Fighting Shadows (On the Ropes #2)(70)

I wished I could stay in that bed with him forever.

I wished I could let go of the past and trust his words.

His smartass joke was only a Band-Aid over the gaping wound that was killing our relationship before we had even gotten started.

Or maybe my doubts were killing us.

As I snuggled into his arms, I breathed in deeply, trying to burn that moment into my memory forever.

I would need it more than anything else when I started over again.





I WOKE UP EARLY THE next morning with my hands kneading Ash’s breasts. She was sound asleep, but my cock twitched between us. I would have given anything to take her right then, but I knew I should wait. She had gone from being virtually untouched for nineteen years to having come at least a dozen times in under two days. That night was our first official date, and I had every plan of ending it with my cock buried to the hilt inside her. So, despite the ache between my legs, I let her rest.

The clock flashed six A.M. but there was no possible way I could have fallen back to sleep. I shifted, trying to scoot out of bed, but unlike Awake Ash, Sleeping Ash was a cuddler. She followed me as I tried to inch my way out from under her. Then I chuckled when she all but crawled on top of me.

The sun was just starting to light the room, but coffee would have to wait. I’d been starved of her for entirely too long. Wrapping my arms around her, I spent an hour soaking her in as she slept peacefully on top of me. The last two days played on a loop while the previous years faded into nothing more than a distant memory.

We still had so much stuff to work through—the misunderstanding the night before being the prime example—but I was committed. I’d talked a big game about making her fall in love with me again and getting to know the real Ash Mabie.

But the truth was that I didn’t need to know any more about her.

I love her.

Every crazy, quirky bit of her, I undeniably loved.

As I kissed the top of her head, my eyes drifted to my old book she had used as a journal over the years, sitting on her nightstand.

It was probably a gross invasion of privacy, but I had spent the day prior reading every word she’d written inside that Dave Eggers book. It had taken me a little while to figure out what the highlights meant, but I finally came to the conclusion that they were her streams of consciousness written in code. The random pink-highlighted letters all combined into sentences about how she’d been happy. She’d rambled about people she’d met, books she’d read from the library, and the longest of all was when Judy had baked a cake for Ash’s birthday.

The blue seemed to be when she had been sad. She’d written about missing her dad even though she knew she had done the right thing by turning him in. She’d mentioned how hard it had been being on the run, and once, she’d debated stealing food versus being hungry. It was all I could do not to set the book on fire after that.

However, I tried to focus on the green letters. Those were her dreams. There wasn’t an F, L, I, N, or T in that book that wasn’t highlighted in green. She hadn’t been lying. I had been walking in every single dream she’d had. But what bothered me was that I was usually walking out on her.

Her subconscious couldn’t have been more wrong. I was never letting her go.

Some time later, I drifted back to sleep with her still snuggled on top of me.

It wasn’t until I woke up that I realized that, while I might not ever let her go, holding on to her wouldn’t be easy, either.



“Ash?” I groaned, stretching my stiff muscles across the empty bed. Prying my eyes open, I looked at the clock.

How the hell did I sleep to eleven?

“Ash,” I called again, but the house remained notably silent. I pushed to my feet and tugged a pair of shorts and a t-shirt on. Then I headed out to find her.

Wandering around the house, I called her name, but room after room, I came up empty.

“Ash!” I yelled up the stairs that led to the unused spare bedrooms.

I’d bought that house determined to one day be able to navigate those stairs. They were a physical reminder that, while I was up on two legs, I was a long way from full mobility. They both taunted me and drove me on a daily basis.

I started the daunting task of climbing them, but at the last minute, I talked myself out of it, deciding to check the weeds instead.

I checked every possible room in my house, but she was nowhere to be found. My mind began to race with possibilities, stretching the gamut of “She’ll be back any minute” to “She’s gone and I’ll never see her again.”

Heading back to my room, I grabbed my cell phone, panic building with every step.

Surely, she wouldn’t try to run again?

We’d made some great strides the night before, and we were supposed to have a date that night.

When I rounded the corner of the room, relief settled in my chest—her clothes were neatly folded in the corner. They were a mess the night before, so at some point that morning, she had to have folded and organized them. The relief was short-lived, though, because the messenger bag she used to carry everything was notably missing.

She wouldn’t have left her clothes though.

Would she?

There was only one thing I knew for a fact Ash would never leave behind—and unfortunately, it wasn’t me.

My pulse spiked as I slowly turned toward her nightstand, praying with all of my heart that I was wrong.