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Ash had to look away at that. She stared holes in the floor as she muttered, “If someone has it out for me, I wish they’d just end it already.”
My mouth dropped open, and no words came out. This…this wasn’t the Ash I was used to. This wasn’t the Ash I’d gotten to know these last few months. This was a stranger, and she looked almost scared, frightened in a way I never would’ve guessed Ash could be.
Travis got up from the desk chair, hoisting his leg over it as he sauntered over to her. Even though I didn’t like watching him get so close, I couldn’t look away. This night was not going how I thought it would at all. He moved to her side, sitting near her on her bed. She refused to look at him.
“What is going on?” Travis all but begged. And he wasn’t a beggar. He wasn’t the type of man who’d ever beg a girl, and yet here he was, begging Ash to tell him what was wrong. I’d like to say I was shocked, but after everything, I didn’t think I could get any more surprised.
Travis never acted this way about Sabrina, and he’d been sleeping with her for months behind my back. Here, with Ash? He was hardly recognizable. He seemed like he genuinely cared for her, which made my mind reel. If this was his caring act, did he even feel anything for Sabrina, or was he simply using her just because he could? I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Sabrina had meant nothing to him, or that Ash meant more.
“I can help you,” Travis went on, his voice a bare whisper. I could hardly hear him, and I was a mere eight feet away. I watched him set a hand on Ash’s back, feeling my blood pressure rising. “I can help you, but you need to tell me what’s going on, Ash. The truth. All of it.”
I zoned out. Whatever he was saying, I didn’t care. In that moment, all I cared about was the fact that he was touching her so tenderly, right in front of me. As if I wasn’t even in the room. As if it was just him and her together, a couple ready to fight the odds in order to be together. To that, I had one thing to say.
Fuck that. Fuck him, and fuck this.
Okay, technically, that was three things, I guess, but you get the point.
What I really wanted to do was launch myself at Travis. I didn’t like getting physical, but I could if the situation arose. This? If this wasn’t that situation, I didn’t know what was. There was one thing that stopped me, however, and that was the dejected look on Ash’s face. No, fighting Travis wouldn’t happen. Not tonight, at least.
Maybe later. I wasn’t going to let Ash choose Travis. I wasn’t going to lose to Travis again, but I could wait. I could wait until this thing with Ash was figured out, because even though I wasn’t a fan of Travis, I needed to make sure Ash was alright first. Out of everything and everyone, Ash was my number one priority. Ash and Will. They were all I had, and I’d be damned if I lost either one of them to whoever was trying to hurt us.
I slowly stood, moving to sit on Ash’s other side. While Travis had a hand on her back, I set one on her knee as I whispered, “We can both help you. You know I’d do anything for you.”
Ash turned her gorgeous eyes to me, and then to Travis. She looked at us both in a way I’d never seen her look at anyone before. Dejected, depressed…lonely. “You don’t get it. Neither of you understand…” She pulled away from us, moving to stand between our two beds, leaving both Travis and I on hers. Shaking her head, she muttered, “I can’t…I just can’t. I can’t do it. I thought I could, but…”
“Ash,” Travis pressed her, drawing his hand to his lap. “You know if you don’t tell me, I’m just going to figure it out on my own. And no matter how long it takes, you know I won’t give up and I won’t stop until I do.”
Ash was serious when she told him, “Find someone else to obsess over.” She turned her chin to me, adding, “And you should find someone else to replace Sabrina.”
Her words were barbed, meant to hurt—and hurt they did. I flinched, while Travis only glowered. I’d told her before, and I meant it, one hundred percent, when I said she wasn’t a replacement. She might’ve reminded me of Sabrina at first, but honestly any blonde did. Now, I saw Ash as her own person, and it was because of that that her words hurt me so much.
She wasn’t Sabrina. She wasn’t a replacement for her. She was…she was so much more.
“You’re both better off without me,” she said, sounding…sounding exactly like I did, right after what happened to Sabrina. It was a thought I had on numerous occasions: the whole world would be better off without me. A notion many depressed people had, even if it wasn’t true.
And in this case? It definitely wasn’t true. If I didn’t have Ash, I had no one. I had a brother stuck in the hospital and a dad who constantly tried putting his nose in my business, but that was it. No one beyond family. No one who mattered.
Travis refused to back down, saying, “I decide who I’m better off without, and it sure as hell isn’t you.” I found myself nodding along—yet another thing I agreed with him about. Look at us, agreeing about Ash so often. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think we were friends.
But we weren’t. Not anymore. And we never could be after what he did. Ash was not going to bridge that gap. The bridge between Travis and I had been burned, its ashes dust in the wind. Sometimes there was no coming back from betrayal. You could only dig yourself deeper in the grave already made for you. Travis and I would never be friends again.
Ash looked between us, something unspoken passing behind her storm grey gaze. Her jaw clenched, and her fingers tightened as they hung at her sides. “I wish you would leave” was all she said before moving to the bathroom and closing herself inside, locking herself away from us as much as she could without storming out again.
I glanced to Travis, wondering if she meant he should leave, or me. Or, hell, maybe she was talking to the both of us. Whatever was happening, it was serious—had to be, to get her to act like this. Ash was the most level-headed person I’d ever met, even if she occasionally didn’t make the best decisions. To see her spiraling like this hurt me in ways I never imagined possible.
I didn’t want her to hurt like this. I wanted to protect her, to save her, to keep the world and its atrocities away from her. Was that so wrong? I’d failed miserably when it came to Sabrina, but I would not fail Ash. I refused to. I would fight tooth and nail for her, give up my heart and my soul if I had to. She was everything to me, and I’d do my damnedest to make her realize it.
“I suppose I should go,” Travis muttered, frowning to himself. His blue eyes moved to me, and for a moment, we simply stared at each other in silence. Neither of us knew what to say, because neither of us had ever been in this position to begin with. This was new territory for the both of us: caring for the same girl and refusing to be the one to back down. No secrets this time, no hiding.
He got up to leave, and I followed him out into the hall, shoving my foot at the dorm door to keep it from closing fully. “Wait,” I said, watching as he turned around. He had one tattooed hand shoved in his pocket, fiddling with something. His cigarettes, probably. “You told me why you had Sabrina’s diary, but you never said why Ash had it.”
Travis was not the kind of person who spoke what was on his mind immediately. No, he had to stand there and think over a good answer, one that would either rile me up completely…or one that would placate me. I knew he’d do what he thought was best for Ash right now, and maybe that was why he said, “I asked her to come to my room. I wanted to show her who I really am, but…” His gaze fell to the floor. “Things are more complicated than I thought they were.”
That was…kind of a non-answer, but it was one I’d come to expect from him. He didn’t outright admit that he and Ash were together physically, and I didn’t know if I wanted to know whether or not they were. Right now, I needed my sanity intact.
“Best be ready for anything,” Travis advised, “because I have the feeling what she’s hiding is something big.” With that, he walked away, his shoulders held squared and his head high. He disappeared around a corner, leaving me to wonder just what it was that Ash was hiding.
Obviously, it was something. Something so huge she wasn’t comfortable sharing it with either of us. I hated that she felt like she had to hide it from me. Didn’t she know by now that I wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what?
