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“True that,” Mick concurred thoughtfully.

I walked to the front of the rig to retrieve my cell phone, feeling his eyes on me again, but I ignored him. The guy might have smashed me with a baseball bat, but it wasn’t me he’d wanted to hurt. The fact that he was probably at large just a few neighborhoods away was irrelevant. I slammed the ambulance door, left the guys to their gossiping, and went into the house to get changed. I pulled my old black woolen hat back over my head as Mick finally ambled in.

“You’ve got company downstairs.”

“Ash?”

He shook his head and smirked. “Nah, the hot redhead with the bangs.”

Ellie.

That made more sense. Ash rarely came close enough to the firehouse for anyone to notice him. He said it was because he found me too hot in my uniform, but we both knew it wasn’t just that. If most of the guys I worked with discovered that he was far more than my roommate, my career as a paramedic in the city would be over.
It was unfair, prejudiced, and discriminatory, and anything else you wanted to call it, but that was the reality. Until Ash came along, I’d never stayed with a man long enough for it to matter. I’d kept my encounters purely physical, brief—not something I’d risk the job for.

Mick knew, but he was different. He was my friend, and I trusted him completely. I bid him good-bye and jogged down the steps to find Ellie.

I found her perched on the wall outside the vehicle bay. She smiled brightly and threw her arms round my neck. I returned her embrace with a grin of my own. “To what do I owe the pleasure, sugar?”

Ellie pressed her lips to mine, ignoring the whistles of the watching firemen. “Do I need a reason?”

I laughed and kissed her back before setting her back on her feet. She was another reason no one ever questioned my relationship status—her irregular visits were just frequent enough for the whole fire crew to assume I was banging her. “No,” I said. “I just thought you were still in England.”

Ellie made a face. “I was, but I got bored visiting my elderly relatives, so I skipped out early. My parents and Meg are still there.”

I grinned a little at that. Another continent was the best place for Megan, as far as I was concerned at least. “So what brings you here?”

“I missed you. And I owe Ash dinner. I called him and he said he was working on something but he’d come out later. What do you say? Want to get some deep dish? My treat.”

“Did Ash say when he’d be done?”

Ellie rolled her eyes delicately. “He said eight, so probably around nine. He sounded pretty vague, so I just told him come to Mario’s when he was finished.”

I glanced at my watch. It was just after seven. I was dog tired, but I was also starving and Mario’s was only a block from home. “Let’s go.”

We ambled slowly to the L and across town to the pizza place. After our food arrived, Ellie filled me in on her trip overseas. Her mom was English by birth, so they all spent a lot of time over there, and she always had bizarre stories to tell about her relatives. We declined dessert when we were done with the pizza, but ordered more drinks. There was plenty left for Ash. He had a strange fondness for cold pizza, a habit that made me shudder.

Ellie looked around the restaurant as she sipped on her beer. She pointed at one of the weird 3D abstract pieces of art on the walls. “That reminds me of the chalk drawings Ash used to do on the sidewalk.”

I stared at the painting. I felt like I should have recognized it, but I didn’t. “Back in Philly?”

“Yeah.” She smiled wistfully. “I used to take him hot chocolate when it was really cold. He didn’t make much money in the winter.”

“Better than begging.”

“I guess,” she said. “I don’t think he really did it for the money, though. Whenever I watched him, it was like he was just trying forget himself, lose himself in the art.”

Her words struck a chord. It was a trait I’d seen in him many times, though I’d often considered it a good one for him to have. He occasionally drew things that disturbed me, but sometimes his creativity was the best medicine for his darker moods.

“I found an old photo a few weeks ago, of a Spider-Man piece he drew outside the record company where Charlie did his internship. Have you ever seen it?”

I shook my head. Ellie rummaged in her bag and pulled out her phone. She pressed a few buttons and brought up the picture she wanted. The image was slightly grainy and blurred, but even with my untrained eye, I could see the detail in the image of the character scaling a skyscraper.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” She leaned over the table so she could see it too. “If you stood at a certain angle it really felt like you were on the top of the building. I cried when the rain washed it away, but Ash didn’t care. I don’t think he ever even saw it in daylight.”

I handed the phone back to her and picked up my beer to buy a much needed moment to compose myself. It had always struck me as significant that Ash had gone from a medium that was so easily erased to one that was about as permanent as you could get. I’d thought about it a lot since we’d met, but had never figured it out. Ash loved tattoos and their meanings, but people were often surprised that he only had one himself—the wizard on his wrist etched by his own hand. It took me ages to work out he was too messed up to let anyone else touch his skin like that. I swallowed thickly. “I hope Charlie paid him well.”

Ellie shook her head. “Not really. He just got Charlie to buy the colors he needed. He drew it in the night, and then he disappeared for a few days after that. I was really worried about him for a while.”

I was silent. Part of me wanted to know every little thing about him, but a huge part of me couldn’t bear to imagine what he’d been through before I met him. Even thinking about it made my chest hurt.

Ellie sighed when I didn’t respond. “It took me ages to get him to talk to me. There were a few kids and vagrants around, but most of them were drunks or prostitutes. Ash was different. From the first time I saw him, it felt wrong to leave him there.”

“You didn’t leave him there, though, did you?” I said lightly.

Ellie picked at the label on her beer bottle. It seemed she wanted to talk tonight whether I wanted to hear it or not. “No, but I didn’t think he was going to stay in Chicago until he met you. You make him happy, Pete.”

“You can’t make someone happy, sugar. He does that all by himself.”

Ellie smiled and squeezed my hand, but whatever she was going to say in response was cut off by Ash sliding into the booth beside her. I laughed as he shook his wet hair into her face. She squealed, but her attempts to fend him off were useless. He scooped her up, grinning like an idiot, and pinned her on his lap.

The sight of them cuddled together was bittersweet. Ash once told me the reason he’d allowed her to help him all those years ago was he couldn’t resist the respite she gave him. She was the only ray of light he’d seen in years, and somehow he’d known the faith she had in him was the only hope he had. He didn’t confide in her, didn’t confess his darkest secrets to her, but he didn’t need to. She loved him enough to just let him be.

“Pete?”

Startled, I realized I was staring. I nudged Ash under the table with my foot to divert his attention. “Hungry?”

He shook his head. “Get a box. I’ll take it home.”

I raised a curious eyebrow. He rarely turned down food. It was an ingrained habit in him to eat at every opportunity, whether he was hungry or not. He ignored my questioning look and reached for Ellie’s beer.

She swatted him playfully. “Not hungry, huh? Bet I’ve got something to change your mind.”

Curled up on his lap with his arm around her, to an outside observer the question would have seemed flirtatious, even sexual. To the untrained eye, they looked like any other young couple—completely wrapped up in each other. But if you looked closer, and you knew what you were looking for, the lack of sexual chemistry between them was obvious. He grasped her shoulders lightly, without a hint of possession. She poked his chest and ruffled his hair with her fingers, but didn’t caress it. Their relationship was warm, and they loved each other deeply. Just not in that way.

In the past, I’d mused that maybe both their lives would’ve been easier if they did have sexual feelings for each other. She’d be able to escape the prison of her closeted sexuality, and the fears that plagued him would cease to matter; they’d become irrelevant.

Eventually, I’d figured out that was bullshit. Ash was messed up when Ellie found him. Having sex with her wouldn’t have changed that. It
would
have made his issues easier to hide from, though. With us, it was always there, lurking behind him, telling him what we had wasn’t enough, he wasn’t enough because he couldn’t do all the things he thought I needed. It was hard to accept that he still felt that way after all this time, especially when I saw him cuddled up to someone else without a care in the world.

Ellie giggled and waved her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Pete?”

“Hmm?” I gathered my wayward thoughts and peered at the packet she clutched in her other hand. “What are those?”

I picked it up as she slid it across the table. “Wagon Wheels,” I said aloud. “That just sounds freaky.”

Ash reached over, unwrapped one and shoved it into his mouth whole. “They taste like MoonPies.”

I grinned at him. Seemed he was hungry after all; damn his sweet tooth. I was still suspicious, though. MoonPies were gross. “What the hell does ‘Jammie’ mean?”

“Jam is jelly in England,” Ellie explained. “So they’re like MoonPies with raspberry jelly.”

My face must’ve shown my opinion, but it didn’t matter because it looked like Ash was going to make short work of them anyway. We spent the rest of the evening shooting the shit, but with everyone working the next morning, we called it a night before anyone drank too much.

Ash and I headed for home after seeing Ellie back to her building. He lit a cigarette as we walked along, and as usual recently, seemed completely lost in thought.

“Did you get everything done?”

“Hmm?”

“Your school work,” I clarified. “Did you get it done?”

“No.”

I reached out and shoved him lightly, ignoring his reticent vibe. “You’ve still got loads of time, though, right?”

He stumbled, clearly distracted, and shot me an irritated glare. “What? Yeah, I’ve got a few weeks.”

Annoying him was better than being ignored, but as a peace offering, I handed him the weird-ass cookies Ellie had given us. Predictably, his face softened. “Thanks,” he said. “Sorry for spacing out. How was your day?”

I shrugged, grinning to let him know all was forgiven. “Same old, same old.”

It was bullshit, and we both knew it. In my job, there was no such thing as a typical day, but sometimes I just couldn’t be bothered to talk about it. Ash took his cue to let it drop, discarded his smoke, and stuffed a cookie in his mouth.

He let us into the apartment and kicked off his shoes. I stepped around him and headed for the bathroom. “I’m going to grab a shower,” I called over my shoulder.

A noncommittal grunt was his only response.

I got cleaned up and ventured out to retrieve the bag I’d dumped in the living room. I was on some heavy shifts for the next few days, and I needed to sort my shit out. Ash was nowhere to be seen. I assumed he’d gone to bed, but when I shuffled back through the apartment, the bedroom was empty. There was only one other place he could be, and sure enough, I found him in his studio, sitting on the floor with a sketch pad on his knees. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips, clearly forgotten.

He didn’t appear to notice my presence, so I chanced a glance around the room, surprised by the disarray. Ash was a tidy guy, especially with his art stuff, but there was shit everywhere in the studio, like he’d thrown it all about trying to find something. I took another chance and craned my neck, squinting at the sketch he was working on. It wasn’t a tattoo, but it was a subject I’d seen him draw before. The child’s face often appeared in his work: a child I’d thought was him until I looked closer and saw it was a girl.

Strange thing was, though I’d asked him many times, he didn’t have a clue who she was.

I
WAS
drifting somewhere in that hazy place where dreaming and consciousness merged. It was a place I often visited after a long shift, a reality I could never quite decipher. I figured it was because I was just too tired to sleep, but the spacey haze was never a feeling I enjoyed.

It was a dark night. Even the rowdy streets below our building were quiet and still. I rolled over for the hundredth time, automatically reaching for Ash, but he wasn’t there. I’d come home at midnight to an empty apartment, and after an hour of restless dozing, he still hadn’t come home.

We didn’t have the kind of relationship where I expected him to tell me where he was going, but a strange gnawing in my stomach bugged me, keeping me from the sleep I desperately needed. Frustrated, I snagged a pillow from his side of the bed and pulled it over my head. Since when had I become his fucking mother?

I fell asleep eventually, despite being certain such a thing was impossible, but I was abruptly woken near dawn by a violent movement beside me. I came to with a start as Ash bolted upright with a strangled cry.

He slapped his hand over his mouth and gasped for breath. His shoulders shook with the effort, but I forced myself to remain still. Every part of me, my head, my heart, screamed at me to sit up and comfort him, but I didn’t. I’d seen him have bad dreams before, and sadly, I knew better than to touch him. Helplessly, I just had to watch as he tried to calm himself down. The room was dark, but in the dim light of the moon, he looked like he was going to be sick.

I felt like a lifetime had passed before he finally seemed to overcome his ingrained instinct to bolt from the bed. He lay back with his eyes wide and stared at the ceiling. Beside him, I remained silent and still. My heart ached. It always hurt to see him distressed, but it had been a long time since his nightmares had hit him so hard. I’d almost forgotten how bad they could be. Suddenly, I was furious with my own complacency.