“No,” he barks. As he steps away from me, his demeanor completely changes. Gone is the lost, broken boy from a few moments ago, and in his place is the vicious asshole I’m much more accustomed to. “I don’t want you,” he spits, looking down at me hunched on the floor like I’m nothing more than a piece of shit on his shoe.
My lips part and tears burn the backs of my eyes, but I fight them. There’s no way I’m going to show this asshole that I care about him rejecting me, because I don’t... it’s just the exhaustion getting to me.
His eyes pin me to the spot for a few more seconds as he backs toward the door.
“Don’t touch anything, and do not, under any circumstances, open the door,” he warns, but before I get to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, he’s gone and the door is slammed behind him.
My legs give out and my ass hits the floor with a thud.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, staring at the closed door like it holds all the answers to the mystery that is Ashton Fury.
I rest my head back against the wall, my eyes full of tears from his rejection but desperate to close.
Knowing that I can’t pass out on the floor—I may as well go back to the car if the fucking floor is my other choice—I climb to my feet and look around.
There are four doors leading from this main room, I already know that one of them is my escape should I need it, so I can only assume the other two are bedrooms and a bathroom.
Sucking in a breath, I prepare to go in search of the bathroom. I really don’t want to be poking my nose around Ashton and his mom’s home, but I feel l have little choice seeing as the prick left me alone.
I pause with my fingers wrapped around the handle, hating that I’m invading their privacy by doing this but not having any other option.
I pull the door open a little and peek through the crack. It’s obviously a woman’s room, so I quickly close it once more. Ashton should be the one to deal with that room first.
I try the next one and find exactly what I was after.
I make use of the toilet before stripping down and splashing cold water over myself. I want a shower and I stare at it longingly, but it just feels wrong to make myself at home like that, so I cope with the bar of soap on the side and the ice water. I squirt a little toothpaste on my finger from the tube littering the basin and attempt to brush my teeth. I’d bought a brush from the first store we stopped in, but I left everything in the car, and I can only assume that’s vanished along with Ashton.
Quietly, I close the door behind me and look around the space once more. The furniture is all old, worn, and chipped. The kitchen units look like they’re barely holding themselves together and the windows are small and dirty and hardly let any light in. I understand why when I walk closer and find that both of them stare directly into someone else’s apartment in the next building.
There are a couple of photo frames on the dresser and I slow as I pass, staring at a younger, sweeter looking Ash with his mom’s arm around his shoulders. She stares down at him like he’s her world and my heart rips open for the poor boy who’s lost everything.
I keep moving, looking around the place, not that there’s much to see until my eyes land on his door.
I know I shouldn’t but my need to know more about the boy who messes with both my head and my body is too strong.
I twist the handle and push his door open. I’m hardly surprised when a black room greets me. Music posters cover the walls, most of them I’ve no idea who they are, gangsta rap isn’t really my thing unless you count being kept awake by it night after night as being a fan.
His bed is covered in messy black sheets and much like the main room, there’s not much in the way of possessions. There’s a couple of bottles of cologne, a set of headphones and a cell charger, but that’s it. I sit down on the edge of his bed and try to imagine what his life was really like here, but it’s hard when there’s so little to go on. One thing I do know though, he’s not grown up like I have, and I start to really understand why he hates me.
Stephen left him and his mom here and started a new life in Rosewood. We’re not rich, not by any stretch, but we’ve got enough to live easily and not worry about buying food and other necessities. We certainly have hot water and heat, which this place seems to be lacking.
When my eyes get heavy and my body starts to shut down, I look over my shoulder at his bed. I really want to crawl under those sheets and drift off. But I can’t.
Instead, I walk out, closing the door behind me as if I never entered, and curl up on the couch, wishing I’d gotten my blanket and pillow from the back of the car. I curl myself in a ball and try to get as comfortable as possible. Thankfully, I’m so tired that the cold and hard, lumpy couch doesn’t really bother me, and in minutes I’m out.
16
Ashton
I didn’t have any plans when I stormed out of the apartment but the second I locked eyes on Dad’s car sitting by the sidewalk, I knew I couldn’t get back in it. Not when it’s going to smell like her, remind me of her.
I ripped my eyes away from what’s been our home for the past few days and started walking up the street like I have almost every day since Dad left and Mom moved us here.
This place is like what I imagine hell must be like, but it’s home, in all its fucked-up glory.
The smell of weed on every corner, the dealers, the hookers, the beat-up, smashed-up cars, the screams and cries of people as they’re taught whatever lesson someone thinks they’re due sound out and it all just feels normal, and I feel like I can breathe properly for the first time since I rode out of this place on my bike.
I walk for hours as the sun gets higher and higher in the sky and the city comes to life.
I have nowhere to go this time in the morning. The few friends I do have will either be passed out or heading to school—probably more likely the former as they attended school about as much as I did.
When I finally feel like I’ve run out of energy, I turn back around, make one quick stop, and head for home, or more specifically, my bed.
Every muscle in my body aches as I climb the stairs. I might have been asleep when Ruby drove us into the city, but it couldn’t have been much before that I drifted off. I laid there for hours, thoughts of where I was going and what I was going to have to do spinning through my mind, not to mention the memory of having Ruby pinned to the car only a few hours before.
I need to stay away from her, that much I know. What I can’t figure out is why I’m unable to let her go. I should have taken her back to the hotel and let her get comfortable with Dad and Lisa, but instead, I took her to the one place I don’t want to be, let alone have a visitor, and then I bloody left her there after she offered to...
I shake my head. I can’t allow myself to think about her on her knees before me. That can’t happen. Not because it’s forbidden or whatever bullshit I’m sure people would spew at us if they knew, but because I don’t trust myself with her. She brings out this crazy side of me, one I don’t even recognize and I’m sure that if she really experiences the things I want to do to her, to hurt her, to punish her, then she’ll never look at me again. Not that that would be a huge issue, but we are going to have to put up with each other somehow seeing as we now live under the same fucking roof.