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“Got it.”
We said nothing else to each other as we went along. Hillcrest’s campus was almost eerie when it was past a certain time in the night. After midnight, the sidewalks were empty, no students to be seen. All the parties were held off-campus, too. Hillcrest wasn’t the place to go if you wanted party central. Too expensive for that.
It was just after three in the morning when Declan called me, so I knew morning would come soon. A few more hours of darkness before daylight sprouted and grew upon the world, and with any luck, Declan or I would find her before then.
If someone was after her, let them come. Let them try and hurt her again. I would take them down so fast they didn’t even know what was happening.
Alas, in order for me to do what the men in my family did best, I would have to know the truth. The whole truth. Ash would have to tell me everything, which I knew was going to be difficult for her. Whatever it was, she was used to keeping it nestled away, tucked inside of her so far lost in her mind she was able to act as if it didn’t exist. She was a good actress, far better than I ever believed she was.
But now I knew the truth. Ash was hiding something, and it was something big. Ash was no angel. Angels became demons the moment they stepped foot on Hillcrest, anyway. They lost their pretty white wings and learned to love the depravity the rich were so used to having. No one remained pure here.
Ash, though, had never been pure. She’d always hidden what made her tick, and now that the hour drew close, now that I was so very near figuring out what that was, I couldn’t help but be excited. I was dying to know what her past was, what made Ash so very different from everyone else I’d ever met.
It seemed, though, I wasn’t the only one with my eye on her—and I didn’t mean Declan, or even Sawyer. It was only now, practically a month after the fact, that I put two and two together. Someone had sent Sawyer a letter. Unmarked, no return address, slipped into the mail slot in the front door. Someone had been watching this whole time, and I was too wound up in Ash to look at the bigger picture here.
And the bigger picture said she was never alone. The bigger picture must involve someone else, but who? Could the same one who hit her have attacked Will? I didn’t so much care about Will, but if it was true, it proved that person was willing to go to any lengths to scare her, and that was the very opposite of okay.
I searched the north end of campus, and Declan searched the south side. We eventually converged in the quad, a big, open green area, full of sidewalks crisscrossing. I hung up the phone when I spotted him, and he did the same. We met each other, neither of us appearing too thrilled with the prospect of losing Ash.
It was quite possible we each went around her as she skated along, but with the silence of the night, we would’ve heard her if she was anywhere nearby.
“Anything?” Declan asked, and I shot him a dour look. If I found her, she’d be with me, wouldn’t she? Come on. He had to be smarter than that. Perhaps the fool was just hopeful, hoping I’d found her and tucked her away in my dorm room safely.
Yeah, I’d learned my lesson with that. Ash was not someone to be contained, ever, and it was steadily driving me nuts.
“She might not be on campus,” I muttered, frowning to myself. Usually I wore an air of uncaring, of boredness, but Ash brought out emotions in me that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. She was nothing like Sabrina. Sabrina was just…fun. Her condition led me to think she was right for me, but she wasn’t.
Ash, though? Ash was right for me. Ash was meant to be mine. She inspired something within me I couldn’t even name.
It seemed she did the same to Declan, go fucking figure.
Declan shoved his hands in his pockets. He wore athletic shorts and a t-shirt, the wind rustling the tips of his brown hair as he glanced all around us, probably wishing Ash would suddenly pop up and find us. “If she’s not on campus, where would she go?”
That was the question of the night, wasn’t it?
Where, oh where would our little, precious Ash go? Where, oh where could she be?
And then it came to me. “I have an idea,” I said, glancing at him. “I hope I’m wrong.”
“Why?” Declan asked, ignorant to it.
Ash was not feeling strong right now, that much was clear, and I’d seen enough to know that the broken stuck together, even if logic said they shouldn’t. Sometimes logic had nothing to do with it.
Chapter Twelve – Ash
I skated around campus for a while, not knowing what the hell I was doing. Well, actually I knew exactly what I was doing. Spiraling. I was spiraling. A downward spiral I had no idea whether or not I’d ever escape from. Climbing out of this spiral seemed more impossible as the hours wore on. Even in my dreams I lost what little sanity I had left.
No one could blame me for spiraling, right? I mean, it made sense that I was losing grip on reality thanks to the reemergence of an ex I thought locked behind bars for the rest of his life. To live through what I lived through…it changed you, made you into someone else.
Something else.
I hardly felt like a person anymore. It was like I was a robot, living and breathing, but not truly living as a person should. Ashley Bonds had died that day in the woods, down in that basement, when she…
Well, when she did something truly awful, really. Something only God could forgive, and even then, would he? God only forgave those who repented, and I had never repented, never apologized to anyone. I only pretended that day didn’t happen, pushed it as far from my mind as I could’ve.
That day, that man…broke me in ways no one else could.
Sawyer, making that Brooklyn chick dye her hair pink and then sleeping with her? Childish. Everything Sawyer had done and made other students do to Declan was childish. He had no idea what it was really like to question reality itself. Making someone depressed and antisocial because you blamed him for your sister’s suicide wasn’t the same as kidnapping and murder.
