Rare (6 page)

I liked it too, but for entirely different, less innocent reasons.

Ash turned his face away from the sky, attuned to my mood as ever. “I know that look.”

“What look?”

“When you’re thinking something dirty and you think your mom’s going to catch you.”

“My mom never caught me at anything.”

Ash moved. Suddenly he was right in front of me. “Yeah, but still, I know that look.”

His closeness was too good to resist. I wound my arms around his waist and slid my hands under his jacket. “I was
thinking
it’s pretty private out here.”

He rolled his eyes. He knew I had a thing for fooling around outside, but we’d never indulged it. Alfresco fucking was a dangerous game. With chicks, if the cops caught you, they’d probably slap your wrist and pat your back at the same time. Get busted with a guy? Half the PD out there would probably shoot you on sight.

I backed him against the wall. “Do you think we can hear the front door from here?”

Quick as a flash, he spun us so our positions were reversed. “Probably. And there’s no other way up, right?”

To be sure, he maneuvered me so my back was against the door, and kissed the hell out of me, fumbling with my jeans. The fly popped open, and I dropped my head back against the wooden door with a dull thud.

Ash dropped to his knees, and the world could’ve come stampeding up the stairs for all I cared.

W
E
GOT
the new place, but with paperwork and everything else that needed to be done, it took a month before we could close the deal.

In the meantime, Ash left the shop in Lincoln Park and started working at the studio in Lakeview. The shop was closer to the new place, but a bitch to get to from our old apartment. The temporary commute wiped him out, but Ted was pleased. He had high hopes of Ash running a shop for him one day. Fruitless hopes, of course. Though he seemed to like his new surroundings, Ash had zero interest in that side of the business.

For the next few weeks, neither of us seemed to do much but work and sleep, until I came home one night to Ash storming out of the apartment. I watched, helpless, from across the street as he flew out of the exterior door, his eyes hard and his jaw set. Even from a distance, I could read him well enough to know he was pissed, but the source of his temper remained a mystery until I opened the door to the apartment to find Ellie crying on my couch.

I let the door swing shut behind me, dropped my bag on the floor, and crossed the living room in two strides. “Ellie? What’s the matter, sugar?”

She raised her head from her arms, crying so hard her whole body shook. An angry red welt marred her pale cheek.

What the fuck?

Anger flooded my veins, and the paramedic part of my brain kicked in. I tilted her face and assessed the damage. “Who did this?”

My tone was gentle, but inside I was raging. Ellie was a petite chick, elfin and tiny. Bundled up on the sofa in one of my sweatshirts, she looked like a teenager. I hadn’t seen much of her since Ash had come back from Philly. She’d changed her job, and no matter my shift pattern, we seemed to work opposite hours. I hadn’t had a real conversation with her in ages, but the imprint of someone’s hand on her face made my blood boil.

I ran practiced fingertips over the swelling. Ellie flinched. “Did you pass out? Lose consciousness?” The shake of her head was slight, but I took it as an answer. “Did you hit your head on anything else?”

“No.”

She leaned away from my touch. I dropped my hands, but instead of moving away, I put them on the couch either side of her, caging her loosely with my arms. The message was clear; she wasn’t going anywhere until she told me who’d hit her. “Who was it, El?”

Silence. For a long moment, I thought she was going to make me ask again. For a shamefully even longer moment, I feared she was going to tell me
Ash
had hit her.

She didn’t. Of course she fucking didn’t. After a protracted silence, she dropped her gaze and whispered a name so softly I thought I’d misheard her.

Sean.

The simmering fury in my veins turned to stone. I
hated
that guy. He was Ellie’s sister’s boyfriend, and an unpleasant run-in with him a year or so back had triggered the psychotic episodes that sent Ash into free fall. I’d never forget the look on Ash’s face when Sean called us a pair of faggots. He wasn’t responsible for the horrors of Ash’s past, but I couldn’t forgive him for making Ash feel so worthless.

With considerable effort, I swallowed my anger. “Tell me what happened, okay? From the beginning.”

“I’ve been seeing someone.” She bit her lip and looked away. “A girl.”

I’d figured as much. Ash hadn’t seen her around for weeks, and Ellie
was
gay, so it was pretty obvious she’d been seeing a chick. I didn’t get what that had to do with Sean. Her own family didn’t even know she was….

Shit.

A horrifying scenario occurred to me. “Did Sean see you with her?”

Ellie swallowed another sob. “We went out, for dinner and some drinks. Deb came home with me. I didn’t know Meg was already there until it was too late.”

“Meg was at your place?”

“She has a key, but she’s never used it. I never expected her to be there. Deb and I were fooling around when I saw them both standing there, watching us.”

Ellie stopped and ran a hand through her hair. Her voice was stronger when she spoke again.

“Meg just stood there. She looked so horrified, like it was the most disgusting thing in her life, but Sean….” She broke off again and took a deep breath. “He called me a pervert, Pete. He said I was a dirty little bitch, in my own home. I was so mad, I slapped him. I never expected him to slap me back.”

It didn’t come as a shock to me. I’d seen too much to be surprised by anything anymore. Besides, Sean was scum, real scum. Nothing was too low for him. “What about Deb? Is that her name?”

Ellie nodded. “She walked out as soon as she realized I wasn’t out to my family. She wasn’t there when it got really ugly. When Sean hit me, I got out and ran after her, but she was long gone.”

“And then you came here and told Ash,” I finished for her.

The picture came together in my mind. Coupled with the image of Ash’s face as he left the apartment, I was worried, really fucking worried. Ash didn’t often lose his temper, but God, he had one, and Ellie was probably one of the few triggers for it. The other was undoubtedly me, but an asshole like Sean wouldn’t dare take a swing at me. He’d proved that before. “Ellie, listen to me. Does Ash know where to find Sean?”

She blanched as she followed my train of thought. “I left him and Meg in my apartment. Ash knows they were there. I’m sorry, Pete. I couldn’t stop him. I didn’t know where else to go—”

I held up my hand. “Stop. I’m glad you came here. Ash is a grown-up. If he does something stupid, it’s his own fault.”

The look on Ellie’s face told me she was worried about much more than Ash hurting Sean, but I didn’t share her concerns. Ash could handle himself. I was more worried that he’d do Sean some serious damage
—
the sort of damage he’d have to pay for. I reached for Ellie’s face again. The red mark was hot and darkening, and the swelling had spread up the side of her head. At best, it was going to leave a nasty bruise. At worst, it was worrying enough to dissuade me from going out to find Ash. “You must have gone flying,” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head or pass out?”

She shuddered and waved me away. “I’m sure.”

There wasn’t really anything else to say, so I wrapped her up in a blanket and put her in our bed. I called Ash’s cell, but he didn’t answer. Aside from calling the police, there wasn’t much else I could do, and there was no way I was going to do that. His years as a street kid made him nervous of cops, and besides, if he had done something stupid, I’d be leading them right to him. All I could do was take care of Ellie and have a little faith that he’d come back to me when he’d done what he needed to do.

I took a quick shower and climbed into bed with Ellie. Sleep felt like it would never come, but when she’d cried herself out, we both fell into a fitful doze.

Ash woke me sometime later. The moment I saw the guilt on his face, my heart dropped through the floor. I gripped his arms, digging my fingers into his skin. “What did you do?”

He shook his head, tapped a finger to his lips, and motioned for me to follow him. I disentangled myself from Ellie and followed him into the living room, where the reason for his guilt was abundantly clear, because there on my couch, with a packed bag by her feet, was Ellie’s tearstained and sullen older sister.

It was the start of a very long night. I checked Megan over for damage, then rechecked Ellie for signs of concussion before leaving them both in our bed. Meg was shocked and upset, but more than that, she knew she had some serious amends to make. Remorse was rare for a girl like her, but I knew Ellie would forgive her without question. I didn’t want to be around for that.

Ash and I hunkered down on the couch to touch base. Ash had made coffee. I found myself surreptitiously checking his knuckles for bruises as he handed me a mug. He caught me, though, naturally.

“What are you looking for?”

“Did you hit him?”

“What? No, at least not as much as I wanted to.”

He looked defiant, like he expected me to rebuke him, but how could I do that when I still remembered punching Sean out myself?

Ash let out a weary sigh. “I could have really hurt him, Pete. I wanted to, but that would have made me worse than him, right? And Meg was hurt. It was more important to get her out.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Kinda,” he said with a shrug. “I think she finally came to her senses, and Sean didn’t like it. I know Meg’s a bitch in public, but I don’t think she’s ever stood up to him before.”

“Wonder why,” I muttered.

“He had her by the throat when I got there,” Ash said. “He could have killed her.”

I put my mug down and squeezed his hand. Sadly, he was no stranger to violence. “At least you got there in time. You got her out.”

“Yeah, but that’s not why I went. It never occurred to me that he could hit Meg too. I just wanted to kill him for hurting Ellie.”

“And that was enough,” I said. “Don’t beat yourself up over Meg. She doesn’t give a fuck about you.”

“True.” Ash threw me a dark grin. “She does care about Ellie, though. I think they’ll be okay after this.”

“Every cloud, fucker. Every cloud.”

Ash rolled his eyes. He hated clichéd sayings. Five years spent alone on the streets meant he’d never heard most of them, but whatever retort he was going to make was cut off by a knock at the door.

W
E
OPENED
the door like a pair of gangsters, but it wasn’t Sean, it was Charlie. He was a little perturbed to see Ash and I both ready to kill, but he got over it.

For the next two days, the Mills siblings set up camp in our bedroom. Their father, David, looked tired and sad when he finally came looking for them. He’d called the police and Sean had been arrested, but for his whole family, it was the beginning of a long period of soul searching. Secrets and lies, coupled with violence and cruelty, weighed heavily on their tight-knit unit. A few days later, they decamped to their home in California, and that was the last we saw of them for a while.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the apartment was empty again. I loved Ellie like a sister, and Charlie was a friend, but even with a shiny black eye Megan was intolerable. Combined with the effect a bunch of houseguests had on my sex life, I was about ready to combust by the time they left. Shame we didn’t have much time to regroup. Moving day had crept up on us, and we had just a few days left to pack and get ready.

Late one night, I was packing up the kitchen when Ash came to find me with a smile on his face. I matched his grin as he took a dish from my hand and set it on the side. He’d been quiet while we’d had an apartment full of people, spending most of his time absorbed in his sketchbooks. It was good to see him smile. “Good mood?”

He shrugged, his eyes dancing with humor. “Maybe. How was your day?”

“Long.” I considered the remaining dishes in the cabinet with absent interest. “Do we need to take this? I don’t think I’ve ever used it.”

Ash peered over my shoulder. He’d got much better at standing behind me, but it still made him nervous. Often, he would shudder and jump back, but tonight he scoffed. “That’s because you never cook anything but toast. Your mom gave us those to cook lasagna in.”

I ignored his jibe. He was lucky I didn’t cook for him. If I did, I’d expect him to eat it and then he’d really be in trouble. “Do we need three?”

“Probably not, but we won’t be that far from her, so we’d better keep them. She’s already told me she’ll be getting the bus to check up on us.”

That made me smile. Moving to Edgewater was going to put us five minutes from Maggie’s place; a bus ride I was happy for her to take in daylight. Commuting to work was going to kill me, but the peace of mind I got in return was more than worth it. I’d never forget the time she put herself on a bus to Lincoln Park to look after Ash. I’d come home to find Italian chicken soup on the stove and him safely asleep on the couch, but it didn’t take long for me to find out she’d been all around the city before she’d found the right stop. It was kinda funny now, but back then, with Ash still fighting pneumonia, Maggie on the loose was the last thing I’d needed to deal with.

I shut the cabinet with a heavy sigh. “Don’t suppose she gave you any food when you saw her, did she? We’re running on empty, here.”

Ash stepped away and opened the refrigerator. “You’re in luck. We’ve got spaghetti and meatballs. Do you want it now?”

I shut the cabinet with a bang. For once, food was the last thing on my mind. “Later. Let’s do something else first.”