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Chapter Seventeen

“No.” Ash’s voice was harsher than Nicco had ever heard it, all traces of his smile, his survivor’s joy, gone, nothing left but the sound of a boy so used to being alone.

He won’t be alone anymore.

And Nicco didn’t know why the thought was bitter when he should have felt relief, comfort, knowing his closest friend in the world might have found someone worth fighting for. He’d been around enough happy couples in his life—and he’d been around Ash for more than long enough—to see the path this was all headed down, the domesticity, the simple picket fence and the life, comfortable, stable, no open roads, no questionable friends.

Yeah. He couldn’t even begin to figure out where all that bitterness was coming from.

Because she’s not me. And neither is he.

The realization startled Nicco so much that he turned away, ostensibly to give Ash and Hanna whatever privacy he could manage, but in truth because Ash had always been too perceptive by half.

A strong arm on his shoulder stopped him.

“Stay.” Ash’s voice was like stone. “I need you to know the truth too, Nic. I need you to know that I’m not that man.”

He held Nicco’s gaze before returning those arctic blue eyes to Hanna. “I need you both to know.”

When he stepped forward, Hanna didn’t step back, and Nicco had to assume that played to Ash’s favor, that she wanted some kind of answer to everything she had clearly been holding onto all those years. Ash had never told Nicco why he had left Wil Van Rijn’s house, the only place he had ever called a home, he’d told Nicco, before joining The Princes. And Nicco hadn’t pushed at the sore bruise of Ash’s past.

Until last night.

Despite the extremely tense circumstances of the current battle he found himself watching from the sidelines, Nicco couldn’t help but lose himself to the memories of the night before, of the stolen glances, the matching rhythms, the nearly-but-not-quite of standing two feet apart and never touching.

For the last year, pleasure had become something utilitarian, functional, medical even, like he knew his heart was still beating in his chest if he could get his cock hard.

But in the shower with Ash…steam and hot water clouding their vision, giving them the excuse they had needed to take a step over the line…it had felt anything but. If the water had been ice cold, Nicco knew his own burning-hot skin could have filled the room with steam, because nothing in the last year, hell, maybe even his goddamned life, had been more decadent, more demanding, more sinful and erotic than stroking his cock because his best friend told him to.

Nicco swallowed hard and tried to calm the pounding of his heart with slivers of cool air to the lungs. If Ash could see emotional wreckage on his face, no doubt he’d be able to read what their shared memories did.

He focused his attention back on the tense conversation before him.

“Hanna, your father wasn’t a bad man.” Ash sounded resigned. “He was just…desperate.”

Hanna looked from Ash to Nicco. “And all three of us know the kind of damage a desperate man can do.”

Ash seemed to be grappling with the last shred of his patience.

“I couldn’t take you from him, Han. Is that what you want to hear? You knew the world that was pulling me in back then, and not even your dad could save me. You had just… Rose was gone. And you would have followed me right into that darkness if I hadn’t left. I couldn’t do that to Wil, and I couldn’t do that to you.”

Hanna’s eyes were ablaze, despite the glassy sheen that made them somehow brighter, deeper, richer. “You didn’t get to make that choice for me.”

Ash let out a sad little laugh. “It wouldn’t have been a choice, Hanna. Tell me right now you wouldn’t have come with me, wherever I was going.”

She folded her arms across her chest, the movement one of self-protection, and entirely too familiar to Nicco.

“And the money?”

Ash nodded. “I let you think what you thought so you wouldn’t come looking for me because I wasn’t strong enough to walk away from you twice. But that was just your dad giving me a fresh start. He wanted me to be okay, Hanna. Even if it wasn’t under his roof.”

“You could have stayed…” she whispered. “You could have been okay. For us. For me. You could have…tried.”

Ash shook his head. “Not back then I couldn’t have. Not angry and hurt and alone. I know you hate Ralston for me, Hanna, but fuck, I did my hating. I did all of—”

Her gaze darted to Nicco’s, which Ash clocked, of course.

“He knows.”