Chapter Twenty-Two
Tyler
“What do you want?” I asked, raising my eyes to her. “I’m not a fucking therapist, you know. You can’t just expect me to put up with you going in and out. If you come in, you’re here to stay.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she answered, “It’s just really hard for me.”
I cringed as I thought, See? This is exactly the kind of shit I was trying to avoid! Nonetheless, I continued to look up and stare at the beautiful blond woman who was insisting that she was worried about me instead of begging to hop on my dick and take it for the ride of her life.
I don’t need this, I thought to myself, but I heard my voice say, “Yeah, I get it.”
I watched as Ashley paused for a moment before she smiled and made her way back inside.
I stared at her while she hovered by the door before I demanded, “Well, what are you waiting for? If we’re going to have an intimate conversation, we might as well be intimate.” I smiled at her in a way that was supposed to be suggestive, but she rolled her eyes and caused me to fear she was going to change her mind about telling me. So I quickly sat up and said in a smooth, understanding tone, “Listen, Ashley, I meant what I said. I really want to know what your deal is with this place.” I made my eyes wide as I tried to seem extremely convincing. “Please…I’m here to help.”
That’s bullshit… I thought, but didn’t entirely believe it, which made me feel even worse. And to make matters even more dire, not only is she getting me to ask questions that I shouldn’t want to know the answer to, she is making me actually care enough to want to help. Why the fuck should I care the reasons behind her hate for this beach house? But I did care nonetheless.
In truth, today was a pretty shitty day for me as well. It wasn’t anything anyone did or said, but more about what I had thought about the whole day.
Therefore, I couldn’t help but want a little human connection. Since Ashley was giving me that connection, I figured I would listen to her problems. Maybe it would distract me from my own.
It was a stupid thought, brought on by the stupid amusement park, but I couldn’t seem to get the thoughts out of my head. The more I tried to ignore them, the more they seemed to keep pummeling me. It was awful and weak. I wanted no part of it, but as I continued to look at Ashley’s expression, I found, to my dismay, that I was actually considering telling her about what it was that made me so upset.
I watched as Ashley contemplated my offer, before she moved over to me and sat her perfectly shaped ass right down on the bed and I felt a ping of attraction. My eyes easily made their way down to her cleavage and I wondered what it would take to get her to take her top off for me.
Be tactical, I thought before I answered seriously while going for broke, “So, what is it, Ashley…Why does this particular house seem to bring out such horrific memories?”
“It’s not that the memories are bad,” she sighed, leaning back against the wall on the other side of my bed. “It’s the fact that I won’t…make anymore?” She stopped and shook her head, as though re-thinking telling me any of this. “Forget it! It’s too heavy for right now.” She smiled then, trying to feign positivity, before she added in an encouraging manner, “What happened to you today?”
I snorted a laugh and answered callously, “You think that your story is heavy. Fuck your story.”
“Oh yeah?” Instead of being offended, she seemed far more intrigued. “Then what is it? What has been on your mind today?”
I thought about this for a second, disgusted at how much I actually wanted to tell her what it was I was thinking. However, my first reaction was to tell her, in no uncertain terms to fuck off; that I wouldn’t tell her my problems if my life depended on it. But before I could open my mouth and ruin my otherwise glorious chances, I had a thought.
I stopped and allowed my emotions, for the first time in a long time, to get the best of me. “It’s…my dad,” I answered carefully. “The man who screwed my mother to make me…” I shook my head and made sure the door was closed. In case the two newlyweds decided to come home, they wouldn’t hear what I was divulging. “Literally the worst fucking decision that man ever made.”
I saw her eyes grow even more concerned for me as she answered, “That’s terrible, Tyler. Why would you say something like that?”
I sighed and tried to control myself before I answered, far easier than I had meant to, in a way that almost scared me, “Well, the short version is that if he had never created me, he probably would still be alive.”
I saw her eyebrows raise, but she didn’t seem nearly as alarmed as I thought she would be. It took her a moment to recover though and when she did, her voice was far more understanding than I knew I deserved. “Well Tyler, I would feel a lot better if you told me the long version.” With that, she gave a reassuring smile and patted my leg with her hand.
The feel of her skin touching mine made me even more excited, despite the pain of the past that I had now willingly opened myself up to. I sighed, not wanting to have this conversation, but realizing that I probably didn’t have much of a choice, now that she likely thought I blew his brains out because he waited up to punish me when I came home past curfew or something stupid like that. I only wished it was that simple.
“All right,” I answered, feeling as though the words were far too simple for everything that I was feeling, along with everything that I was about to divulge. “Growing up, I didn’t really have any kind of fucking father figure. My mother swore up and down that he was a bastard and had left the two of us the moment he found out that she was knocked up, never to be heard from again. My grandmother took care of us when I was little, because my mother wasn’t really good for anything except screwing people and I suppose my grandmother felt bad for me. Who the fuck knows?”
I felt myself grow nervous as I realized that I had never actually spoken this story out loud before. “Then, when I was five, my grandmother died and left everything she had in the world, being well-off thanks to my grandfather, to my mother, so that she could take care of me. It was a lucky break for her and at least she had the decency not to spend it all in one place, but she also didn’t work very much. Therefore, while we had the house, which was going to shit because my mom didn’t know the first thing about fixing it, we still had to be fairly sparing about what we did. Then, she married again, when I was ten and that guy taught me a little bit about how to work on a house and be a good provider.” I shrugged, feeling as though I had nothing to hide anymore, since I was already explaining my most coveted secret to her. “I fucking liked him. He was a hard ass, but he was what I needed at the time.”
As I spoke, I watched Ashley as she took it all in. I wasn’t sure how much she could relate, but I was sure that on some level, she felt like we were connecting. For all the lies I had told women to get them into bed with me, I had never told any of them the truth except Ashley, so I thought we were connecting a little bit too.
“However, that marriage didn’t last long. Once again, my mother said that he walked out on us.” I shrugged and allowed my voice to drop to a pitch that enticed Ashley to read between the lines. “She sure got a shit-ton of money from that deal though, which leads me to wonder.”
“Do you think that your mother left him and took his money?” Ashley whispered, as though she thought there might actually be someone there to hear.
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I didn’t want to completely give my mother away. Even though I knew she deserved it, I couldn’t quite bring myself to be as cold as she was. Plus, if this conversation went south, I didn’t exactly want to implicate my mother in a scam of taking men for all they were worth, considering the relationship we were all currently bonded to. My mother was as dumb as rocks, but sneaky as any woman I had ever met, which was nice when I saw that she was actually having a good time at the amusement park. I had the thought that just maybe, she was going to stick around with this guy for a little while.
That would be bad news and awkward for Ashley and I once I finally got her in bed, but besides that, it might not be such a bad deal.
“Anyway,” I continued, “after that dude left, a man claiming to be my father showed up on our porch. My mother kicked him out, but I was curious and so, I tracked him down. Long story short, my mother never told him about me. She just left him after she found out that he had knocked her up and chose to spite him instead of become a legitimate family.” I shrugged. “Now you know why I think commitment is a crock of shit. It was pounded into me since birth. When I found all of this out, I began hanging out with him again. I didn’t tell my mom. I figured it would just lead to trouble…” I stopped then and sighed, wondering seriously if I would be able to make it through this conversation without breaking down.
“Are you okay?” Ashley asked again, this time moving closer to me, so that I could feel her comforting vibes against my skin. It wasn’t much of a comfort, per se, but her closeness certainly did make me horny. Almost as though she figured this out, she scooted a little away from me, looked me in the eyes and asked seriously, “Then what happened?”
I shrugged, staving off the sense of emotion that was surrounding me. I certainly didn’t want to feel the way that I was feeling, since I knew what it was going to lead to, but I was also aware that Ashley probably wasn’t going to let this go. So I answered, “Nothing happened…At least with my mom. She never found out,” then, I lowered my voice and my eyes as I said in a tormented tone, “That is until…”
“Until what?” she asked as I felt her body lean into mine heavily. She was interested in this, almost as though I was spinning a tale. I had the inclination for a moment that maybe she thought I was lying, but I soon realized that I was too deep into my own horrible recollections to contemplate that now.
Feeling the singe of her disbelief running through my body and taunting me, I glowered up at her and answered, “Until I fucking killed him.”
“What?” she demanded, glaring at me before she stood up. “That isn’t funny, Tyler.” I could tell that she was trying to hide any inkling of a nervous laugh.
“Whatever!” I demanded. “I’m trying to be honest with you, but if you want to believe I’m fucking joking, then leave!”
She narrowed her eyes and stood up before walking out of my room. “Yeah, and I’m trying to tell you things that are personal to me. It took a lot to tell you anything and now you’re just mocking me.”
Feeling as though I was being made a fool of, I glowered at her and joked in a cynical manner, “What do you mean? There’s nothing more personal than murder.”
She shook her head again and hissed, “You’re unbelievable.”
“Then leave.”
I watched as Ashley pursed her lips before she said, “Fine, I will.”