CHAPTER SEVEN

BRAND STOOD HELPLESSLY IN THE drive, watching as Ashton vanished down the road. Everything in him wanted to chase him—to drag him back, to hold him here, to keep him safe.

But Ashton had said no, leaving Brand locked and frozen and not even sure what had happened or why he felt as if he’d been struck a violent and bone-shaking blow.

“He has my temper,” a soft, gently accented voice said from behind him. “My fears, too.”

Brand glanced over his shoulder. Amiko Arakawa leaned in the doorway of the house, watching him with a sort of melancholy amusement, though not unkind.

“Miss Arakawa…?”

“Amiko,” she corrected wryly. “I’ve spent enough time in the West that I’m used to it.” She pushed away from the door, descending the steps on light, delicate steps to stop before him, looking up at him assessingly. “Ash runs when he’s afraid, Mr. Forsythe. Just like me. And he has quite a bit to fear, right now.”

“I…” Brand curled his fists helplessly. “I am supposed to be with him. I am supposed to be there for him.”

“And you would hold him down to do so?”

Yes, Brand realized with a sharp and sudden ferocity. If Ashton wanted him to. If that something inside Ashton that pulled on Brand was really twin to the unnamed thing coiled and waiting inside him.

Was that what this was?

Recognizing a kindred spirit, and hoping beyond hope that someone, that Ashton could understand and crave this need inside Brand, this yearning he didn’t even have the words to articulate?

He let his gaze drift toward the road, and the spot where Ashton had last disappeared. “If he would let me,” he murmured.

“That’s between the two of you,” Amiko murmured. “But it would only make me run farther…though Ash may be like me, but he isn’t me. It’s strange to know him so well, and not know him at all.” She tucked her hair back prim. “I used to come back to Calvin…before I stopped coming back at all.”

“What made you come back, before you stopped?”

“Knowing that he would always be waiting for me.”

Brand returned his full attention to the petite woman at his side. “Then…young Master Ashton needs to know that I am waiting for him?”

“I have a feeling he already does.” Amiko lingered on Brand, studying him, seeming to weigh and measure him. “…you want to be something more to my son than simply his manservant, don’t you?”

“I…” Brand struggled, fists clenching once more, fingernails digging into his palms. “I don’t…know. I have been in his employ for approximately three days. But I will say I am drawn to him. As if some part of me recognizes some part of him. Yet I know my place, and I know I must remain in it.”

“You’re blunt. Honest.” Amiko chuckled. “I should disapprove. I don’t.”

“I value honesty, Madame.”

“Then I will be honest with you.” Amiko sighed, gaze drifting away from him. “Sometimes you just…feel things. And they don’t have an explanation. They don’t follow logical sense. One day you can wake up and realize you’re in love with your best friend…or you’re out of love with your husband. You can be indifferent to someone one day, and then the light catches them just right the next day and they take your breath away, and they’re all you can think about. I could tell the moment I met you that my son consumes your thoughts—and you are so busy trying to figure out why that by the time you finally do, he’ll be gone.”

“That may be for the best,” Brand said.

“It might. But if you feel like reading tonight…perhaps read about the red string of fate.” Amiko smiled faintly. “It’s a story I know quite well.”

“The red string of fate?”

“Ah. Hai. Look it up.” She reached over and patted his arm. “Perhaps it’s just the two of you tugging at each other’s strings, and it doesn’t have to make sense at all. The red string has no understanding of days, hours, minutes, even years. It just is, and it pulls when those holding either end of it are close enough to each other to hear each other’s heartbeats.”

Brand frowned, turning that over. It sounded quite terribly impractical. “Thank you, Miss Ara—Amiko.” He supposed he had a good deal to think about, if nothing else—least of all the oddity of having this conversation with Ashton’s mother, even if it was in veiled terms. “If he returns to the house, would you tell him that I am at the office?”

“Of course.” Amiko’s eyes glittered brightly as she fluttered her fingers at him. “Go. Shoo. You look like the workaholic type.”

“Madame,” Brand said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “you have no idea.”

ASH RAN UNTIL HIS WAISTCOAT threatened to cut his torso in half; until the slap of the pavement against his feet ached through his dress shoes; until his entire body pinched and he doubled over and struggled to breathe as he hunched on the shoulder of the winding suburban highway in the shade of the overhanging trees.

Fuck. Fuck. What had he thought he was going to do? Run all the way to the inner city in his fucking polished Italian leather shoes?

The bitingly cold air sliced into his lungs. He pressed his hands against his thighs, straightening, and glanced back the way he’d come. At least Brand hadn’t chased him down and dragged him back.

So why, then, did he feel a faint twinge of disappointment?

It didn’t matter. Brand was just going to drag him back to more work. Nothing had changed now that his father was home; nothing at all. Ash was still the completely unprepared CEO of a global megacorporation.

And his father—this figurehead in his life who was half stranger, half everything he loved—was still dying.

They’d just changed the scenery.

Maybe Ash was the one who needed a change of scenery. He fished his phone from his pocket and pulled up the black car service app he’d used before Brand had taken over as his driver, and put in a request for pickup.

Within ten minutes he was settled in the back of a sleek black SUV with blackout windows, leaning against the door and watching the roads slide by, blending from slick suburban blacktop into patched and potholed city streets. The driver said nothing, practically a voiceless automaton, and Ash kept his mouth shut. If he said anything, there would be no tart rejoinders, no gentle mockery.

Who would have thought Ash would miss that?

He had the driver drop him off on the sidewalk at Central Park. Considering he hadn’t picked up anyone watching him as he’d run from the estate, it wasn’t likely Ash had been tailed—and considering his past haunts, wild yacht parties and burning through the gorgeous young men at expensive bars frequented only by the rich, he doubted any nosy paparazzi would even think to look for him here.

Nor did he think anyone would recognize him, making it safe to take his shoes off, tuck his socks into his pockets, and walk barefoot through the grass.

It wasn’t anything he could remember ever doing in his life. As a child he might have played on the lawns at the Harrington estate now and then, but he couldn’t remember. Such things hadn’t been allowed at his Liverpool boarding school, the boys kept tightly in hand. And when he’d come breaking out of Liverpool and into liquor-soaked years at university…

There’d been a certain expectation. Living fast, living hard, glitz and glamour and money spent everywhere. No time for simplicity.

No time for savoring the crunch of autumn leaves beneath his bare soles, and the ticklish feeling of grass poking up between his toes.

Yet as he lingered, looking up at the wan autumnal sun and the pale, watery sky, he wondered if he would ever be able to coax his father to walk through the park like this with him, one day. Just father and son learning how to be father and son in a simple and quiet moment. He didn’t even know if his father would be able to stand again, let alone walk with him, talk with him.

And just like that, the bitter pain in the pit of his stomach was back, chasing him from the park and through the city streets.

He didn’t know how long he wandered. The bustle of continuous pedestrian traffic was a blessing, letting him blend in, get lost, be no one on his way to nowhere.

Even if “nowhere” ended up being a quiet hotel bar, dim-lit where he could hide himself in the shadows and sink himself into shot after shot of vodka.

He tried to take it slow, pace himself…but what the fuck did it matter? Maybe he’d follow in his dad’s footsteps. Give himself liver cancer. Not tell anyone about it until he was almost dead, but who the fuck would even mourn him? He didn’t have an ex-wife or a kid or anyone but a valet who didn’t even like him; he just coddled Ash for a paycheck, and before the week was up Brand would probably figure out working for Ash wasn’t worth it and just…quit.

And then he’d have no one.

No one except Vic looking at him with pity, and the people whose beds he shuffled through just to pass the time.

There was Andrew. Andrew wasn’t anyone and he wasn’t anyone to Andrew.

But if he was with Andrew tonight, he wouldn’t feel so alone.

He wasn’t sober enough to be making this decision. But he wasn’t sober enough to stop himself, either, and as he paid his tab and wove out of the bar, he called for another black car pickup. He saw the world through a haze of street lights, running in the vodka blur like a city seen through a rain-fogged window, as the car took him out to the waterfront bank of ridiculously high-priced condominiums where Andrew lived on his mother’s pension. Hell, he might not even be home. Ash didn’t know what he’d do, then. Go home, maybe.

Go home, and wait until Brand Forsythe fell asleep before slipping into his bed, pressing against his back, and begging the man not to look at him, not to make him feel ashamed of this quiet and lonely need.

The black SUV let him off outside Andrew’s gate, tall wrought-iron that creaked open to Ash’s touch. The lights were on upstairs in the sleek modern-deco townhouse, and when he slouched against the entryway and pressed the doorbell, the echoing chime inside was followed by Andrew’s call of “Coming!” and the heavy clatter of feet on the stairs.

Then he was there—handsome and familiar and easy, and his face lit up with a touch of curious interest as he saw Ash. “Ash, hey—thought when you didn’t answer my text—”

“I had shit going on,” Ash said.

He bit his lip, looking up at Andrew—tanned and boyish and disarming, utterly shallow and vapid and perfect for what he wanted right now and all wrong for what he needed. Andrew was so passive, always went along with what Ash wanted…and until now, he’d always thought that was exactly what he craved.

Only now he wasn’t sure what he wanted at all.

Only that it was easy to forget with Andrew, and he’d take that if nothing else.

“I’m drunk,” he said, then stepped closer, curling his fingers in Andrew’s shirt and jerking him close. “And I want you.”

He stretched up on his toes and pressed his mouth to Andrew’s. Andrew made a startled sound—one that melted into an eager murmur as he leaned in, his hands grasping at Ash, rough and clumsy and fumbling at his clothing.

“Oh hell yeah,” Andrew gasped, dragging Ash inside and into the foyer, his tongue tracing Ash’s mouth and then teasing inside. Ash almost thrust away right then and there; he was used to Andrew’s fumbling, sloppy kisses, but he didn’t want Andrew inside him like that, knowing him, making it intimate. He tore his mouth from Andrew’s and distracted himself by pressing his lips to his strong, tanned throat, kissing and licking and biting. Groaning, Andrew went limp—and didn’t protest when Ash shoved him against the wall inside the foyer, slipping his hands under his clothing to run his fingers over his hard, toned body, that beach-body athleticism that Ash used to find casually appealing but now felt plastic and fake.

Fuck.

Fuck.

He could feel Andrew’s cock pressing against his belly, hard and hot through his jeans, but Ash?

Ash wasn’t hard at all. Wasn’t anything.

If anything, he felt slimy. Sick. Violated, even though he was here willingly. Even though he’d started this.

With a groan, he leaned into Andrew, resting his brow to his chest and slipping his hands out from under his shirt. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t. I fucking can’t. This is fucked up.”

Andrew’s hold on him tightened, then loosened and fell away. “Ash…?” he asked, voice thick with desire, breaths rushed—but Ash only shook his head, pulling away.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“What…?”

“I shouldn’t be here.” Ash swallowed roughly, watching Andrew’s confused face in complete misery. Andrew looked like a confused puppy, adorable but completely empty and without substance. “I…I shouldn’t have come here just because you were easy and it would make me feel better. I’m sorry.”

Andrew looked puzzled, but just shrugged, smiling affably and scrubbing his fingers through his crop of dusty brown hair. “Hey. No strings, right? Never any hard feelings.”

“I know.” That didn’t stop the ache of guilt in the pit of Ash’s stomach, or the ache for something else. Someone else. “I just can’t live like this anymore.” Shaking his head, he ducked around the door they’d left open, slipping outside into the night. “I gotta go.”

“Hey!” Andrew stumbled after him. “Hey—you’ve been drinking, you shouldn’t drive—”

Ash fished his phone from his pocket, and offered a faint smile over his shoulder. “I won’t be,” he said, and hit the first speed dial in his address book.

Before lifting his phone to his ear and waiting, heart in his throat, for the line to pick up.