CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

SAM

Damn it. Damn Ru and his big mouth. Damn the orders that are still coming in from the dining room, making it impossible to go after Ash. Damn that bastard, Luca too. Ash’s sexual choices aside, she didn’t consent to having a video made. The bastard shouldn’t have done it. And then to make it public. The guy is a real piece of work, and now Ash is suffering as a result.

The way her eyes grow to saucers as she works out Ru’s seen the video too kicks that protective instinct I’ve always had around her into high gear. There’s embarrassment making them water. Shame. Guilt too. I’m reaching for the top button of my coat before she turns and sprints from the room.

“Sorry, Sam,” Ru says. “It just clicked. If you want to go after her, I’ll cover.”

“Nope,” I snap through gritted teeth, moving onto the next task at hand. Taking off after Ash right now is a bad idea. Bad. Bad. Idea. I pick up a steak and throw it into the hot pan. It immediately starts to sizzle. She’d made it out of the bedroom, and then Ru just had to go and fuck it up. I can tell she thinks the tape is all her fault. She’s probably nursing that miserable idea right now as she dives back under the covers of my bed.

Chasing after her now isn’t going to do either of us any good. Not when she’s so unhappy and it’s all I can do to fight the urge to fix it. I glance at the ceiling as I flip the steak, revealing the perfectly seared side. Going up there…it would only end one way. Just one. With her naked body against me. Her lips joined to mine. Frantic hands and words that don’t mean what they should. Whatever it takes to make her feel better. Or just to pretend that she’s mine. 

And then what? We coast in some blissful high for a day, or a week, maybe even a couple of weeks? Long enough that I start to believe we can have a future before it all crashes around us? The lows have always been worse than the highs. I used to put it down to her being so much younger than me. How was a man my age supposed to make it work with a girl who hadn’t even seen the world yet? Now I’m not so sure that’s the problem. Not when my sister can make it work. Mandy too. If anything, Mandy was the one who finally got me to push past the idea that things didn’t work out with Ash because I was too old for her.

The urge to follow through fizzles away. It’s better that we don’t reopen old habits, no matter how much I might find myself still wanting her. “No, she’ll hole up in my apartment. I’ll check on her once we close the kitchen.”

“All right.” He nods.

Everyone else carries on around us, pretending they haven’t been privy to a slice of my personal life.

***

“Why don’t you go check on Ash now. I’ll finish up here and lock up behind me.” Ru tosses his coat into the dry-cleaning bin full of linens as the kitchen door shuts on the last of our crew. “Tell her I’m sorry for earlier.”

“Actually, can you stick around?” I ask as I head for the stairs. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.” He heads in the direction of the larder to take stock for our next delivery. “Buy me a beer?”

“Done,” I agree before jogging up the stairs.

Ash isn’t in the bedroom when I walk in. I flip the covers off the bed just to be certain, then check the bathroom. It shouldn’t surprise me that she’s not where I expect her to be. That would be like expecting her to stick around for more than a few weeks at a time. Hell, there’s every chance she’s bolted anyway. Except her case is on the floor at the end of my bed, the clothes she showed up in and her toiletries spilling out everywhere. There’s a half empty bottle of vodka on top of my dresser that wasn’t there earlier in the day. Where the heck did she get that? I roll my gaze heavenward. Probably filched it from storage.

“Where did you get to now, Ash?” I ask the empty room, unsurprised when it doesn’t answer back. I march back downstairs. Sooner or later she’ll show up drunk and sobbing, or call for me to come rescue her from a situation she can’t manage. Won’t she? It’s been a long time, but some things don’t change. Although it’s been a long time since I could rely on her to act the way she has since she arrived last night.

Ru collects a couple craft beers from the bar fridge and plonks down on one of the tall backs as I join him. “She all right?”

“Not really.” I pick up the beer he pushes in front of the stool beside his. “She didn’t realize she was being taped, or she didn’t know what it was for. She definitely didn’t give consent.”

“That sucks.” He takes a pull from the long neck of his bottle, studies the label, which in Ru speak means it’s not a bad brew. “Always knew that kid was going to get herself into trouble, just didn’t expect it to be this.”

I side eye him, curious, but he doesn’t bother to enlighten me. One of the edges of the label on my bottle has lifted, and I wedge my thumbnail under it to push more of it off. “Do I want to know?”

“You,” he says into the mouth of his bottle, so that I’m not quite sure I heard him right. Then he grins at me. “I thought she was going to find trouble in you. The way you used to look at her, man.” He shakes his head, that grin petering into something a little more sentimental as he claps me on the shoulder.

Shouldn’t be surprised that Ru could see what neither Ash nor I could. Does he see how hard it is for me to be around her now? “I didn’t look at her like anything. She was only a kid.”

“Didn’t say you wanted to throw her your bone, did I?” He raises one eyebrow and stares me down. “But you looked at her like she was the sweetest fucking lollipop in the whole candy store all the same. Sometimes I got the impression you loved her more than you did your own sister. Like she had you wrapped around her itty-bitty finger.”

“Shut up.” I smack away his pinkie finger as he wiggles it in front of my face. Maybe he has a point. Maybe Ash and I had this connection, long before it got complicated with adult feelings. But it didn’t help us navigate troubled waters then, and it doesn’t help me work out what to do for her now either. Christ, I hope she comes back. Just so I know she’s okay. No, she will show up. She always does. When that happens, I’m going to have a few choice words for her.

“So what’s she going to do about the video?” he asks.

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. It’s one of Marco’s, right?”

“Not sure.” He pulls out his phone, thumbs through his messages until he finds the one Marco sent the video in.

He plays a few seconds, and I want to tell him to shut it off. Can’t stand that he’s watching it, can’t deal with the idea of her with other guys, can’t turn off the effect her voice has on me. If I squeeze the glass bottle in my hand any tighter it will shatter. “Turn that shit off.”

“I think it might be from the company he works with,” he says finally as he stops it and pockets his phone. “Similar format, logos, and hashtags. That kind of thing.”

“Can you ask your brother?”

“Can you stop growling at me like I’m the one you’re pissed at?” He raises a shaggy eyebrow into the curls that hang over his forehead.

“Sorry.” I exhale. “This whole thing just has me on edge.” I’m frustrated twice over by Ash’s behavior, and worried about how she’s handling the situation.

“Sure, I get it. I’ll ask Marco what he knows. If it’s not one of his, maybe he can find out who made it.”

The phone behind the bar rings and I leave it to go through to the answering machine. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And so does Ash.”

“You might want to answer that,” he says as my cell goes ballistic.

“Sam, can you come down to Mayhem Avenue ASAP?” a man’s voice carries clearly over a background of pop rock. “There’s a girl here. Says she’s your... What was that?” His voice moves away from the speaker and the sound is muffled, probably by his fingers. Then it’s clear again. “Right, she says she’s your dirty little video star. I don’t know what that means. Wait. Now she’s saying something about doing the splits, or showing me how wide she can spread her le...oh.”

“Fuck.” I yank on a tuft of my hair. “On a scale of one to ten how drunk is she?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I barely served her, but—”

“Doesn’t matter. She knows how to score free drinks.” In the background I can hear her singing, like she’s not too far away from him.

“Get down from there,” he says to her. “Come on now.”

“Stop it,” she yells. “I wanna dance. I wanna have fun.”

I slide off my stool, grip Ru’s shoulder. “Gotta go.”

Ash is dancing when I storm into Mayhem five minutes later. She’s dancing and swaying to the beat of the music as though she doesn’t have a care. Her bare feet stomp on the runner that lines the hardtop of the bar, while she fluffs her hair with her hands before throwing them up to the sky.

Around her a group of mostly guys has formed. The testosterone from that part of the room is strong, and the jerks that surround her jostle to grab her attention. She has more fans than the band at this point. Even if the guitarist was to strip naked, he probably couldn’t grab this lot’s attention. Those hands come back down, find her throat, and the curves of her pert little tits and slowly skate down her sides.

Someone wolf whistles.

“Yeah, baby.”

“More, sweetheart. You’re giving us such a good show.”

“Don’t listen to them, honey. You do you.” One of the only females in the group chimes in.

A prickly sensation shoots up from my gut and down my left arm as I bunch my jaw and fight the urge to march straight up to the bar and make her get down, even if that involves a fireman hold.

“Great. You’re here.” Jack sidles up to me on his side of the bar. So that’s who I was talking to over the phone. With all the background noise I hadn’t been able to tell if it was him or the other brother that usually tends the bar.

I glare at him and my eyelid twitches. It’s not his fault though. Not anyone’s fault Ash is behaving like this. She’s lost, and hurting. Must remember that. “You let her climb on the bar?”

“Trust me, I tried to stop her,” Jack says with a shrug as he watches the group at the bar. “The girl is a firecracker. Couldn’t get her to comply. Didn’t want to throw her out in case she found more trouble. Was going to ring Summer, because I’ve seen her in here with your sister, but she begged me to call you instead.”

“Thanks,” I say. Not much else he could have done anyway. “Let’s not involve Summer in this.”

The thin silk shift dress Ash was wearing earlier still clings to her curves, especially as she circles her hips and draws her hands up the inside of her thighs, catching the material and dragging it up too.

I know what these jerks are thinking while they watch her. They see her performance, this good time girl act, and they want her, even if just for a little while. I’m not immune. I want her too. But this girl on the bar doesn’t last. I want what’s underneath that. If only I could get her to see that she’s so much more than some guy’s fun time. 

She pops one finger in her mouth and twirls some hair around her finger, and my gut turns into this little ball of fury so bad that I can taste blood. There’s no way I’m letting any of these jackasses get too close. I’m not her bodyguard, but I am the guy she seeks out when she needs someone to help her, to protect her.

“All right, you got her from here?” Jack asks as a guy at the other end of the bar grabs his attention.

I grit my teeth as one of the men beckons to her and she drops to one knee to accept the shot he’s holding out to her. She knocks it back as another hand shoots up in the crowd, the shot glass in his hand filled with Black Sambuca.

“I’ve got her,” I grumble, not particularly caring if Jack hears me or not while I stalk across the room to get between her and the jerks who think this show is for their entertainment.

I march right up to where she’s swaying, her feet still beating a rhythm on the wood and bark, “Get down now.”

She prowls further along the bar, before glancing back at me. Bright red lips form the word ‘No’ before she brings one slender finger to her pout.

“Right now, Ash.” I thump my fist down on the counter, and a couple of the guys side eye me. “Get the hell off the bar. We’re leaving.”

“Why don’t you leave her alone?”

“Why are you trying to ruin our fun?”

“Who are you? Her father? Fuck off, man.”

“Yeah, why don’t you listen to my new friends?” Ash turns back, drops not quite gracefully to her knees and starts to crawl toward me. “They like me like this.”

I like her like this, watching her dance, the way her hands on her body make me imagine they’re my hands on her body. I’d like it more if she wasn’t doing it in front of a group of horny strangers who don’t give a shit about why she’s behaving like this. I’d like it more if it was just for me, the way it used to be when she’d turn the music up real loud and do an impromptu little striptease for me. But telling her that I wish she’d never left isn’t what she needs right now. She doesn’t want to hear how much I miss her. That’s not why she’s pushing my buttons. 

“Show us your tits, love,” someone in the crowd calls out.

“Come on, Ash.” I reach out my hand to her. “Let’s get out of here before you do something you’ll regret.”

“You wanna go home?” She slips her hand into my palm and taunts me. “Fine. But tell me…what are you going to do with me when we’re there, Sam? Are you going to pretend everything is peachy? Are you going to pretend like you don’t want to fuck me?”

“Trust me, Ash. The last thing I want to do with you right now is fuck you.” It takes all my willpower to keep my voice level and unaffected by the lust pumping through my veins. “You acting like this isn’t turning me on. But I am going to make sure you don’t get into any more trouble tonight.”

“Is that so?” She smiles, a molasses kind of smile that makes my heart trip, and then she pulls my hand to her knee and slides it up the inside of her slender creamy thigh until my fingers skim hot silk. “What if I say I don’t believe you? What if I don’t want to stay out of trouble?”

Christ. She has no idea how her taunting gets to me. Makes it hard to think logically, when my entire body is wound tight. I pull my hand from between her legs. “Either you get off the bar right now, or I am going to get you off myself.”

“Please,” she says and then bites her lip, two small white teeth leaving dents. “I want so much to get off. You always know how to make me feel better.”

Bad choice of words. “Wrong answer.”

I grab her wrist, and then sling my arm around her waist to lift her down. The moment her feet touch the floor I’m pushing through the crowd, dragging her along with me.

“I’ll get you off, love,” one of them says, getting in her face, his dirty leer itching to be knocked off his scrawny face.

Pulling her behind me, I get in his way. Chest to chest I stare him down. The guy isn’t as tall as me and probably doesn’t weigh more than a buck ten. He might be quick in a fair fight, but if he gets any closer to her he won’t see me coming. “Don’t touch her.”

“Maybe she wants me to touch her.” He tries to peer around me so that he can wink at her. “You want me to touch you, darlin’? I’ll make you feel good. I promise. Bobbie’s got what you need.”

“Step back,” I snap, barrelling forward and not giving him a choice.

A couple people voice their disapproval. One of them tells me to get fucked, another yells that he’s going to call the police as I haul Ashleigh away from the group. Let them try to stop me. I’m not leaving her here with them.

“Show us your vag, sweetheart,” some cunt bellows. “We all seen the video.”

I’m this close to snapping, my free hand curling into a fist, my pulse pounding in my temples as I grit my teeth and focus on the exit.

“What video?”

“The one of her taking it up the ass.”

“I want to see that,” another calls out.

“I’m sure you can find it on the internet,” she snarls at them. Though she stops fighting my grip on her, I can sense the burn of her glare on my shoulder.

Jack comes out from behind the bar, walks up to us, motioning to the security guy by the door to join him. “Better get her out of here before this gets out of control.”

With a jerk of my chin I walk around the buff guy who’s stalking toward Jack and straight out the door.

“Let go of me,” Ash sulks, trying to yank free of my grip the moment we hit the pavement.

“Not going to happen.” Not until we’re far enough away from Mayhem that the jerks watching her dance won’t find her if they come looking for her, which means we’ll be back inside the restaurant before I let go of her.

She claws at my hand, pinches the webbing between my thumb and fingers like she used to when we were younger. It’s annoying more than it is painful. “Don’t be an asshole, Sam. Let go of me.”

“No.” I put my head down and walk faster, dragging her along with me. The cold air is a slap in the face that helps me regain my equilibrium. Don’t know why she’s fighting me so hard. Don’t know why I’m still so protective of her when we agreed we weren’t those people anymore. It’s just that she doesn’t have anyone else to fall back on. Daddy’s little rich girl has been doing it tough for as long as I can remember. Raised by an army of nannies and servants and chauffers until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Only ever happy around Summer, but my sister hasn’t seen Ash spiral out of control. Only me. It’s like I’m the only person she’s ever felt comfortable enough to let her guard down around.

“You don’t own me.” She drags her feet. “You can’t treat me like you own me.”

“I’m trying to help you,” I tell her, letting her go. “Can’t you see that?”

“I don’t need your help,” she fires back as I pivot to face her. Tears course down her cheeks though she pretends she doesn’t know. There’s no back of the hand swipe, there’s no sniffling. She holds her chin up and doesn’t quaver. Her stare is steely and her jaw juts out just enough to be defiant. “I can handle myself.”

I want to say I believe her, but I don’t. All I’ve seen her do since she showed up on my doorstep is fall apart. And why bother to show up anyway if she doesn’t want anything more than a fuck? “You can handle yourself? Is that why you asked the bartender to call me?”

“You didn’t have to come.” That chin inches up a fraction more, as though the height of her chin corresponds to her stubbornness. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, trying to contain the emotion that sparks in her eyes. “I don’t need you to rescue me from bars. Or assholes.”

“That wasn’t what it looked like in there.” I point in the direction of Mayhem where some of the group have spilled out onto the street.

“Maybe I was having fun.” She pouts.

“What? You wanted trouble.” She’s so damn frustrating. So beautiful. I miss her so damn much. Deep down in the marrow of my bones. I miss the way her body fits against mine. The way her plump lips yield to my kiss. Her taste. Especially when she’s looking at me like she is.

“Maybe I do.”

“But why?” Christ, at times she is the most frustrating person I have ever met. “Why would you want that?”

“Maybe that’s all I deserve,” she crosses her arms against her chest and bites her lip. 

I’m like a moth drawn to a flame. She singes me with a look, and all it does is make me want to give her as much trouble as she can handle. I want to melt that sullenness from her face with my mouth and my hands and my tongue. I want to set fire to her blood the way she does to mine. I want to cradle her in my arms while my chest soaks up the tears she cries, and my ears catch the words that tumble off her tongue, and my heart beats strong enough to drum out all her fears. But none of it lasts, none of it truly gives her any peace.

What I wouldn’t do to be that for her.

I just don’t know how to. Or if she’ll even let me try.

But I reach out to her anyway, touch her cheek. “I don’t think trouble is what you’re after, Ash. I think maybe you’re looking for the exact opposite.”