“Well... this is nice,” Ash grumbled, looking around one of the spare rooms at the compound. It had a bed, two bedside tables, a lamp, and a set of drawers and an attached bathroom.

I glared at the tall brunette’s back as she rummaged through the empty drawers. She chuckled when she found the bottom drawer shoved full of condoms, but it didn’t lighten my mood. “What the fuck was that?” I growled at last.

“What was what, Anna?” Ash closed the drawer, hesitating before she turned to face me, her glasses reflecting my crossed arms and scowl.

“Your story. You didn’t tell them everything,” I pushed, getting annoyed at her constant side-stepping.

“I told them all they needed to know,” Ash retorted, standing then moving over to my side of the room. “Everything else is unnecessary.”

“You should tell them everything. They can protect you.”

Ash stiffened, a frown appearing on her lips. “You’ve changed.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Ash didn’t correct me; instead, she took a step forward, her hand reaching up to brush a stray hair out of my face. “You haven’t told them everything, either. I can see the way he looks at you. Are you sure you want to tell him everything? About our past? About who you really are?” She hesitated with her next words, her eyes skimming down to where I knew the scars from my wound were hidden. “About what you found out at the hospital?”

Ash’s eyes, through the darkness of her glasses, looked up to me with the same steel-piercing stare I had known for years. The same glare that reminded me there was nothing to be hidden from Ash.

“How did you—”

“You still have me registered as your next of kin,” she answered, a small almost smug smile pulling on her lips. “So, let me ask you this: You’ve told him you love him, and I’m sure you do; that jacket”—she said on a bitter hiss—“is proof of that. I couldn’t imagine you allowing yourself to become property otherwise. And yet, you still keep secrets from him. You can’t tell him everything. So, do you really love him?”

“I do,” I growled.

“Do you love him?” Ash repeated again.

“I just said I fucking do.”

Ash stepped into my space, her face coming close to mine, breath rolling over my cheeks, eyes so close I could see into them through the lens of her sunglasses. “Do. You. Love. Him?”

“I do,” I breathed. “I really do, Ash.”

Her eyes studied my face, and then the tension dissipated. She stepped back, her expression soft. “Then tell him everything.”

“But you just—”

“It doesn’t matter, Anna,” she interrupted, her thumbs gripping the loops of her denim shorts. “This is your future, now. Not mine. I told my half, basic albeit, but it’s not the whole picture. If you want any kind of life with this guy, you need to tell him.”

“But everything is—” I paused, seeing Ash’s don’t-make-me-repeat-myself frown. “Are you sure?”

She let out a tired grumble. “I just said so, didn’t I?”

I replied with a soft sigh as she smirked at me.

“Have you always been this easy to convince?” She laughed, earning herself a hard punch in the arm.

She rubbed it, but her wide smirk had a foreign chuckle rising from the depth of my chest. I was unable to contain it as we broke into full-out laughter. I reached my arms forward and wrapped them around her neck, dragging her down to my height, and despite her awkwardness, hers folded tightly around me.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered in my ear, her head in the crook of my shoulder as I did the same thing, breathing in her familiar scent mixed with the scent of salt and dirt from her wandering adventures.

“Yeah, me too,” I admitted and released her.

Moment over, she dumped her bag on the bed, the clink of glass bottles in her bag making me frown, but I ignored it as she flashed me a grin. “You need to tell me everything.” She sounded like an excited school girl.

“Oh, so you don’t know already, Miss I’ve-obviously-done-background-checks-on-all-of-your-associates?” I scoffed, dropping onto the side of the bed, making her bounce a little.

She puffed at a brown hair falling over her face. “Oh, you caught that, huh?”

“Yeah, I did,” I grumbled, glaring at her.

“I had to make sure you didn’t end up with any dangerous nutters,” she whined at me in a pitiful defense.

“Dangerous nutters?” I let out a loud laugh.

Well, she has a point, I thought, thinking about it. Jax, specifically. They were all weirdos. Dangerous, too. Not to me, though.

“They good to you?” Ash’s voice suddenly turned serious, and I was caught off guard as she lay there, looking at me, her glare, even through her sunglasses, intense.

“Yeah,” I said honestly. “They’re good.”

“Good,” she said. “I won’t shoot them again, then.”

“Too right, you won’t,” I growled. “Only I get to shoot them.”

“Tell me, then,” she said softly, lying back down, head propped up by a tanned arm. “Tell me the story,”

“All right,” I said, getting comfy, kicking my feet up on the bed and propping up a pillow. “Once upon a time...,” I began, watching Ash roll her eyes. And then I told her everything in detail this time, not brief like during our last meetups. I told her about how I got to Fellpeak. How I joined the Black Angels. And how Wolf and I came to be.

And Ash listened quietly the whole time.

She didn’t smile or joke. She simply listened to me as I told my story.

And when I finished, we both curled up in bed and fell asleep next to each other for the first time in a long time.