Saving Ash (book #2) Chapter Twenty-four

Cinder

“Cinder, talk to me,” I hear him say from somewhere in the distance. We’re still in the tub, and I don’t know how long I’ve been staring into nothingness. I can’t look him in the eye. I’m still trying to process what he just told me.

            He had a child with Pippa…

            If I look at him, he will see all my hate and despair. Everything I promised him will be a lie. I know I can’t blame him. He had a child. A child he loved. A child he lost. I can accept that. But I can’t accept she was the mother of his son.

            “I’ve done what you have asked. I’ve opened the door to all my demons, my regrets, my sins.”

            Answer him. Say something. He’s right. He did exactly as I asked, and now I’m not sure I can handle this. His hand comes to my face. He cups my cheek, and I slide my eyes with caution to his.

            I see him. The true him. An aura of light shines around him. All colors have been revealed. The light now shines in his darkness, and he’s standing on the edge of promises. A promise I gave him.

            “Ash, I don’t know what to say. Of all the things unimaginable, that was the last thing I could have imagined. Christopher was your…son?” I ask just above a whisper.

            “Yes.”

            “And how old were you when he was born?”

            “It was the end of my fifteenth year.”

            “I…I.” I can’t finish. I’m too in shock. This man has suffered more than I could have imagined. The things he’s lived with. A life of lies. A life of abuse. A life without a life. No wonder he’s so fucked up.

            “Cinder. Please don’t leave me. I need you.” His voice is small, and I picture the young boy who lived in the shadows of her abuse. The boy who never knew real love. A boy trapped by desire. Desire that held him prisoner.

            He said he liked it.

            “And no one knows Christopher was your…son?” I ask.

            “Only you.”

            I start to stand, but Ash pulls me down. “Where are you going? You promised me you wouldn’t leave me.”

            “Ash, I’m not leaving you. I…I just need some space and time to process this.”

            “Why?”

            “Why!? Because this is some messed up shit, that’s why.”

            “I told you; you wouldn’t be able to handle my demons.”

            “When you said, demons, I thought you meant your freaking kink. Now I’m hearing about incest and…babies. Is this what the wealthy do for fun? Abuse each other, tell lies, and keep secrets to the grave?”

            “I can’t say for all wealthy, but for my family, yes.”

            I push his hand away and stand to get out of the tub. He sits up and watches me. I pull a towel from the rod and wrap it around me and run into the bedroom. But I don’t know what to do after that.

            “Cinder, please. I beg you. Don’t leave me. I don’t know what to do now.” He’s standing there with a towel wrapped low on his hips, looking so vulnerable—so scared.

            “That makes two of us, Ash.”

            He starts to walk toward me, and for some reason I back away. He holds his hand out, like I’m a scared animal he’s trying to coax to him.

            Why? Why does this part bother me so much? Shouldn’t it be the fact that his stepmother raped him, repeatedly? Why does a baby seem to make it…intimate? Rape victims sometimes get pregnant. And Ash should be treated no differently. He was a child. It’s not his fault.

            “Why me, Ash? Why have you chosen me of all the people in the world, why me?”

            “Because you make me want to change. Live something different beside what I have been. I just never thought I could. I don’t know anything else. From the time I was young, this was all I knew. I never had a normal teen’s life. A teen who had crushes on girls at school. Dates with girls, high school dances and proms. I’ve never even kissed another girl, Cinder. Until you. The minute I felt I wanted to kiss you, I had to go deeper. Break the cycle I’ve been living in since the age of fourteen…”

            “Fourteen? That’s how old you were in those pictures? I knew you looked young.”

            “Yes, I was fourteen when the abuse began. And the fact I’m now seeing it as abuse, tells me something.”

            Maybe it’s different with boys. Boys who are teenagers raging with hormones. Boys who fantasize about sex 24/7. What boy wouldn’t want to fuck his hot teacher?

            “What are you thinking, Cinder?”

            “How much you wanted it,” I say with no remorse. I watch his breath hitch from my words. For some reason, I want to hurt him. Because he’s my only link to her—Pippa. “You still call out her name at night. You still role play being with her.”

            “Pippa,” he says quietly.

            “You still want her,” I shout and run toward the closet to dress. I need to get out of here. I need to get to Sasha’s and tell her everything. I no longer want to protect Ash.

            The minute I’m in the closet, the door shuts and it’s dark. Ash is inside here with me. I hear us breathing. Though it’s dark, I know we are looking right at each other.

            My eyes are becoming used to the dark, and I can see his silhouette. I see the outline of his strong body, his disheveled hair. And then I see the glistening in his eyes.

            “Cinder. Don’t be afraid.”

            “I’m not afraid, Ash. I just can’t get this sick feeling out of me.”

            “I make you sick?”

            I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s too soon. Too soon after the truth. Even in infidelity, no one is ready to go on with each other. Time has to play a big part of it. A time to be pissed. A time to blame. A time to go numb. And then a time to heal.

            But is this my heartache?  My moment of truth? I was not even a part of this. Yet it feels all of me is coming undone. Like I’ve been the joke of some poor wife who had no idea that her husband has a mistress.

            “Ash,” I say and crumple to the floor. I start to cry, punching my fist into the floor.

            “Cinder. Shh, it’s okay. I understand how you must see me. But I had to take the chance. If I am ever to have a chance with you…”

            I lift my head. “A chance?”

            “Yes, a chance with you. A chance to know…love…”

            He stops. The word has him all confused and even in the dark, I can see his frustrations.

            “What are you saying, Ash? You want to…love me?”

            “No.” There is a moment of silence and I want to tear out of this closet. “I am in love with you.”

            Love. He said the word love. He said…in love with me.

            “Ash…I don’t know what to say.”

            “Say you won’t leave me. Give me a chance. Let me love you.”

            “How do you know it’s love that you feel for me?”

            He pulls me up on his lap and cradles me in his arms. “Because when I’m with you, I can’t see anything else. I can’t imagine a day I wake up and you’re not there. I get chills thinking of all the things I get to experience for the first time as a man in love. Because when I’m with you, she leaves me alone.”

            Pippa. He means…Pippa.

            “Ash, I can’t let my heart get ripped out. Not again, and I don’t mean from a boyfriend, or whatever we are. I can’t be left behind like I’m a nothing. Like when my father left me. When my mother left me. Like when all my foster parents left me. I can’t go through that again.”

            “I know. I will never leave you, Cinder. We are both broken souls left behind to find the other. I just never cared until I found you.”

            I move my head up to face him in the dark closet. I feel him coming closer and then his lips on mine. My heart stirs with heartbreak and love. Blood runs through my veins like fire and my body completely betrays me. I want him more than ever. I want him through all the heartache and evil that time has taken from him. I want him so she can’t have him.

            “Make love to me, Ash.”

            He picks me up and then moves us to the middle of the closet. The small space fills with our breathing, our need.

            “I love you, Cinder,” he says, laying me to the floor.

            I want to say it. Tell him I love him. But for some reason, the words won’t come. Anger holds them back. But it’s also anger that is driving this moment of passion.

            I feel him all over me. His lips. His hands. And then his cock presses in me hard, and I feel his toes anchor to the floor.

            I’m dizzy and feel drunk. This desire is crazy and unhealthy. And yet, it’s what makes it all the more passionate.

            We rock into each other like mad lovers. Years of heartache thrusting in and building a new. My fingernails dig into his back, and I welcome the hard thrusts he is giving me.

            “Love me, Cinder,” he says between thrusts and moans. “Please say you love me,” he begs.

            “Ash…I…I.” It’s right there but I won’t let it come out. And maybe I feel it’s the last weapon I have left in my arsenal.

            “I will earn your love, Cinder,” he breathes out, rocking in and out of me. My heart explodes with his declaration to win my love. It makes me feel worthy and my orgasm explodes on his next thrust. A thousand sparkling lights fill the space, and I feel I’m floating somewhere in a world where only we exist.

            I feel him shudder and release himself inside me. I smile and think back to the day when the doctor who gave me the physical, told me Ash always waits until after the physical before becoming intimate. But with me, he didn’t.

            I wrap my arms around his neck and take pleasure in the little kisses Ash is giving me all over my neck and face.

            Yes, he will earn my love.

***

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.