Son of a bitch!
“Oh my God, you did that on purpose!” I yelled, causing him to laugh and drop his head to my shoulder. “You just made me feel sorry for you to prove a point.”
He continued laughing.
“What kind of asshole manipulates a woman’s feelings just to use them against her?” My voice broke on a sob.
His head immediately popped up, and his laughter fell silent. “That’s not what . . .” he started but stopped mid sentence when he caught sight of my victorious grin. “Oh, you are so going to pay for that.” He began tickling me as I squirmed underneath him.
For several minutes, we rolled around on the floor, laughing and acting like the kids we really were. Finally, when we were both out of breath, we climbed into bed. Flint ordered me to undress then promptly juggled me into our position. It was late, and we were exhausted.
I wished I could stay in that bed with him forever.
I wished I could let go of the past and trust his words.
His smartass joke was only a Band-Aid over the gaping wound that was killing our relationship before we had even gotten started.
Or maybe my doubts were killing us.
As I snuggled into his arms, I breathed in deeply, trying to burn that moment into my memory forever.
I would need it more than anything else when I started over again.
I WOKE UP EARLY THE next morning with my hands kneading Ash’s breasts. She was sound asleep, but my cock twitched between us. I would have given anything to take her right then, but I knew I should wait. She had gone from being virtually untouched for nineteen years to having come at least a dozen times in under two days. That night was our first official date, and I had every plan of ending it with my cock buried to the hilt inside her. So, despite the ache between my legs, I let her rest.
The clock flashed six A.M. but there was no possible way I could have fallen back to sleep. I shifted, trying to scoot out of bed, but unlike Awake Ash, Sleeping Ash was a cuddler. She followed me as I tried to inch my way out from under her. Then I chuckled when she all but crawled on top of me.
The sun was just starting to light the room, but coffee would have to wait. I’d been starved of her for entirely too long. Wrapping my arms around her, I spent an hour soaking her in as she slept peacefully on top of me. The last two days played on a loop while the previous years faded into nothing more than a distant memory.
We still had so much stuff to work through—the misunderstanding the night before being the prime example—but I was committed. I’d talked a big game about making her fall in love with me again and getting to know the real Ash Mabie.
But the truth was that I didn’t need to know any more about her.
I love her.
Every crazy, quirky bit of her, I undeniably loved.
As I kissed the top of her head, my eyes drifted to my old book she had used as a journal over the years, sitting on her nightstand.
It was probably a gross invasion of privacy, but I had spent the day prior reading every word she’d written inside that Dave Eggers book. It had taken me a little while to figure out what the highlights meant, but I finally came to the conclusion that they were her streams of consciousness written in code. The random pink-highlighted letters all combined into sentences about how she’d been happy. She’d rambled about people she’d met, books she’d read from the library, and the longest of all was when Judy had baked a cake for Ash’s birthday.
The blue seemed to be when she had been sad. She’d written about missing her dad even though she knew she had done the right thing by turning him in. She’d mentioned how hard it had been being on the run, and once, she’d debated stealing food versus being hungry. It was all I could do not to set the book on fire after that.
However, I tried to focus on the green letters. Those were her dreams. There wasn’t an F, L, I, N, or T in that book that wasn’t highlighted in green. She hadn’t been lying. I had been walking in every single dream she’d had. But what bothered me was that I was usually walking out on her.
Her subconscious couldn’t have been more wrong. I was never letting her go.
Some time later, I drifted back to sleep with her still snuggled on top of me.
It wasn’t until I woke up that I realized that, while I might not ever let her go, holding on to her wouldn’t be easy, either.
“Ash?” I groaned, stretching my stiff muscles across the empty bed. Prying my eyes open, I looked at the clock.
How the hell did I sleep to eleven?
“Ash,” I called again, but the house remained notably silent. I pushed to my feet and tugged a pair of shorts and a t-shirt on. Then I headed out to find her.
Wandering around the house, I called her name, but room after room, I came up empty.