CHAPTER NINE
Three Years, Four Months Ago
It’s late when I get home, and my body is still on fire from Ash. I could say it was his touch that did it, the feeling of his fingertips as they found my sex and played me until I couldn’t bare anymore. But I’m beginning to think it’s just his presence.
I barely make a noise when I come into the bar. I don’t have an explanation for it, but it feels like there’s something wrong, something happening here that shouldn’t be.
I’m shaken by Ash’s ridiculous proposition, and I know I’m making things up. You can’t sense when something is off... can you?
I’m a woman of science, but I hold my door key in my hand like a shiv when I walk into the darkened bar. Maybe there’s something in my lizard brain that makes me aware that something’s off, that nothing here is right. The door to Bianca’s office creaks, like it’s opening a bit at a time, but there’s no telltale ray of light across the floor. A chill runs down my spine, and I remember Ash’s words.
There’s a hit on your family, and there’s no way out.
He also mentioned making me his. That’s not exactly what I had in mind for the rest of my summer in New York, but even when I think about it in passing, something primal hits my gut. As I walk through the darkened bar, I roll the idea over in my head. Ash, offering me his protection. In return, I’m his—for how long? As long as Cullen targets my family? Or until Ash decides he doesn’t want me anymore, doesn’t want to fuck me or use me?
The rational part of my brain is angry even considering it.
But desire writhes through my body, make its way to my sex, arousing me even through my fear. When I reach the foot of the stairs that leads up to my apartment, I hear my aunt talking, and a man’s voice responding. Her words are forced and angry, increasing in volume even as the man’s voice remains steady and cold. I peer around the staircase and look to see that Ash’s boss, Cullen, stands over my aunt’s desk, hunched toward her like a lion poised in front of its prey. I can barely make out my aunt in the shadows of the darkened office, but her voice rises again, and this time, I hear her.
“I just don’t fucking have it this time, Cullen. I don’t—”
I walk up two more stairs and hide in the shadows, heart pounding hard against my chest, so loud and insistent that I feel like Cullen might whip around the corner and pounce on me. The bar is dark, all shadows and white moonlight. Cullen’s voice rumbles again, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Whatever it is, it’s not good, because my aunt groans, and I hear her throw one of the antique beer bottles she keeps on her desk. It crashes against the wall. Cullen’s laughter crashes through the darkness, and my blood turns to ice.
“Don’t take the girl,” my aunt says. “Not the girl—she’s not a part of this—”
“She’s part of it if I say she is.”
I hear scuffling in the dark of the office, and then my aunt panting and screaming. The office door creaks open further, and I hear a man’s heavy footsteps, and a woman’s heels being dragged across the floor. The back door opens, and they’re both gone.
Without thinking, I scroll through my phone and find Ash’s number, dialing it as soon as his name appears. He answers on the first ring, apparently not asleep yet after what we were up to tonight.
“Summer,” he says, his voice a low, suggestive growl.
“He’s got my aunt,” I whimper. “He’s got her.”
There’s a long pause at the other end of the line. “I’ll sort this out, then I’ll come get you.”
“Okay—and Ash—be careful.” I can only hear breathing on Ash’s end, and then a click. Everything he’s said has turned out to be true. And if he’s described this Cullen man accurately, he’s not going to let go until he has the money from my aunt—or until she and I are both dead.
My body feels cold, hands numb and shaking. I sink down into myself and cry, counting off the minutes until I’m back in the only place I feel safe—with Ash.
Present Day
“I saw that young man dropping you off here last night.” My mother, Linda Colington, comes around the side of the breakfast table and puts a plate with biscuits and lavender honey in front of me. She’ll get me fat as hell before I even finish one year of my residency. But residency doesn’t pay much, and my mother’s breakfast is free. She kisses me on my cheek, brushing away a few of the loose tendrils of hair from the messy bun I’ve started wearing for work.
“He’s not young,” I say. I shove a bite of biscuit into my mouth, and it practically melts on contact. My mother’s biscuits are some of the best on the island, and there’s absolutely no one here to taste them. “And he wasn’t exactly dropping me off, not like you think. I mean, he walks me to my apartment from work, and sometimes he drives me here. But it’s not like you think.”
My mother nods and sits down across from me, holding her tea with both hands and then pressing it up against her cheek. “He’s tall, and he’s handsome. And he’s asked about you several times. Very handsome. Not much my type, but Bianca—well, she liked them tough. One time when he came by, he told me he was starting his own fighting thing—studio or whatever it is—”
“A gym.” I look over at her and dump a generous amount of sugar in my coffee, stirring it slowly and popping another piece of biscuit in my mouth. “Since when has he been chatting with you?”
“Since you came back. He came by and said he was hoping to see you, and then I asked him if he was handy. And he’s been by a few times to fix some leaks and nail in some boards on the back porch. He actually knows a fair bit about tools and man stuff like that—and he won’t let me pay him—”
“Mom. Oh my God.” I drop my face into my hands and start turning pink. “You can’t just go and ask my—“
Boyfriend? Husband? What the fuck?
“Your what? Are you going to tell me he’s your ‘friend’?”
“No, not exactly. He’s not really my friend. He’s—well, I know him from New York. And he’s been living here—”
“Interesting coincidence,” she says, sipping her tea. I know I’m growing more and more flustered—there’s no one in the world that can agitate me like this woman can. Her sister runs a close second. “He met you when you were living with Bianca?”
“Yes—well—kind of. I guess that’s right. He did.”
“And he’s living here now?”
“Mom, you’re repeating yourself.”
“I was just getting the story. I know there’s a big story about some man. Bianca hinted at it.”
Of course she did.
“And I thought it was all done—” My mother goes on, as I sink lower and lower in my chair, my nose almost touching my biscuit. “But if this is the guy...”
Instead of answering, I give her a look of death and finish my coffee. She shrugs and keeps fiddling with her tea bag, then gets up and flits around the room like she always does, dusting the mantle above the fireplace, even though she probably already dusted it this morning.
It would be easier if I could tell her, if I could explain everything about Ash and the entire debacle. But there are parts of the story my mother wouldn’t exactly be happy knowing. Like the entire month she didn’t hear from me when I landed myself in a Damascus hospital, dreaming about Ash every night and desperately working to transfer to the Ukraine.
There are golden memories with Ash, but most of them happened while we were lying together in bed. The rest are colored gray, listless and sad and tired. I spent three years trying to erase all of it, but here he is, doing odd jobs around the inn for my mother, buttering her up and probably eating biscuits and asking for peppermint tea. I groan at the thought.
“What, honey? You’re blushing.”
“Am not,” I huff. “I’m just a little miffed that you two have been colluding behind my back.”
“Jonathan and I aren’t colluding, or whatever you want to call it. He’s just been nice enough to help me out.”
“Jonathan? Do you call him that?”
“That’s his name, sweetheart. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Christ, Mom. Everyone calls him Ash.”
“He told me to call him Jonathan.” She’s still dusting, and I can tell she’s trying not to look at me, like she kept doing the last time she brought this up. “I’m sorry if you didn’t want me talking to him. He’s the one who came and introduced himself, Summer. He is tough-looking, but he really seems like a nice boy. And I can use any help I can get right now.”
I look up at her, and I can tell she’s clenching her jaw tight. “What’s that supposed to mean, Mom?”
“It’s just that I haven’t gotten a lot of guests recently. Bianca was supposed to help me with marketing, get me on Yelp.”
“Mom, her business completely failed. Why are you going to her?”
“She’s smart about these things. She’s been helping with a club up in New York, some gambling place—”
I cut her off before she starts talking about Bianca’s business savvy, which I know for a fact doesn’t exist. What Bianca is good at is somehow convincing the Irish mafia not to kill her, though I’ve never quite figured that one out. “Is your business here okay? Do you need anything? I can pay for the biscuits—”
“No you don’t.” She whirls by and clears my plate away, brushing her hand against my shoulder. She’s still thin in her upper body, but her hips seem to be slowly expanding each year. “You’re my miracle girl, my gift, and I just want you to go to your internship—”
“Residency.”
“Residency, yes. And I don’t want you to worry about anything here.”
My chest tightens. No inn in the Outer Banks should be empty at this time of year, and it occurs to me that maybe it’s not just empty because it’s not on Yelp. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No. Well.” She walks off into the kitchen and turns on the water.
“Mom!” I shout. “Don’t walk off like that!”
The water turns off, and my mom stands in the kitchen doorway. Everyone has always said her face is plainer than Aunt Bianca’s, less striking. But the way she stands, back lit from the kitchen windows, red hair now with distinguished streaks of gray, she looks incredibly beautiful—and vulnerable. “The inn is empty because it’s failing,” she says, with a wistful smile. “I’m behind on my mortgage payments, and it’ll be repossessed next month. I haven’t had the energy to get guests or do any advertising.”
“Mom, that’s how you pay your mortgage.”
“Too far gone. I need too much, and there’s really no way it’ll stay in business. Not with what I owe.”
God, I’m glad I’m not looking into running a small business because fuck me, no one in my family can do it.
“Can you borrow from Bianca?”
“I won’t ask her to do that, and I’m not asking anything of you. Or anyone else. I have plenty of waitressing experience—I can do that.”
“Mom, no.” I try not to let my voice break or the tears start to flood my eyes, but I know they will. This has always been my mother’s dream, and this is the place she’s been happiest. It’s meant stability for me, a place I can come home to. With everything going on, I hadn’t thought to ask why it was empty, hadn’t thought to push her on it. There were excuses—yes. Having the mold cleaned out of the eaves, the porch resurfaced, carpets replaced in each of the rooms. But I hadn’t seen trucks here the times I’ve visited, no crews in and out doing all the things she said they’d do. Apparently the only one doing things for my mom has been Ash, and her professional life has been crumbling behind my back. “Mom, there’s got to be another way.”
“None that I can see. I’ve been foolish, thinking I could make this place into some kind of escape. Bianca’s a good bit younger, but she knows how to live in this world. Even after her running away from here like a crazy woman, and...”
Her voice trails off, and she drums her fingers against the cherry wood doorway. Everything about this place is beautiful—crown molding, antique furniture, pale blue walls and tastefully selected paintings. To think of it going away makes my heart hurt indescribably.
“Mom—” I start again. But I don’t know what to say. It feels like there’s a brick in my gut, weighing everything down, pulling at the small happinesses I’ve known since I’ve been back. It feels like my life—no matter how I try to work it—is filled only with duplicity and loss, and pain for the people around me.
I do the only thing that I can: I go to her and draw her into a hug and hold her for a long time. I barely even notice when my phone alarm buzzes, alerting me that my shift is starting, that I’m beginning another day again. My mother lets go and kisses me on the cheek.
“Don’t think about this,” she tells me. “I’ll be okay. Just go to work and go see your boyfriend.”
Husband. But who’s counting?
“He’s not my—”
“Whatever you say, Summer. But either way, don’t worry about me. Not right now. I’ll figure something out. I always do.” She pats me on the cheek, and I walk out of the front door and down the grand old steps that won’t belong to my mother for very much longer. I’ve had enough hurt in my years to know that sometimes, when there’s loss, humans feel it physically. There aren’t any studies published on this kind of thing, but I’ve been through it enough to know.
It feels just like my mother is trapped, like she’s been taken, like there are walls closing in around her and no way out.
When I start my drive to the hospital, I have a flashback to living in New York and all the pain that stemmed from every decision I made. I thought I’d gotten away from it, but it turns out that the past repeats itself again and again.
If I were younger, I might call on Ash to solve this problem. But he’s just as messed up as I am, or so it would seem. I don’t know about all the losses and traumas he’s been through, but I can guess it would be a lot by this point.
This man, he’s never far from my mind.
And it’s in moments like these that he nags at me like a low-grade fever.
I try to remind myself of the time I needed him most, when I was alone in Syria. He never knew, but that was the thing that broke my heart for good. And the reason why there’s no way I can go there again. Even if he does know what to do about all of this, I can’t weave him into my life again.
There’s no way.
I’m not his anymore, and I’m not sure if I really ever was.