Chapter Forty
Fanny
“Would you rather sit or stand?” Ash asked me, looking uncertain. I couldn’t remember him ever looking at a loss. It rocked me.
“I’d like to whisk us both back to the beach and that kiss.” Everything had seemed so solid then. At least to me. Probably not to him considering all that he hadn’t revealed.
“I’d like that, too.” Sadness flickered in his eyes clouding the blue. “What if we stand over by the half wall closer to the ocean?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” He reached for my hand. I didn’t pull away this time. I slid my fingers into the gaps between his. He shifted to angle his body toward me, lifted our joined hands and brushed his lips across my knuckles. “A perfect fit,” he said, and my heart fluttered as he lifted his head and stared deeply into my eyes. “I knew you were right the moment I first looked at you.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond. He tucked our hands to the center of his chest, which coincidently brought the side of my body in direct alignment with his. “Knew it with even more certainty when I held you. Every moment, every conversation, every facet of your personality has confirmed my initial impression.” He cast his gaze to the ocean giving me his profile. The breeze lifted the strands of hair that had escaped the tie holding the rest back.
“Ash,” I breathed. “Please. You’re making me cry.” I used my free hand to swipe the wetness from my cheeks.
“Sorry, little one.” He dipped his gaze to me. I tried to give him a smile. It trembled like the waves did when they lifted to high as if to touch the clouds before gravity brought them crashing back to their rightful place. “Sorry for the mess I made of things after that kiss. I told you out on the pier that I was clueless about you and me, and it was the fucking truth.” He turned his gaze back out to the water, and I pressed closer to him. It was all I could do. The rest was up to him.
“But knowing who you were, I also knew who I wasn’t. I lived a hedonistic life all those years on the road. I Ioved Linc. He loved Simone. He spiraled without her and instead of yanking him out of the abyss I dove right into it with him. Drugs were a part of it. But so was a lot of experimentation. Guys. Girls. Threesomes. I don’t know all that Renee told you, but I have tried almost everything hoping to fill the void. None of it worked. When I met you I had finally come to that realization. All part of the crossroads I mentioned to you.”
“Not good timing to meet me.”
“No.” He turned his head. His gaze was turbulent. “Because even without all the stuff I had to work through at the time including my diagnosis, I knew I was overreaching by desiring someone so perfect.”
“I have my faults, Ash. I’m impulsive. Flighty. Emotional. I think you’ve seen all those things while I’ve been here. I’m far from perfect.”
“Ok, you’re very grounded, at the least. Name one impetuous, highly risky thing you’ve done besides running away that night with your sister?”
My mind went blank.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I thought so. I bet the most rebellious thing you ever did was follow bands like ours. So yeah in comparison to me you’re perfect.” His gaze went back to the ocean. “I wish I could give you that in return.” His eyes narrowed. “Wish I could go back to the start.” His tone matched his introspective profile. “Be the man I was before the band left OB that first time. But the past can’t be undone. I am a sum of my parts and a product of my past. You know all the truth of it now. That kiss was the only untainted part of me I had left to give you.”
“What about me being the only woman you’ve ever been affectionate with?”
He stilled, turned his head toward me, a light flickering to brighten the dark in his eyes.
“Has Renee ever gone surfing with you?”
“No.”
“So that’s mine, too. Has any woman ever been with and your friends at a dinner party up here on your roof? In your studio? Sung a duet with you? You ever let anyone stay in your bedroom overnight in your bed? You ever carried a woman when she was weak? Tease her when she was sad?”
He shook his head, the darkness in his eyes receding like the inky night sky from the dawn.
“You ever let Simone or Linc sit with you, talk with you, touch you or comfort you after one of your bad dreams?”
“No, little one.”
“You’re vulnerable with me. Unguarded. Not one hundred percent all of the time, but the times you have been are mine, too. But you’re also strong, too. Incredibly strong. You’ve had your own demons to slay, yet you’ve championed my cause, not once but several times. Intervening between me and my stepfather. Setting me up to pursue my dream. You beat up someone who terrorized me. You rescued me and my sister when we were in trouble. You do all that wonderful strong stuff for anyone else?”
“Just you.” His lips curved.
“Just me.” I smiled.
“Fanny.” He shifted, released my hand, but only to pull me more fully into him.
“That’s another thing.” I was worked up now. “How do you do that? Make my unique name sound like something so beautiful.” I placed my hands on his chest, on his silky soft shirt comforted by the warmth of his skin and the steady pounding of the perfect heart I knew beat beneath it.
“It’s not anything I do, little one. That’s just you being you. I don’t think there’s another person on the planet who would have reacted to the things Renee told you or the news that I was HIV positive the way you did.”
“I don’t know about other people. I just know about you and me. And it wouldn’t say very much about me as a person if I rejected you because of something your ex-arrangement girl told me or because you were sick. It wouldn’t say much about my feelings for you, either. It would mean I was pretty superficial.”
“HIV isn’t just a sickness.”
“I know it’s a serious chronic condition. But it’s not a curse, either. Having HIV doesn’t define who you are. It doesn’t mean you should punish yourself or cut yourself off from the world like Quasimodo in his tower. It doesn’t make you unlovable if that’s what you think.”
“I got it being irresponsible with the drugs and unprotected sex.”
“So you made bad choices. One plus one equals condemnation in your eyes since you process things in equations and absolutes. But I see things differently. My mom marrying Samuel was a mistake, but she did it because she loved me and my sister. Me running away with Hollie was dangerous, but I did what I felt was best to protect her.” I offered him a soft smile. “Why you did the things you did is an important part of your story. You were in love with someone who didn’t love you back. You said you had a void inside you. You sought to fill that emptiness with things that would never satisfy. Well, there’s emptiness inside of me, too. A loneliness. Only it disappears when I’m with you.” I stared deeply into his aquamarine eyes willing him to understand. “Stop beating yourself up about the past. You’ve learned from it. Move on. It’s not an end. It’s only the beginning of something beautiful if you give the girl who’s always wanted you a chance to fill that void inside of you.”
“There’s no resisting you, Fanny. You’re an incredible woman. Turning this completely around, so that instead of me apologizing, you’re comforting me, and not just comforting me but making me almost believe that I can be worthy of you.”
“No believing about it.” I brought my hands to his handsome face and framed it. “You are.”
“On that you’ll have to believe for both of us. Your faith in me is what truly matters.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Didn’t he need to believe in himself to fully give all of himself, all that was inside his heart to me? But I let it slide for now. We were here. I was where I wanted to be. Where he wanted me to be.
“So moving forward?” Eyes searching mine, he covered my hands with his own, removed them from his face, gathered them together in his warm strong grip and placed them between us. “A relationship. Full emotional and physical connection. Is that offer still on the table?”
“Yes, of course it is.”
“Good. Because I want that. I want it all. No closed doors between us anymore.”
“I want that, too.”
“But there have to be some boundaries, Fanny. Your safety is and always will be a priority to me.”
“I understand. Yours is to me, too. I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t. Not exactly. But trust goes two ways, right?” He pulled in a breath. “I got retested. You remember the day Linc stayed in the apartment?”
I nodded. He had been gone a long time. I had missed him.
“Well, I wanted to see what my titers were. If they were still as favorable as the last time I got checked. They are. The virus is undetectable in my blood. The risk of spreading it through intercourse is so low right now that it’s practically not even quantifiable. But for me that’s still not good enough. We’ll have to use a condom. Latex. The virus can’t pass through it.”
“That’s good news about your results. I wouldn’t know what it all really means.” Only that I wanted him. Maybe I had made it too simple. Possibly he had made it too complex. So here we were in the middle but no longer in limbo. “Thank you for explaining.”
“I want to share everything we can, Fanny. I want you. I want you in my bed. Starting right now and then the next day and the one after that. I don’t want to wait anymore. Last night when I realized that’s what you had in mind, what you had wanted too, well it only made me more miserable to have that closed door between us. So I called my doctor on the way up to LA. I talked to him about you and me and us moving forward. He told me you would have no risk at all of contracting the virus if I use a latex condom properly, which I plan to, and if you take the medication he prescribed for when we have intercourse. But I don’t want you to just take my word for it. I want you to talk to him yourself. Dr. Landry. His cell number is programed into the phone up here. I’m going to leave you now. Give you some privacy to call him if you want to. I already signed a release and told him you might. I also got the prescription filled for you just in case. If you want to take it after talking to him, it’s right here.” He released my hands and reached into his jacket pocket. He pressed a small bottle in my hand. “It might not be the most romantic proposal you’ve ever received.” His expression was wry, but this was Ash. He was gorgeous and his ocean blue eyes sparkled with sincerity. “But this is me wanting you right back, gypsy rose. It’s me needing you and caring for you. Me being real. And me taking care of you the best way I know how.”