by Lisa N. Paul
Taking a small step backward he released her and inhaled deeply, holding it in before releasing it slowly. “Did I ever think about you? Princess, I’ve spent every minute of every fucking day since I was nineteen years old thinking about you. Hell, if were being honest, even before then.” Even though controlled, his voice was sharp, his stance was rigid, anger, frustration, and years of holding back coursed through his veins. He refused to play these games anymore, he made a promise to Leo, to Ashley and to himself and it was time he lived up to it.
Ryan closed his eyes and whispered, “He asked me to make it right with you.” Leo’s broken voice played in his mind. “He knew I loved you, he knew I’d live my life trying to earn back your trust, so making that promise to him was the easiest thing I’d ever done. So yes, Ashley, you’re all I’ve thought about.” His gaze tightened as he willed her to understand.
Ashley returned his stare and he knew from her face that she was stunned by his outburst but experience told him that she was still too caught up in her own animosity to see his point of view. He stalked closer to her, needing to feel her warmth around him, even if the heat came from anger and despair.
“I fucked up, Ashley. I was a stupid, punk-ass kid who made a horrible mistake. Did I deserve your anger? Abso-fucking-lutely. Did I deserve for you to dump me on my ass and never look back? You bet. But, did any of us deserve what happened with Leo? No! I didn’t, he sure as hell didn’t, and as much as you would love to stand there and shoulder the burden for the rest of your life, you didn’t either.”
Ryan pumped his fists open and closed, trying to encourage the blood to flow through his fingers. He wasn’t angry. He was afraid—afraid of actually losing her for good, after all these years of fighting to stay in her life.
He watched her lip curl up in disgust. She crossed her arms over her chest and her nostrils flared subtly. She was still refusing to listen to him—he knew she couldn’t hear what he was saying because she was too engulfed in pain and anger. Ryan’s chest tightened as he watched Ashley rub her fist over her sternum in small circles.
Make it right…Take care of her, Ryan…
Leo’s words reverberated in his head like a dream. Better yet, like a prayer.
“You,” she jabbed her finger into his chest, “are an arrogant asshole.” Her face was flushed, her eyes burned with hurt, filled with years of guilt and sadness. He watched as her body shook with…what? Fear? Frustration? He didn’t know, but he did know that now was the time to push—he couldn’t back down now that they had finally come to this point. He needed to see this through. Something screamed at him, warning him that if he pulled back he would lose her forever.
Make it right…
Leo’s voice rang through his head. Yeah, buddy, he promised his best friend, I will.
“What makes me an asshole?” He ran his hands through his hair, “I can’t wait to hear this,” he snapped sarcastically, moving so that he was only inches from her frame as he stared intently into her eyes. “Seriously, Princess, please enlighten me, because this is how I see it. From the time I met you, you have yet to follow your heart….ever! Sure, you listen to that big ol’ brain of yours, you let it make every single smart decision, but you haven’t actually lived one day of your own life in twenty-four years.”
He watched as Ashley blanched at his accusation, but it didn’t take long for her to react as he felt the full-force of her anger and the venom in her words. “Have you lost your mind? Clearly, all of the stupid women you’ve been fucking have rubbed off on you because I’ve been living my own life since the day I left Miami!”
His stomach clenched. He knew his next words would hurt her. He knew they were unkind but she needed to hear them. She could choose not to hear him—hell, she could choose to never speak to him again—but he couldn’t stand in the corner wishing for things to be different any longer. It was time to face the past and move on, either together or apart.
Inhaling deeply, he ran his fingers through his hair, stopping to massage his scalp.
“I didn’t say that you weren’t living on your own, Ash, I said you haven’t been living, period. You’ve never once followed your own heart. Leo knew it, he told you so himself, didn’t he?” Ryan watched as Ashley took on the faraway look she got when thinking about the past. He assumed she was getting lost in memories of her brother, but he needed her with him…now.
“Ashley, are you listening to me?” She startled when he called her name and the tension that had momentarily left her shoulders returned. Ryan softened his voice, he needed her to hear him. “You spent your childhood trying to be the perfect daughter, and then spent your adulthood following the dreams Leo had mapped out for himself before he died. When have you ever just been you?”
Ashley visibly flinched, and Ryan knew the words he just spoke sliced through her heart like a knife. The pain was evident as her mouth dipped down and her chin began to tremble. In a matter of mere seconds, the pain transformed into fury, and her injured expression became a vengeful sneer.
“You want to know when I was me?” She seethed. “I was me when I loved you! I was me when I gave you my heart, my trust, my love…EVERYTHING, Ryan!”
She palmed away the salty sadness of her unchecked tears and continued speaking in a raspy, broken voice, “I gave myself to a guy who didn’t return my love, or my trust. He didn’t cherish my heart, he gave it back to me—broken into jagged little pieces. That’s when I was me, Ryan. You were the first and only man who got a piece of the real me. And do you wanna know what I learned? I learned I wasn’t good enough.”
Each word crippled him. They punched at his diaphragm, stealing his breaths. She had always been good enough. It was he who never measured up. He who didn’t deserve her.
No. This wasn’t about his insecurities. This was about getting her to move forward.
“Ashley, do you want to know where I was tonight?”
She looked down at his feet before she replied, “No. I don’t care where you were, or who you were with.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” His gaze penetrated hers. “I was trying to figure out what to do about you…about us.” He could see the argument forming on her lips so he pressed one finger to her mouth and continued to speak.
“I’ve been trying for years to get you back, but I finally realized I didn’t lose you, Princess…you did. I don’t care what you say or what you think, you stopped living the day Leo died. You’re half a person and that half isn’t even you, it’s…Leo. It’s his piercings and his tattoos. But come on, Ash, let’s be truthful, you’re not even showing the honest side of your brother…” Her stone still posture and shocked stare told him he had her attention, even if it was laced with excruciating pain, and it forced him to proceed.
“It’s not the side that made him proud, it’s the side you’re choosing to recall. You’re rewriting history, Princess, and while you’ve remembered the battles, you’ve forgotten the victories.” Ryan stroked his knuckles down the side of Ashley’s jaw, “Leo would be heartbroken to see what’s happened to you.”
Ashley swatted his hand away from her face and glared at him, “How dare you,” she sneered, “you son of a bitch! How can you stand there and talk to me that way after everything I’ve been through. My God Ryan, I thought you loved me. I thought you’d always be there for me but once again—once again—you stand before me and crush what’s left of my heart!” He could taste the venom in her words and it became increasingly bitter with each swallow.
They were interrupted by booms of thunder and streaks of lighting, which struck in time to the argument that was raging between them. If Ryan had been a religious man he would have surmised that God himself had orchestrated a symphony building up to this—their final blow-up. Ryan’s insides churned at her toxic words and her fractured glare. She batted his outstretched arm away as he tried to embrace her crumbling form.
“I do love you. Can’t you see that?” He could hear the plea in his tone but at t
his point he wasn’t above begging if it would make her listen to him. “Look at me, Ashley. Really look at me…for once. I’m standing here telling you the things you need to hear even if, in the end, your knowing them makes you hate me. I’m not trying to crush your heart, Princess, I’m trying to put it back together.
You’ve spent almost seven years in mourning. Seven years blaming yourself for things you had no control over. It’s time to let it go, Ashley. You need to move on. Leo loved you with his whole heart—you were his soul—and he would never have wanted you to live your life mourning his. He would’ve told you to, ‘Reach for the light at the end, Ash.’ He lived by those words.”
He knew it was a little low to quote Leo at this moment, but he needed her open, raw and ready to start over. Leo was the one person who truly had the gift to do that. Although the devastation and pain in Ashley’s eyes told him he may have pushed too hard too fast.
The ringing of the phone broke the silence but not the tension. He didn’t want to answer the call, the only person that mattered in the moment was standing in front of him, but the second and third rings seemed to get progressively louder.
“Answer the call, Ryan,” Ashley requested, her tone flat her eyes red. “It could be Lyla and she’s home by herself. She could need something.”
Ryan knew that Ashley wanting him to answer the call was about more than Lyla. He knew she was trying to put space between them but as much as he wanted to push her—to continue to make the progress that he knew they could—past experience dictated that he needed to let what he’d said thus far settle. So, he’d give her space…just not too much. As soon as his back was turned his thoughts went to who could be on the phone. Memories washed over him as he remembered the night so many years before, when he’d taken the call from Leo. God, he hoped it wasn’t anything bad, if not for his sanity, for Ashley’s.
He knew if anything happened to anyone from the bar, including Kyle—because even though he was a huge pain in the ass, he was still family—then Ashley would most likely never recover. He quickened his pace the last few steps and grabbed the receiver.
Such was his focus on the telephone that Ryan forgot about Ashley. He forgot about the woman he’d torn open and left alone in the hallway. He forgot about her innate impulse to run away from her fears. The lights flickered as the storm whipped around them. The wind howled and sent the rain crashing against the house. Such was the noise that Ryan had to press the receiver tight to his ear to hear the person on the other end. Such was his concentration that he didn’t hear the one noise he should have been listening for. The sound of the front door opening and closing.
“WHAT’S UP, DANNY?” The hairs on Ryan’s neck stood up when the caller I.D showed the Marcus’ home phone number.
“Ryan…” The older man’s voice sounded strong but thick with emotion. “I just got a call from the fire company.” The silence that followed that statement spoke volumes.
“Tell me what happened, Danny.” Ryan squeezed his eyes closed as he once again scrubbed his hand over his scalp. How could this night get worse? Julie’s soft cries in the background alerted Ryan that he wasn’t going to like what Danny had to share.
Danny’s gruff chuckle sounded forced and Ryan heard him comfort Julie before he described the domino effect of the 140 mile per hour winds that had snapped the tree, knocking it into the utility pole, which in turn had split the pole and sent it—and its still-live wires—crashing into the bar, thus sparking the fire that had ultimately consumed Danny’s on Main.
“What?” Sorrow cracked Ryan’s voice.
“According to the fire chief it wasn’t burned to the ground,” Danny sounded like he had aged during the length of the conversation, “but what wasn’t ruined by fire was destroyed by the hoses and the hurricane. The bar is totaled, son. I wanted to call each of you personally, because God forbid you find out on the news.” The shudder in Danny’s voice was audible.
Tears filled Ryan’s eyes. Danny’s. Both the place and the man had been home to him for more than four years. It had been the net that caught Ashley when she was lost and flying blind, and the place that had kept them together for so long.
“Oh, fuck, Ashley!” Ryan’s grip tightened on the receiver, and the phone shook against his ear as he spoke. “Danny, I don’t know how I’m gonna tell Ashley. As much as I love the bar, as much as it’s been my home, it’s been her safe place for almost six years. Christ, Danny….”
“Go, talk to her, son. I’ve got another call to make. We’ll catch up tomorrow once the storm passes. Ryan, I know it was our home and Julie and I are…well, we’re sick over this, but it was just a place, son. What really matters are the people who comprise it, and that’s all of us…” Ryan heard Danny’s voice break just before he cleared his throat. “We’ll be okay. I need each one of you to believe it…for me.”
“It’s gonna be fine, Danny. We’ll make it fine.” Ryan tried to make his tone confident with false enthusiasm. It wasn’t until he disconnected the call that the soundlessness of the house screamed for his attention.
“Ash?” He called, taking the stairs two at time to the second floor, “Ashley?” He knew, he just knew, before he’d even called her name a third time that she had left their house. She’d left angry, hurt, sad, and in the midst of a hurricane named after the one person in the world that had never let her down.
“Ashley Beth!! Fuck!” Ryan ran down the steps barely stopping to shove his feet into his boots as he headed for the door. It was nearing on midnight, where the hell could she have gone?
Memories of a similar time flashed through his mind as he raced through the living room. “Where are my fucking keys?” His shout went unanswered as it echoed through the house. Ryan wracked his brain for where he might have left them. He knew that he always left them in the bowl on the entryway table. Always. He knew that Ash knew—“Goddamn it Ash!” Realizing she’d taken his keys—most likely to stop him from following—he threw on his jacket and raced out the door. As he calculated the time of his phone call with Danny in his head, he knew that, with the weather the way it was, the ten minutes he’d spent on the phone wouldn’t have given her that much of a head start.
His mind was spinning with possibilities as to where she might have gone. The small town had been all but evacuated—every business was closed and every road was littered with branches and fallen trees. The wind pulled at his hair while the rain slapped his face. It felt like he was running against a wall because the harder he pushed, the less he moved. Memories of racing to find Leo crashed through him like the wind and the rain but, just like years before, neither slowed him down.
Into the Light
THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS swished quickly from left to right, but it didn’t matter. Even though they were on hispeed, Ashley still couldn’t see more than a foot or two in front of her. Her car felt more like a boat as it rocked and swayed from the pressure of the wind. Probably wasn’t my best idea leaving the house in this weather, she chastised herself as she finally pulled her car onto Main Street. A fallen tree prevented her from driving any further on the road, but she needed to get there. She needed to get to Danny’s. Her safe place. Danny’s had been the warm embrace that had saved her when she’d been ready to give up on herself which now seemed like a lifetime ago.
Tired and hungry, she’d pulled into Danny’s parking lot for the first time about seven years prior. She’d had no intentions of ever going to the University of Pennsylvania—hell, she hadn’t even formally graduated high school—but she’d wanted to torture herself by visiting the campus that she would never attend. She’d wanted to remind herself of one more thing she didn’t deserve, one more thing that would never be. On the way to Philadelphia she stopped in Charistown for a bite to eat. When she walked into Danny’s on Main she found her home.
All these years later, it was still her home. She’d chosen to hide her weaknesses from most of them—not because they wouldn’t accept her, but because she couldn’t be
ar the look of pity they would have on their faces if they knew she still harbored guilt for Leo’s death. Danny and Julie would be crushed if they thought she still blamed herself after all these years.
Wrenching her keys from the ignition, she stepped out of her car and started to make the rest of the journey on foot. Danny and Julie had given her, Max, and Kyle their own set of keys to the bar about four years earlier for Christmas. Ashley smiled when she thought of the card attached to the keys—You never knock on the door of your own home.
The rough bark of a fallen tree trunk cut into the smooth skin on the palms of her hands as she hefted her body over it and on to the street on the other side. She tried to wipe the rain-matted hair from her eyes so she could see where she was going but the wind refused to cooperate and she lost her footing and slipped, falling to the ground. It wasn’t the sting of the cut on her leg, or the knowledge that the warm liquid she felt trickling from her knee wasn’t rain but blood, but the acrid smell that filled the air and the loud sounds of people’s voices over Mother Nature’s tantrum that caught her attention.
“What the hell?” She took off running down Main Street towards the smell and the shouts, until the swirling lights of the fire trucks came into view.
“No. No. No.” Screams filled the air as she arrived in front of Danny’s on Main…or, what was left of it. “NO!”
She wished her screaming would stop. Her limbs shook uncontrollably as her chest heaved, trying to allow her lungs to take in the thick, wet, smoke-filled air around her. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, hoping to jar the images in front of her from her brain.
“There’s no way this can be happening,” she cried into the night.
“Miss, are you okay? Can we call someone for you?” She opened her eyes to see the hand that lightly touched her soaked shoulder, led to an arm that was covered in fire retardant gear. She stared at the fire fighter but was unable to form words, unable to process what was happening in front of her. “Miss, you’re screaming and shaking and I’m worried you’re going into shock. Please, tell me your name.”