Saving Ash (book #2) Chapter-Fourteen
Ash
As I look at her, doubt swarms through her mind. Any thoughts of fixing me will be cast to the side. What she thought she knew, couldn’t be further from the truth. I look down. I’m holding her hand. I feel the trembles that escape her heart and run throughout her veins. She doesn’t know she’s holding a monster’s hand. A serpent who will lure you in and lock you away, never to be the same again.
That’s what she did to me.
Pippa.
My first love.
My mother.
My demon.
Yes, she lives in me, no matter how much I try and change. She molded me. Created me. I’ve tried to live in two worlds. But it doesn’t work that way. I’m lost somewhere between a lovesick boy, and a ruthless man whose only pleasure is to take the heart of others and play my sick game with them.
It’s simple really. A lovesick boy only brought me pain and despair. A ruthless man gives me power—pleasure.
So, why would I ever want to change?
She slowly looks up at me. Her eyes are filled with the mystery that I am. A soul she can’t save. She knows it, I can tell. But is she willing to stay the course?
I know in my sick way, I’m getting pleasure just at the thought. A lost, heartless man who every girl thinks she can save. It’s what makes this game so much greater.
I’m a bastard. Something that can’t be caught in the wild and learn to live in a tame world.
I look her straight in the eyes, my steely glare keeps her from reaching deep into the dark pockets of my mind. She has only discovered one thing. But trust me, there is so much more to Ash Sinclair.
More secrets.
More demons.
So. Much. More.
My fathers’s priest stands between the two headstones. A cold wind whips through the small tent.
Why a tent, Father?
Are you still ashamed of the life you took from me? A life that could have been so different. A life where maybe I could have loved…again.
Cinder looks to my father and then to the priest chanting something about death and life. She pretends to be listening. But I know she’s not.
My thumb comes to caress the inside of her hand. She glances up, and I see the tears swelling in her eyes. I don’t know what it means. Don’t care to know. I only want one thing.
Desire. Desire that comes in wicked ways. Being so close to evil and innocence forms a lust growing inside me. Something I must get out. Act upon.
She looks over to the headstones once again. She focuses on Christopher’s.
Christopher. The Christopher the world will never know. They will never know the true way you came to be, and died.
I remember his laugh. His touch. How easily he could burn me with his looks.
It wasn’t your fault, little one. Your life was not to be, like mine.
But here I am. And there you are.
The priest begins to pray, and I watch them all bow their heads. Father, Cinder, and I know Hunter is out there among the headstones. He’s not out there for his sister's memorial. He’s out there to make sure she’s still dead. Never has Hunter placed a flower on her grave.
Like me, Hunter has a secret.
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Saving Ash© 2024 Gina A. Jones rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.