All It Takes (15 page)

“Excuse me.” The words are finally out of my mouth, but the pressure on my chest is still there. “Can I help you?” I snap as I come to a stop. Crossing my arms over my chest, I cock out a hip and glare at her.

“Oh,” she says, turning on me, a sick little smile touching at her lips. “I’m
sorry.”
Yeah,
I think,
I’m so sure you are.
“Is this . . . yours?” She pokes at the garbage again, scattering it so that it falls even farther onto the street, nearly squashing the tiny white dog by her side, the one I hadn’t even noticed until now. She must not be overly concerned about it, since it isn’t on a leash and she nearly just crushed the thing with her move. Seriously, what the hell? This woman is old enough to be my mother, and she’s acting like a high school mean girl. What is wrong with this town?

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is,” I say, feeling more than seeing it as Ash and Bruiser catch up to me and settle at my side. I take a deep breath and feel Ash’s hand land gently on the small of my back. I glance over at him, and something inside me warms to see that his attention is on me. All on me. Not on this stupid woman and her posse. I let out the breath I’m holding as smoothly as I can. I can’t show these women how mad I am, how freakishly livid they’ve made me. Judging by the smug look in their eyes, that’s what they want.

I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. Bolstered by the weight of Ash’s hand on my back, I raise an eyebrow at her. “Is there a problem here?”

One of the women scoffs. I’m not sure which one, but the sound sends a shot of pure fury up my spine.

The ringleader just plasters on a saccharine smile. “Oh, nothing,” she says, reaching up and tossing a lock of her over-processed hair over her shoulder. “I was just telling the ladies here that I was glad that someone was cleaning up the Collins woman’s trash, though—” she glances back and forth between me and Ash, a smirk pulling at her lips “—I suppose if this is yours now, that’s a little too much to ask for, isn’t it?”

And with that she turns to her friends and says, “Let’s go, ladies,” and the entire fucking group sashays away. My muscles coil under my skin, ready for a fight. I want to lunge after her. I feel wild. I want to rake my nails down her face, claw at her throat, bite at her skin. It’s primal, unrestrained.

Vicious. Just like she is. Just like this whole goddamn town is.

It’s only the touch of Ash’s hand against my back that holds me in place as the hateful woman and her expensive tracksuit-clad posse walk away, a little faster than strictly necessary.

“Jesus
fucking
Christ,” I mutter, and jerk away from him to stalk up the porch steps. The boards creek and bang under my boots, and I’m still gritting my teeth as I yank open the screen door. I’m actually
shaking
I’m so pissed off. Shaking so bad that my fingers don’t want to close around the key, that it’s a struggle to get it into the lock.

How
dare
they? What fucking right do they have to talk about my mother that way? Like she was trash?

She wasn’t perfect. But she was never trash.

Who the fuck do these people think they are?

Finally,
finally,
I get the key to slide in, and I twist it with a jerk that hurts my own wrist but I don’t give a shit. I just yank open the door and fucking
slam
it behind me.

Assholes.

Ash

I
give the women one last glare, and then tug on Bruiser’s leash. Together, we head up the front path to the house. As soon as we’re on the front porch, I unclip his leash from his collar. He knows what to do, I don’t have to worry about him making a break for it, and while I lean over to do it, I steal a glance back at the group. They’re walking away, and as I watch, one of them glances back and visibly jerks as she catches me watching. Then she whips her head back around and the group turns the corner and disappears from sight.

Good.

Good fucking riddance. Star has enough shit to deal with, without being judged by some snooty know-it-alls like that.

I should have let Bruiser eat their little fluff-ball. That would have shown them.

Pulling myself upright, I reach for the door, and as soon as I pull it open, I’m greeted with the sound of Star swearing like a fucking sailor, immediately followed by a crash against the wall.

Fuck. She’s
pissed.

I’m in the kitchen before I realize I’ve moved, and just as I walk through the doorway, Star screams and hurls a frying pan against the wall with both hands. It hits the wall with a crash, sending bits of plaster and drywall into the air before careening away so fast I jump to get out of the way, even though I have no way to know where it’s headed.

“Jesus!” I say, and Star fucking
whirls
around to look at me, anger and defiance sparking in her eyes. I lift my hands in the air in surrender. I have never seen her like this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen
anyone
like this. “Are you okay?” I ask, but my voice wavers under her glare, and I hope I haven’t just brought her wrath down on me.

“Did you fucking hear what they said about her?” Star demands. “About my mother? Who the fuck do those bitches think they are, talking about her like that, like she was worth
nothing.”

“I know,” I said. “Don’t listen to them. They don’t know anything.”

“Goddamn right they don’t know anything. Who the fuck even says things like that about someone? Who the fuck are they, acting like she was beneath them?” There are tears streaming down her face, and her face is waging a battle between anger and sadness right in front of my eyes. I take a step forward, raise a hand to reach out to her, but she opens her mouth and lets out a fucking wail, and reaches over to the table, snatches up one of the heavy metal soup pots we’d set there earlier and whips it against the wall. It clangs and ricochets off, just like the frying pan.

“Goddamn them. And her. And this fucking stupid useless house!”

She turns away from me and starts grabbing the mason jars off the counter and smashing them into the sink. As soon as I realize what she’s doing, what damage she could do, I race forward and grab her. But it’s too late.

There’s already blood trickling down her hand.

“Fuck!” she spits, and grabs at it just as I catch her in my arms.

“Hey. Hey hey hey, it’s okay.” I pull her hand away from her wound. I need to see the damage. She’s shaking in my arms, her chest heaving with sobs, and she leans back against me. “It’s okay,” I tell her again, and wrap myself around her as best I can, pressing my mouth against her ear through her hair. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she says, and turns around in my arms. She presses her face against my shoulder.

“No,” I say, bringing my arms up around her, pulling her close. “But it will be.”

I’ll make sure of it.

Chapter 15

Ash

“H
ey,” Star whispers to me, and I turn from my seat on the front step to look at her. She’s all wrapped up in a hoodie now, the sleeves tugged all the way down to cover her hands. Only the dark-painted tips of her fingers are visible. She shifts from foot to foot, and I can see the muscles shifting beneath the tanned skin of her long, fucking gorgeous legs.

“Hey,” I say back and take another drag of my cigarette. I’m down to my last one. I blow out the smoke slowly, watch it as it dances in the night air.

“Can I . . . I mean . . . Is it okay if I join you?”

God, she looks so scared now, like she expects me to say no.

I don’t think I’m ever going to say no to this girl.

I slap the palm of my hand down on the step next to me. “Pull up some wood,” I tell her, and turn back out to look at the road. I only barely hear her footsteps as she approaches. She sinks down onto the step next to me, and stretches her legs out in front of her. Her feet are bare, I notice. Her toenails painted white, her star tattoos dancing up her left foot. I want to reach out and touch her, but I won’t.

I can’t.

So instead I tuck my own hand into the pocket of my hoodie, leaving only the left one, the one farthest away from her free to hold my smoke.

We sit there in silence for a few minutes, watching as the streetlights start to blink on as the darkness finally arrives, covering the neighborhood. I hear Star’s intake of breath beside me, and I know she’s about to speak, about to talk about what happened. And I’m just not ready for that yet, so I spit out the first thing that comes to my head.

“How’s your hand?”

She kind of blinks at me for a second, as though she has no idea what I’m talking about, but then she looks down and tugs up the sleeve, and I can see the stark white of the gauze against the black fabric of her hoodie. It’s tinged a little with blood. I shove my smoke back between my lips, and reach out for her hand. “Let me see.”

“It’s fine,” she says, but holds out her arm, anyway, sitting quietly as I turn it this way and that. It’s only bleeding in that one spot, and by the looks of it, it’s slowed way down. So that’s good. When she’d first cut it, I’d been worried she’d snagged an artery or something, or that she’d need stitches, it had been bleeding so bad. She’d stood there, wincing and swearing as I held her hand under the running water of the tap—thank god that hadn’t been turned off like the power had been, otherwise I’m not sure what I would have done. When I’d been certain it was clean, I’d pulled it away to examine it, only to have the blood just well right back up again.

I had grabbed a stack of paper napkins out of the package we’d left on the kitchen counter, and pressed them against the cut, telling her to hold it there good and tight, as I went rooting around for the first-aid kid we’d found earlier and had thrown . . .
somewhere.
I finally found it in the dining room, sitting on one of the tucked-in chairs like it was a guest at some fucked-up dinner party. I’d gone a little overboard with the gauze when I began wrapping her up, but it wasn’t like I had any stellar first-aid skills. Plus, I figured that too much was better than not enough. At least it looks like the bleeding has stopped.

I tell her so, and she kind of smiles at me, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and pulls her hand back.

“Is it still hurting?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

“It’s a little sore,” she says, picking a little at the edge of the gauze. “But I’ll be fine. It’s my pride that has taken a beating more than anything.”

I can believe that. She’s always been so cool and collected. Having me see her like that must really be messing with her head.

She lets out a sigh. “I’m really sorry, by the way. About what happened in there.”

I take a long drag on my cigarette and reach over to tap the ash into the little empty soup can that Star gave me when we couldn’t find a single goddamn ashtray in the house. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I tell her. And it’s the truth. “It’s those assholes who should be sorry for talking about your mom like that.”

“Yeah,” she says, and turns away from me to look out at the street. It’s quiet right now, not that this block ever really bustles with activity. I suppose people pay a premium to live in a neighborhood like this. Not that the one I grew up in was so different. The houses were a little smaller, the cars a little older. But overall, not so different. “But the worst part about it is that they were right.”

I turn to look at her. She lets out a breath and tugs the sleeves of her hoodie back down over her hands, covering them completely this time. She wraps her arms around herself, and pulls her legs up, planting her feet on the step directly in front of her. She leans forward, and it almost looks like she’s curling herself into a ball. God, she was really affected by that shit.

“I loved my mother. I really did. It’s just…when I was little, things were great,” she says. But she’s chewing at her lower lip, and staring off into space, like just the act of remembering is wearing on her. “But then my dad died and…my mom, she just stopped, you know?”

“Stopped?”

She sighs and reaches up to tug at the end of a lock of hair. It’s distracting, all long and half-curled. I keep wanting to bury my hands in it, to see what it feels like for myself. “Stopped being a mom,” she says. “I mean, she was there. She didn’t abandon me or anything. I was still fed and clothed and dropped off at school on time. But it was like she’d just checked out, you know? She was there, but at the same time she wasn’t.” She drops her hand back down, and her fingers curl into fists. “That’s when she started bringing home the stuff.”

Shit.
It
had
been her dad’s death that had set her mom off. That made sense. She’d lost not only the guy she’d loved, she’d also lost the one person who would have actually been able to stop her from bringing all this shit into the house in the first place.

“And at first it was great,” she says. “I had all these new toys to play with, and all this new star stuff. I loved it. But . . . ”

“But then it didn’t stop,” I say, because that’s what happened. It just kept coming and coming, burying Star and her mom alive.

She nods. “And soon it didn’t matter that I had the newest toys, because there was nowhere to play with them. There were these paths through the piles, and my mom tried to pretend it was a game, like we were living in a maze or something. And that was fine at first, too, but eventually people noticed. And then she had to choose between having me and keeping her things and, well . . . ” She’s still staring off into space, and I can’t help but wonder what she’s seeing, if that day is playing over and over in her mind in full color. “Well,” she says after a moment, seemingly shaking it off, “you know the rest.”

I can’t help it. I reach out and wrap an arm around her shoulders and tug her just a little bit closer. “That blows,” I tell her, and take another pull on my cigarette before I can say anything else.

I can feel her nod against my shoulder, lean into me, just a little. “Yeah,” she says. “It really does. It’s just . . . She was a shitty mom. I know that. She chose her stuff over her daughter, over me. But . . . ”

“But she was still your mom,” I say. And I get it. I do. Because even after they kicked me to the curb, my parents will always be my parents, and I don’t think there’s anything they could do that I wouldn’t forgive them for, at least a little bit. They’re the reason I’m here.

Star shifts against me, and I’m doing everything I can to not pull her closer. “Yeah, but it’s more like she was a
person
, and people keep forgetting that. They just keep talking about her like she wasn’t. Like all she was was
this,”
She reaches a hand out and kind of waves it around us, gesturing to the house, the car, all the stuff. Everything.

“Look,” I say. “Screw them. Seriously. Those people? The ones from earlier and anyone else who says that shit? They don’t matter. Not to you and not to me.” I take one last puff of my smoke and finish it off, dropping the butt into the soup can.

Only you matter,
I want to say, but I keep my mouth fucking shut. She doesn’t need my problems, not right now.

We sit in silence for a minute, just breathing in the night air, until finally Star turns to me. “Come on,” she says, pulling out of my embrace and getting to her feet. “We missed dinner and I don’t know about you, but I’m
starving.”

I don’t even think. I just follow her inside.

I’m pretty sure I’d follow that girl anywhere.

***

Now that we have the power back on, dinners are less of the
college food experience extravaganza
and a bit closer to the
look at me, I’m a grown-up
kind of thing. The meals aren’t fancy, but they are tasty. Spaghetti and meat sauce, tacos, chicken and potatoes. Simple stuff, really. But considering I have no clue what I’m doing in the kitchen, I still think it’s pretty damn good. I’m even starting to reconsider my stance on vegetables. When Star adds them to stuff, they taste good. I’m starting to think that it’s not veggies I hate, but my parents’ cooking. After all the drama we’ve been through lately, it feels good to just sit down with Star and eat. And she was right. I was ravenous.

But eating dinner with her, cleaning up afterward . . . it’s nice.

I’m not used to having
nice
in my life. I’m used to
shitty.
I’m used to
disappointment.
I’m used to people being let down by me, by the way I act and speak and fucking
look.
Everyone’s just always so disappointed in me and with me and just—
ugh.

But when I look at Star, I don’t see disappointment in her eyes. Not when she looks at me.

She’s standing next to the counter now, drying the last of our dishes from dinner. It was my job to wash since she couldn’t with her injured hand. And she’s just smiling at me, talking about something that she’d seen Bruiser do today when I’d been out taking a load of stuff down to the dump. But I can’t even make out the words she’s saying.

I don’t even hear them.

All I can do is look at her, at how fucking gorgeous she is. How her eyes fucking light up when she smiles at me, when she tells me about her day. And suddenly all I can think of is the way she looks at me, and the
chance.

The chance that she feels the same way about me as I do about her. The chance that we could be together. That it could be
good.

The chance that I keep letting pass me by every single fucking day that I don’t open my mouth and say something, don’t do something about it.

My heart is racing in my chest, and the thoughts that are racing through my brain must show on my face, because Star’s voice trails off and just looks at me, that same little furrow digging deep between her eyebrows.

“Ah, fuck it,” I say suddenly, striding toward her. I grab the dishtowel from her hand and toss it on the counter beside her as her eyes widen with surprise.

“Ash, what—” But that’s all she gets out before I surge forward and press my mouth to hers.

For a minute, she stands there frozen, and all I can think is that this is the end. I’ve fucked everything up. But just as I’m about to pull away, her hands come up and I feel her fingers against my face. It’s the softest damn thing I’ve ever felt, and I can’t stifle the moan that rises up out of me as I press forward, and slant my mouth against hers. My tongue glances against her lip, and then she’s pressing back against me, her mouth opening beneath mine, her fingers tightening in the fabric of my shirt.

Fuck.

My arms come up around her, my palms flat against her sides, my fingers touching, trailing everywhere I can reach. And she fucking
whimpers
and starts writhing her hot little body against mine, and what little control I have
snaps,
and I’m wrapping her up in my arms and leaning her back against the kitchen counter.

Star

H
oly crap.

Holy.

Crap.

This is actually happening. God, for
weeks
I’ve wanted Ash, wanted to press myself against him, touch him all over. Now that it’s actually happening I don’t even know where to start.

So I do the only thing I can. I touch him everywhere. Up his arms, under the hem of his shirt, feeling the heat of his skin against mine. I reach up and wrap my arms around his neck, tugging him closer. I slide the fingers of my good hand through his hair.

A million years pass; a single second. I can’t tell anymore.

And then all of a sudden, we’re moving.

His hands are rubbing up and down my sides as we kiss, making our way, together, step by step, toward my makeshift bedroom. When we’re just inside the door, Ash spins us so that my back is up against the door jamb, and his hands smooth down my sides to my legs. Then, without warning, his hands clasp behind my thighs and he hauls me up. The jamb digs into my back and I wrap my legs around his waist without thinking, a rush of heat shooting through me. I rake my fingers through his hair and jerk his head closer as he presses against me. His body rubbing against mine. Back and forth. Back and forth. It’s driving me crazy.

Moaning, I lick into his mouth one last time, getting lost in the kiss before I pull away enough to drop my legs back down and push him toward the mattress. He stumbles back a bit, grinning at me all cocky. But I can see the way his chest is heaving, the way the muscles of his chest shift and move beneath his skin.

He wants this as badly as I do.

I reach down and grasp the hem of my tank top, and begin pulling it up over my head. The cool air against my overheated skin is delicious and I shiver a little as I shake my hair free and drop the shirt to the floor.

There’s a whimper, and I freeze.

That sound wasn’t from either of us.

I whirl around and find Bruiser just outside the door, staring at me with big eyes.

Ash lets out a laugh behind me, and I look over my shoulder and glare at him before turning back to the dog.