not leaving your side.”
Ethan did smile then, but it was sad and a little bit lonely. “I’m not taking you with me, Ashley. I’ll not be responsible for putting you in any more danger.”
“It’s not your decision to make. I’m not a damsel in distress for the gallant hero to save and then leave conveniently in the castle while he goes off to slay some more dragons. I decide what happens to me. I’ll go where I want to go. And there is nothing you can do to stop me.” She stood a few inches away from him, breathing heavily and trying not to wring his neck.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. “I can think of a few ways of stopping you. I’m a good bit stronger than you.”
“You’ll have to lock me in the bathroom or tie me up to keep me from going with you,” she said, even more frustrated by his lack of reaction. She reached out to grab his shirt in her urgency. “But even then, I’ll get loose eventually, and then I’ll come after you. We’re in this together. We agreed on that from the very beginning. I don’t care that you were the one who got us into this mess. It’s not just your game anymore. I’m in it, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s not only a matter of your not being able to help. You’ll end up doing more harm than good. You mean well, but you’re inexperienced, over-anxious, and thoughtless. The fact is you’re getting in my way.”
Ashley let go of his shirt and tried to shake him. But Ethan grabbed her wrist firmly before she could. She tried to free her hand, but he held on to it. Then he claimed her other wrist as well so that he was in complete control of her body.
There were tears in her eyes, but they were from frustration and anger rather than pain. “Stop it, Ethan,” she said, a touch of helplessness edging her voice. “Stop being this ridiculous martyr. Stop lying to me and trying to make me angry enough to let you leave. It’s not going to work. I’ve been furious with you every day for the last week, and I’m still not letting you go off without me.”
Ethan released her abruptly. He turned his body away. “I can’t do it, Ashley.” His voice was low now, but no longer controlled. “I can’t keep on doing this, knowing that I'm responsible for putting you in danger. I can’t live with the fact that I might get you killed.”
Ashley reached over and turned him so that he was looking at her again. She reached up and took his face in her hands. “Now you know how I feel. You can understand why I refuse to sit here and let you get yourself killed by yourself.” She met his eyes and saw something change in his expression. She didn’t need to hear any response to know that she had finally won. He was going to let her come with him. “Admit it, Ethan,” she added, her tone growing softer. “I have helped you this last week. You wouldn’t have gotten this far without me.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds. But when he opened them again, he was smiling. “All right. I admit it. You’ve helped me. I’d be absolutely nowhere without you. But I’m living in constant terror—afraid that you'll get hurt.”
She smiled back at h
im. “That’s the price you pay for not living in isolation.”
“I give up,” he said resignedly. “You can come. But if you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.”
Ashley tsked her tongue on her front teeth and shook her head at him. “Using silly clichés now? Have you descended to that?”
Ethan scowled at her. “Hold your tongue, woman. I’m already terrified enough.”
She finally felt her heartbeat slow down. “So we’re okay? You aren’t going to try to run away again without me?”
“I wasn’t running away. I was making a valiant, selfless attempt to save your life.”
“Seriously.”
“Fine, I won’t try to leave you behind again. I only hope we both won’t later regret it.” He put his hand over the one she had resting on his arm. “Thank you, Ashley.”
She grinned at him. “You’re welcome. Now, can we please go back to bed? Neither of us has gotten any sleep so far, and we might actually be able to make it to Sioux Falls tomorrow if we don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
She went to the bathroom, and when she came out Ethan had taken off his shoes, socks, and shirt again. She got into bed as he went into the bathroom, but then she thought of something. So she climbed back out and walked over to the table where Ethan had put the note and the rest of the cash.
Ashley had picked up the note, unfolded it, and read the first few words when a hand came out of nowhere to snatch it away from her. She squealed and whirled around to see Ethan glaring at her.
She smacked him lightly on the chest. “Don’t scare me like that. I just wanted to see what you wrote.” She reached out again for the piece of paper.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, holding her off from him. “You’re coming with me, so it is irrelevant. I just explained the situation.”
“Then let me see it.” She tried to stretch her arm around to where he was holding the note.
Ethan pushed her off of him, gently but firmly. Then ripped the note up into about twelve pieces, crumpled them into a ball, and threw them in the trashcan. “I told you it was irrelevant.”
Ashley made a throaty noise of annoyance, but made no more moves toward the note. She got back into the bed and turned off the light. Ethan joined her almost immediately.
By now, having grown completely shameless, Ashley scooted over until she was lying against him. She sighed with relief when he moved his arms around her in a way that was now very familiar.
She wondered, if she brought up the undefined thing between them once more, whether Ethan would now have a different response. She thought maybe he would. Not that he was ready to commit to a long-term relationship, but she suspected he would at least be willing to talk about their feelings so they could figure things out.
But after her thwarted attempt the day before—and his words that had broken her heart—she wasn’t quite brave enough to start that conversation again.
Instead, she tried something else. “Ethan?” she said softly into the dark room.
“Hmm,” he murmured, the husky hum vibrating his chest.
“Why did you blow up your boat?”
“What the hell made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“It was full of Jones’s moonshine. If he was going to come after me, then I didn’t want him to have it. Or the boat to transport it in.”
“Oh. It was a nice boat.”
“I’d rather have my old dilapidated boat and not be trapped in that horrible net.”
“You could have gotten a lot of girls with that boat.”
“I don’t want a lot of girls.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his grumpy tone and at the very sweet sentiment.
“And if they just want me for my boat, then I definitely don’t want them,” he added.
“Well, in all honesty, they might want you for more than your boat. You’re quite good-looking, you know.”
Ethan snorted at this, but it felt like he was smiling too.
Lifting her head to peer in the direction of his face, she admitted, “I think so, anyway. And, believe it or not, I like you. A lot.”
He leaned up and planted a light kiss on her temple. She felt a little gooey and marveled at his aim in the dark. “I like you a little bit too.”
With a silly, blissful sigh, she lowered her head again and snuggled up against his warm body. “That is, I like you when you aren’t smug and bossy and stubborn and trying to be a martyr.”
She both heard and felt him chuckle. “That doesn’t leave much space for actually liking me.”
Brazenly, she rubbed his chest with her palm, loving the feel of his firm flesh beneath her skin. “I'm usually able to squeeze a little bit of liking you into every few hours...but only on your good days. Sometimes you are just so horrible and infuriating that I can only like you for about two minutes per day.”
He laughed again and tightened his arms around her.
“Are you going to actually go to sleep tonight?” she inquired after a few minutes of silence.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish you would. You’ll be no good against the bad guys if you don’t get any sleep.”
“I’ll try. But I’m not going to promise anything.”
It was the best Ashley could hope for. She could at least trust him not to try to leave her behind again. So she settled in beside him, closed her eyes, and tried to relax.
The last thing she remembered before she drifted off to sleep was Ethan’s breathing getting slower and his arms still holding her close.
He did actually go to sleep. Ashley knew it for sure.
Because when she finally woke up, it was after eleven o’clock in the morning. The sun was blazing in through the cracks between the curtains, and Ethan was still sound asleep beneath her.
She wriggled a little, and Ethan unconsciously pulled her in closer. With a little more squirming, she managed to lift her head up and look down at his sleeping face.
He looked relaxed, peaceful and gorgeous. Ashley gazed at him in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, she felt her body start to respond to his tranquil appearance and to the feel of his body against her so she decided it was time for her to get up.
Before she got to the bathroom, she reached into the trashcan and pulled out the pieces of the crumpled note Ethan had thrown away several hours before.
She didn’t try to put it together at the moment, for fear of Ethan waking up and catching her. She just slipped the crinkled remnants into her bag.
***
It was past noon before they left the motel. Ashley had only one free moment to decipher the note—when Ethan was in the shower. But instead she used the spare minutes to go and get two large cups of coffee.
Overall, she concluded it was a better use of her time.
She could feel the crumpled pieces of Ethan’s note like a presence inside her bag, and she was worried as they got ready to leave that Ethan would glance in the trashcan and notice that the paper was gone.
But he didn’t, and as soon as they got back into the stolen truck and Ethan hotwired it one more time, she breathed a covert sigh of relief.
The note was hers—Ethan had written it to her—and she’d be damned before she let it go without a fight.
They hadn’t spoken much during the drive, and Ashley was fully focused on thinking about Ethan. That is, until she started to feel a very familiar discomfort between her legs.
She shouldn’t have drunk so much coffee that morning.
They had only been driving a little over an hour, so Ashley crossed her legs and tried to think of something different. This only worked for about fifteen minutes. Pretty soon, the situation was growing desperate.
“Ethan?” she said at last.
He glanced over toward her, raised his eyebrows at her uncomfortable expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I think we need to stop.”
“Why?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciou
sly.
“I drank too much coffee.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Can’t you hold it? We just started. We’ll never get anywhere if we stop every hour.” His voice was impatient and a little grouchy.
“I’ve been holding it for twenty minutes. I can’t hold it much longer.” It was very inconvenient, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She had to go the bathroom, and she had to go now. “And you don’t have to act all superior-bladder on me. I seem to recall stopping a couple of times for you to go. Of course, you pretended that we needed gas or something.”
“Fine. We’ll stop as soon as we find a place. But there’s not much around here except for pig farms. So unless you’d like to make use of a convenient tree…”
“If we don’t find a place to stop in the next five minutes, I’ll be very happy with a tree. The situation is fast becoming desperate.”
Two minutes later they saw the sign for a gas station. Ashley tried not to gloat when it was the right chain for them to use Miss Horner’s credit card.
“We can fill up with gas while we’re here,” she said, trying not to sound too pleased with herself. “See—it was all meant to be.”
“I’m not sure what kind of destiny would be remotely interested in rearranging circumstances to provide you with a bathroom break.”
He had pulled up next the gas pump, so Ashley didn’t bother responding to his snide comment. Instead, she just ran for the bathroom.
When she returned a few minutes later, Ethan had just finished pumping the gas. Without a word, he made his way inside the quick shop. Ashley noticed that, when all was said and done, he didn’t turn up his nose at using the restroom himself.
Finally she was provided with the opportunity she’d been waiting for.
Glancing in the direction Ethan had retreated, Ashley pulled out the crumpled note and started working fast. It wasn’t as hard as she’d feared, because he hadn’t ripped it evenly, and so the edges were all very distinct. She smoothed out each piece, fit them together, and quickly scanned over the words.
Her initial response was almost disappointment. She had been waiting for so long to read it that she’d built up ridiculous fantasies about what it might say. Her mind knew that Ethan’s feelings for her weren’t what she dreamed they were, but her stupid, silly heart still hoped for her mind to be proven wrong.