Look After You (23 page)

“
Why?”

As he contemplates his answer, he presses his thumbs against the ball of my
foot, moving the medium pressure into a sweeping motion. He shrugs his shoulders, looking me straight in the eye. “I don’t know, I guess I haven’t found the right girl yet.” My stomach drops as he dazzles me with his penetrating glare. He continues with his foot massage and concentrates solely on my foot, uncomfortably so. I smile sadly, my gut instinct telling me that he has found the right girl, but he can’t do a thing about it. I suddenly remember things he has said to me, certain looks he has given me, that one time after dinner when he said he desperately wanted to kiss me but said how he couldn’t be the guy who breaks up a family. Not to mention that he’s here with me now and has been all day, brings me to the conclusion that it was me he was talking about in his text message to his mom.

“
Why?” The words exit my mouth before I have chance contemplate the meaning behind them, or put a filter on my mouth to shut the hell up.

He raises his head up, a confused smirk etched along
his mouth. “Why? Why what? Why haven’t I found the right girl?” No, why are you falling in love with me? Luckily that response stays safely inside of my head. “I don’t know, Ava,” he says sounding rather exasperated with me. “I guess we’re not all as lucky as you. You’ve found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with; you have a beautiful daughter who loves you. You’re lucky because not a lot of people find that kind of happiness.” That one statement has my heart shattered in a split second and I find it hard to catch my breath. I want to reach over and put the bright smile back into his sad eyes, but instead I just allow the silence to settle over us, and I lie back down.

I spend the remainder of our awkward silence thinking about what he said, how even with my lucky happiness, as he put it, I still find myself remembering how amazing his lips felt on mine when he kissed me yesterday and how I wish he would kiss me again. I watch him as he contently continues to massage my feet; his fingers gently pulling at my toes in an upward motion and one part of me wishes that I had met Ashton before Sebastian, he is an incredible person, so sexy, so perfect, but the other part is glad I didn’t, because if I hadn’t have met Sebastian, then he would have never given me Lily, and that thought is almost crippling. She is my world and I can’t imagine my life without her. Plus, I love Sebastian; I can’t allow myself to go there with Ashton. Even if it means denying myself of him…

I lift myself up onto my elbows when I feel his hands settle my feet back down gently onto the bed, and I watch as he moves himself off from the bed. He blinks in surprise when he notices me looking up at him, a small smile playing on his lips. “I thought you were asleep.”

I shake my head as I sit up, crossed legged, enveloping my fluffy white robe a
round me to avoid flashing him. “No, I was just thinking.”

“
About?” he inquires, no doubt his turn to ask all of the questions.

I purse my lips, before answering.
“Nothing. Everything.”

“
Hmm cryptic,” he muses as he sits beside me. I flinch slightly when the pad of his thumb brushes delicately against my tender cheek, where my mother so
kindly
slapped me this afternoon.

“
Sore?” he questions, with a painful look upon his face.

“
Yes, a little,” I say, with a gentle nod, the sting a little unbearable, now that he has mentioned it.

“
Let me grab some ice for it, to help reduce the swelling. I’ll be back in a second.”

Minutes later he returns with an ice bucket full of ice and a
small white towel from the bathroom. He sits on the edge of the bed with the bucket perched in-between his legs. He grabs a handful of ice cubes and places them into the center of the towel, folding the edges over the ice cubes and fisting the towel in the palm of his hands. He gently brings it up to my left cheek, the ice immediately beginning to ease the sting.

“
Thank you.” I smile as he keeps the ice held securely against my cheek. He traces my face with an intense gaze for a moment, and with one look alone, makes me want to undress my robe for him and fall to his mercy.

“
Are you going to tell me what happened today?” he asks with full concern, his eyes darkening with anger.

“
What, with my mom?”

He shakes his head.
“No. Of course, I could have fucking throttled her for laying a hand on you like that and for the shit she said, but I was talking about your brother.”

The relaxing foot massage Ashton just spent the last hour giving me, suddenly feels wasted when every single muscle in my body tenses at the mention of my brother, my c
alm mood vanishing in a second. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter now,” I say, waving it off like it isn’t a big deal. It is a big deal and he knows it.

“That would have me convinced if you didn
’t suddenly just tense up, and not to mention your reaction to him earlier. I think I still have some fingernail marks somewhere,” he says pointing to his stomach for full emphasis. “What has he done to you, for you to be so damn scared of him?”

I deliberately shy my eyes away from his, picking at an invisible mark on the sleeve of my robe, desperately wanting to talk about anything other than my brother. As I continue avoiding him, he takes actions into his own hands and crawls on top of me, his knees straddling the top of my legs, his hand still holding the ice pack to my
cheek. I gape at him in shock. “Why did you run away from home, Ava? Did he hurt you, is that it?” I look away, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth, desperate to stop my chin from quivering. He delicately removes the ice pack from my cheek, placing it beside his knee, while his right thumb and forefinger tilts my chin up, forcing my eyes in place with his. “You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can trust me with anything. I promise.” Hot tears begin to fill my eyes, blurring my peripheral vision. I shake my head hastily, wishing he would just leave it alone. “Let me in, please,” he practically begs, while fast tears fall lucidly down my face.

“I can’t…you won’t…you won’t...” I try to speak out through a breathless cry, but the words get stuck in the back of my throat, the words becoming more difficult to say with each given breath.

“I won’t what?” he encourages, his deep voice shaking with determination. I feel more tears disperse down my face, my face reddening with unpleasant heat at his obvious struggle.

“You won’t…” I clench my eyes shut as I push through the lump lodged inside my throat. “You won’t believe me. You’ll h-h-h-hate m-m-me,” I manage to stutter through my exhaled breaths; my body shaking with uncontrollable shivers.

“It isn’t possible to hate you, ever. What I’m feeling for you right now, Ava, is the very fucking opposite of hate. So try me,” he growls animatedly, shuffling closer to me.

My eyes snap wide open as his powerful words begin to register, and they enc
ourage me. For once in my life, I feel I can let go of my secret with somebody other than Caleb. A secret I have spent the past thirteen years kept buried. A secret I have kept from Sebastian, replacing it with a fabricated lie of some ridiculous family feud that he somehow believed. I take a deep breath and then force the words I never thought I would get to repeat. “He r-r-raped me.”

His face instantly pales, his eyes turning a solid black, with
a hundred different emotions of shock and anger rousing his facial features. “D-did I just hear you right?”

I nod my head in one fluid motion, a silent sob striking painfully through the core of my body. I feel his body tense up on top of mine, the hands at the side of his
legs clenching into angry fists. “No, no…if I would have heard you right, then I wouldn’t have just heard you say he raped you,” he growls with a shake of his head as if the words are too hard for him to understand. Almost like he doesn’t believe me…

He moves away from me in one swift movement and angrily paces the length of the room, his hands gripping harshly at the tendons of his neck. I watch in absolute heartbreak, wishing I could take my words back, to take the angry look from his face.

“Ash-Ashton,” I say through my panicked sobs. “P-please, you have to b-believe me.”

He snaps his head back at me, sor
rowful shock widening his eyes. “Oh, baby.” Immediately he is at my side, his gentle hands cupping my face, taking extra care with my tender cheek. “I do, baby, I do believe you. I’m just really fucking angry right now but not at you, never at you.” I gulp heavily in relief, clutching at his wrists as if I’m holding onto him for dear life. A look of terror fills his eyes as he searches my entire face. “How many times?” He recoils the moment the question leaves his mouth. I just look at him with tears filling my eyes, unable to give him an exact number of times.

“More than once?” he utters with sickening shock. I can only respond with a nod
. He clenches his eyes tight shut, and quickly reopens them again, his body trembling. “How old were you?” I can see a look of dread on his face as he awaits the answer to his question.

“Fifteen,” I whisper, dreading his response.

His shoulders rise and fall as he chokes on a silent heave, a look a pure disgust registering on his face. He clutches tightly against my robe, with a look of devastation. “I can’t...I can’t even...comprehend...I mean fifteen...you were just a child...” Then he slowly brings his hand up through my hair, sliding a loose strand behind my ear. “Does Sebastian know?”

I shake my he
ad. “No, only Caleb knows.”

“
I’m so sorry, baby. You should never have had to go through that, not at fifteen, not at any age.” He catches a falling tear with his thumb. “How long?” he asks, with anger laced in his voice.

“
Until high school graduation, and then…I ran away,” I say through a hiccup, struggling to catch my own breath.

“
Three years?” he whispers in added shock, still trying to come to terms with what I’m telling him. I close my eyes on a nod while tepid tears continue to flow from my eyes.

“
Oh fuck, baby. God, I want to fucking kill him,” he states angrily through gritted teeth, his fingers that are molded to my skin, tensing up. “Sick twisted bastard,” he mutters under his breath, causing my eyes to re-open. Then a sudden look of realization crosses his features. “Your sister, please tell me he didn’t?” The one tragic look I give him as I cry hysterically gives him the answer that he needs. “Oh, God no. Is that why she?” he asks frantically, his fingers physically shaking.

“
Yes,” I say quietly through my hysterical sobs.

He bolts up from right in front of me, charges angrily to the dining area, f
orcing his shoes onto his feet. “I’m going to fucking kill him!” he roars angrily, every muscle of his body clenched tightly together, his fists bounding together at his sides, a look of indescribable anger pouring out from him.

“
What are you doing?” I rise onto my knees, in sheer panic.

“
I’m gonna’ go and chop that guys dick off and feed it to the fucking dogs!” Oh shit, he’s going to go and find him. Oh fuck, no. “That so called
brother
of yours needs to be taught a fucking lesson.” He grabs hold of his wallet and phone from the bedside table, then places a chaste kiss against the top of my head, and then lowers his head to my eye level, looking at me with his possessed demon eyes. “I promise he’s not going to get away with this.” He hastily makes a step to move but at a frantic pace I scramble up onto the bed, standing unsteadily on both feet an  rush towards the edge, gripping forcefully against his arm, pulling him back towards me. “Ashton, no, please no-no, please, you’ll get yourself into trouble,” I scream out frantically, my face drenched with tears.

“
Ava, let go of me.” He tries to force his arm away from me, but I just tighten my grip against his arm, determined not to let go of him.

“
No! I won’t let you do this. Please.”

“
Ava, he hurt you and your sister! He’s a monster, and I can’t just sit here and do jack about it. I won’t let him get away with this.” I wipe my moist face with the sleeve of my robe, and then I fist my fingers through his hair, gripping the strands with more force than is probably necessary, using my two-foot leverage of height to force him to look up at me.

“
No, please. Stay here. Stay here with me,” I beg, clinging desperately to him. The desperation goes up a notch when he still continues to fight against my hold and in one fluid movement I jump into his arms, straddling my legs against his hips, locking my feet together at the crook of his ass, my arms clinging tightly against the back of his neck. And with the sudden loss of momentum, he stumbles backwards and his hands automatically clutch firmly against my ass cheeks, to keep me from falling.

“
Please, just stay here.” In-between my words of desperate cries, I start to kiss his entire face, anything to stop him from finding Avery and doing something stupid.

“
Don’t-(kiss)-leave-(kiss)-me-(kiss)-stay-(kiss)-here-(kiss)-please-(kiss)-I-(kiss)-need-(kiss)-you.” I start to press tiny delicate kisses against the edge of his lips, still sobbing and clutching desperately against him. Then without taking a moment of consideration I kiss him fully on the lips and in that one moment, everything changes.