Storm Front (The Charistown Series) (Volume 2) (36 page)

“Ashley, are you listening to me?” She startled when he
called her name and the tension that had momentarily left her shoulders
returned. Ryan softened his voice, he needed her to hear him. “You spent your
childhood trying to be the perfect daughter, and then spent your adulthood
following the dreams Leo had mapped out for himself before he died. When have
you ever just been
you
?”

Ashley visibly flinched, and Ryan knew the words he just
spoke sliced through her heart like a knife. The pain was evident as her mouth
dipped down and her chin began to tremble. In a matter of mere seconds, the
pain transformed into fury, and her injured expression became a vengeful sneer.

“You want to know when I was me?” She seethed. “I was me
when I loved you! I was me when I gave you my heart, my trust, my
love…EVERYTHING, Ryan!”

She palmed away the salty sadness of her unchecked tears and
continued speaking in a raspy, broken voice, “I gave
myself
to a guy who
didn’t return my love, or my trust. He didn’t cherish my heart, he gave it back
to me—broken into jagged little pieces. That’s when I was me, Ryan. You were
the first and only man who got a piece of the real me. And do you wanna know
what I learned? I learned I wasn’t good enough.”

Each word crippled him. They punched at his diaphragm,
stealing his breaths. She had
always
been good enough. It was he who
never measured up. He who didn’t deserve
her
.

No. This wasn’t about his insecurities. This was about
getting her to move forward.

“Ashley, do you want to know where I was tonight?”

She looked down at his feet before she replied, “No. I don’t
care where you were, or who you were with.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” His gaze penetrated hers.
“I was trying to figure out what to do about you…about us.” He could see the
argument forming on her lips so he pressed one finger to her mouth and
continued to speak.

“I’ve been trying for years to get you back, but I finally
realized
I
didn’t lose you, Princess…
you
did. I don’t care what
you say or what you think, you stopped living the day Leo died. You’re half a
person and that half isn’t even you, it’s…Leo. It’s his piercings and his
tattoos. But come on, Ash, let’s be truthful, you’re not even showing the
honest side of your brother...” Her stone still posture and shocked stare told
him he had her attention, even if it was laced with excruciating pain, and it
forced him to proceed.

“It’s not the side that made him proud, it’s the side you’re
choosing to recall. You’re rewriting history, Princess, and while you’ve
remembered the battles, you’ve forgotten the victories.” Ryan stroked his
knuckles down the side of Ashley’s jaw, “Leo would be heartbroken to see what’s
happened to you.”

Ashley swatted his hand away from her face and glared at
him, “How dare you,” she sneered, “you son of a bitch! How can you stand there
and talk to me that way after everything I’ve been through. My God Ryan, I
thought you loved me. I thought you’d always be there for me but once again—once
again
—you stand before me and crush what’s left of my heart!” He could
taste the venom in her words and it became increasingly bitter with each
swallow.

They were interrupted by booms of thunder and streaks of
lighting, which struck in time to the argument that was raging between them. If
Ryan had been a religious man he would have surmised that God himself had
orchestrated a symphony building up to this—their final blow-up. Ryan’s insides
churned at her toxic words and her fractured glare. She batted his outstretched
arm away as he tried to embrace her crumbling form.

“I do love you. Can’t you see that?” He could hear the plea
in his tone but at this point he wasn’t above begging if it would make her
listen to him. “Look at me, Ashley. Really
look
at me…for once. I’m
standing here telling you the things you need to hear even if, in the end, your
knowing them makes you hate me. I’m not trying to crush your heart, Princess,
I’m trying to put it back together.

You’ve spent almost seven years in mourning. Seven years
blaming yourself for things you had no control over. It’s time to let it go,
Ashley. You need to move on. Leo loved you with his whole heart—you were his
soul—and he would never have wanted you to live your life mourning his. He
would’ve told you to, ‘Reach for the light at the end, Ash.’ He lived by those
words.”

He knew it was a little low to quote Leo at this moment, but
he needed her open, raw and ready to start over. Leo was the one person who
truly had the gift to do that. Although the devastation and pain in Ashley’s
eyes told him he may have pushed too hard too fast.

The ringing of the phone broke the silence but not the
tension. He didn’t want to answer the call, the only person that mattered in
the moment was standing in front of him, but the second and third rings seemed
to get progressively louder.

“Answer the call, Ryan,” Ashley requested, her tone flat her
eyes red. “It could be Lyla and she’s home by herself. She could need
something.”

Ryan knew that Ashley wanting him to answer the call was
about more than Lyla. He knew she was trying to put space between them but as
much as he wanted to push her—to continue to make the progress that he knew
they could—past experience dictated that he needed to let what he’d said thus
far settle. So, he’d give her space…just not too much. As soon as his back was
turned his thoughts went to who could be on the phone. Memories washed over him
as he remembered the night so many years before, when he’d taken the call from
Leo. God, he hoped it wasn’t anything bad, if not for his sanity, for Ashley’s.

He knew if anything happened to anyone from the bar,
including Kyle—because even though he was a huge pain in the ass, he was still
family—then Ashley would most likely never recover. He quickened his pace the
last few steps and grabbed the receiver.

Such was his focus on the telephone that Ryan forgot about
Ashley. He forgot about the woman he’d torn open and left alone in the hallway.
He forgot about her innate impulse to run away from her fears. The lights
flickered as the storm whipped around them. The wind howled and sent the rain
crashing against the house. Such was the noise that Ryan had to press the
receiver tight to his ear to hear the person on the other end. Such was his
concentration that he didn’t hear the one noise he should have been listening
for. The sound of the front door opening and closing.

“WHAT’S UP, DANNY?” The hairs on
Ryan’s neck stood up when the caller I.D showed the Marcus’ home phone number.

“Ryan…” The older man’s voice sounded strong but thick with
emotion. “I just got a call from the fire company.” The silence that followed
that statement spoke volumes.

“Tell me what happened, Danny.” Ryan squeezed his eyes
closed as he once again scrubbed his hand over his scalp. How could this night
get worse? Julie’s soft cries in the background alerted Ryan that he wasn’t
going to like what Danny had to share.

Danny’s gruff chuckle sounded forced and Ryan heard him
comfort Julie before he described the domino effect of the 140 mile per hour
winds that had snapped the tree, knocking it into the utility pole, which in
turn had split the pole and sent it—and its still-live wires—crashing into the
bar, thus sparking the fire that had ultimately consumed
Danny’s on Main
.

“What?” Sorrow cracked Ryan’s voice.

“According to the fire chief it wasn’t burned to the
ground,” Danny sounded like he had aged during the length of the conversation,
“but what wasn’t ruined by fire was destroyed by the hoses and the hurricane.
The bar is totaled, son. I wanted to call each of you personally, because God
forbid you find out on the news.” The shudder in Danny’s voice was audible.

Tears filled Ryan’s eyes.
Danny’s
. Both the place and
the man had been home to him for more than four years. It had been the net that
caught Ashley when she was lost and flying blind, and the place that had kept
them together for so long.

“Oh, fuck, Ashley!” Ryan’s grip tightened on the receiver,
and the phone shook against his ear as he spoke. “Danny, I don’t know how I’m
gonna tell Ashley. As much as I love the bar, as much as it’s been my home,
it’s been her safe place for almost six years. Christ, Danny….”

“Go, talk to her, son. I’ve got another call to make. We’ll
catch up tomorrow once the storm passes. Ryan, I know it was our home and Julie
and I are…well, we’re sick over this, but it was just a place, son. What really
matters are the people who comprise it, and that’s all of us…” Ryan heard
Danny’s voice break just before he cleared his throat. “We’ll be okay. I need
each one of you to believe it…for me.”

“It’s gonna be fine, Danny. We’ll make it fine.” Ryan tried
to make his tone confident with false enthusiasm. It wasn’t until he
disconnected the call that the soundlessness of the house screamed for his
attention.

“Ash?” He called, taking the stairs two at time to the
second floor, “Ashley?” He knew, he just knew, before he’d even called her name
a third time that she had left their house. She’d left angry, hurt, sad, and in
the midst of a hurricane named after the one person in the world that had never
let her down.

“Ashley Beth!! Fuck!” Ryan ran down the steps barely
stopping to shove his feet into his boots as he headed for the door. It was
nearing on midnight, where the hell could she have gone?

Memories of a similar time flashed through his mind as he
raced through the living room. “Where are my fucking keys?” His shout went
unanswered as it echoed through the house. Ryan wracked his brain for where he
might have left them. He knew that he
always
left them in the bowl on the
entryway table. Always. He knew that Ash knew—“Goddamn it Ash!” Realizing she’d
taken his keys—most likely to stop him from following—he threw on his jacket
and raced out the door. As he calculated the time of his phone call with Danny
in his head, he knew that, with the weather the way it was, the ten minutes
he’d spent on the phone wouldn’t have given her that much of a head start.

His mind was spinning with possibilities as to where she
might have gone. The small town had been all but evacuated—every business was
closed and every road was littered with branches and fallen trees. The wind
pulled at his hair while the rain slapped his face. It felt like he was running
against a wall because the harder he pushed, the less he moved. Memories of
racing to find Leo crashed through him like the wind and the rain but, just
like years before, neither slowed him down.

Into the Light

THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS swished
quickly from left to right, but it didn’t matter. Even though they were on
hi-speed, Ashley still couldn’t see more than a foot or two in front of her.
Her car felt more like a boat as it rocked and swayed from the pressure of the
wind.
Probably wasn’t my best idea leaving the house in this weather
,
she chastised herself as she finally pulled her car onto Main Street. A fallen
tree prevented her from driving any further on the road, but she needed to get
there. She needed to get to
Danny’s
. Her safe place.
Danny’s
had
been the warm embrace that had saved her when she’d been ready to give up on
herself which now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Tired and hungry, she’d pulled into Danny’s parking lot for
the first time about seven years prior. She’d had no intentions of ever going
to the
University of Pennsylvania
—hell, she hadn’t even formally
graduated high school—but she’d wanted to torture herself by visiting the
campus that she would never attend. She’d wanted to remind herself of one more
thing she didn’t deserve, one more thing that would never be. On the way to
Philadelphia she stopped in Charistown for a bite to eat. When she walked into
Danny’s
on Main
she found her home.

All these years later, it was still her home. She’d chosen
to hide her weaknesses from most of them—not because they wouldn’t accept her,
but because she couldn’t bear the look of pity they would have on their faces
if they knew she still harbored guilt for Leo’s death. Danny and Julie would be
crushed if they thought she still blamed herself after all these years.

Wrenching her keys from the ignition, she stepped out of her
car and started to make the rest of the journey on foot. Danny and Julie had
given her, Max, and Kyle their own set of keys to the bar about four years
earlier for Christmas. Ashley smiled when she thought of the card attached to
the keys—
You never knock on the door of your own home
.

The rough bark of a fallen tree trunk cut into the smooth
skin on the palms of her hands as she hefted her body over it and on to the
street on the other side. She tried to wipe the rain-matted hair from her eyes
so she could see where she was going but the wind refused to cooperate and she
lost her footing and slipped, falling to the ground. It wasn’t the sting of the
cut on her leg, or the knowledge that the warm liquid she felt trickling from
her knee wasn’t rain but blood, but the acrid smell that filled the air and the
loud sounds of people’s voices over Mother Nature’s tantrum that caught her
attention.

“What the hell?” She took off running down Main Street
towards the smell and the shouts, until the swirling lights of the fire trucks
came into view.

“No. No. No.” Screams filled the air as she arrived in front
of
Danny’s on Main
…or, what was left of it. “NO!”

She wished her screaming would stop. Her limbs shook
uncontrollably as her chest heaved, trying to allow her lungs to take in the
thick, wet, smoke-filled air around her. She closed her eyes tightly and shook
her head, hoping to jar the images in front of her from her brain.

“There’s no way this can be happening,” she cried into the
night.

“Miss, are you okay? Can we call someone for you?” She
opened her eyes to see the hand that lightly touched her soaked shoulder, led
to an arm that was covered in fire retardant gear. She stared at the fire
fighter but was unable to form words, unable to process what was happening in
front of her. “Miss, you’re screaming and shaking and I’m worried you’re going
into shock. Please, tell me your name.”

Ashley shrugged out of the man’s grip and walked closer to
the disaster that had once been her lifeline. “I’m sorry, Miss, but we can’t
let you any closer to the site. Even though the fire is contained, the building
isn’t stable. Please, it’s pouring, this storm is tenacious and it’s not going
anywhere,” he shouted over the wind. “You need to get to a safe place. Let me
call someone for you.”

“I don’t have anyone,” she whispered, her tears mixed with
the rain streaming down her face. “I have nothing left. I’m all alone now.”

Trembling, she slowly made her way to the ground, her legs
drew up tight and her arms wrapped tightly around them. “I have nothing left.
I’m all alone now,” she repeated as she rested her head into her knees.

There she was. Sitting on the sidewalk, curled so tightly
into herself it was painful for Ryan to witness. He knew exactly what she was
doing. She was trying to shield herself, to make herself numb to the
inescapable agony surrounding her. He could recall the first time he’d seen her
coiled in tightly like that. It was the night she had built her fortress—the
night she had sat guard outside the morgue and created walls too high for him
to climb and too thick for him to break through. They had a close friendship
for a lot of years, and even that took a lot of patience and a very large
chisel. Now thanks to his stupidity, he had all but lost the small opening he
had made with her. And this, this was his own private hell.

His heart splintered as he watched her from a distance, but
the damn thing cracked clear in half when he got close enough to hear her
cries. Seeing her car at the top of the street had the memories of Leo’s wreck
slamming into him like a freight train. Seeing Leo’s car shattered and
flattened under the tree. His body broken and mangled, hanging on for mere
minutes, if only just to give Ryan advice on how to love Ashley.

Breaths that were ultimately wasted on advise that had gone
unused. So the only thing that stopped Ryan from a full-blown melt down was his
deep need to get to Ashley—to make sure she was well, to wrap his arms around
her, to protect her from going through any more pain alone. He’d left the abandoned
vehicle and ran like the hounds of hell were chasing him to get to her.

“I have nothing left, I’m all alone now.”
He watched
her body tremble violently in the cold, wet, stormy night and his eyes quickly
traveled to the remains of their touchstone. If
his
loss felt
insurmountable he could only imagine what Max and Kyle would be feeling right
now. And Danny and Julie, oh God, their pain. Shivers ran through his own solid
frame as he thought about their loss. Even as his family’s hurt weighed heavily
on his mind, thoughts of everything but the beautiful heartbroken woman before
him vaporized the minute he heard her sobbing, “Leo, I’m so sorry. We had
everything in each other.

And Ryan…God, you must hate what I’ve done to him.” Her
words became jumbled as her sobs wracked her body. “I deserve what I’ve become,
Leo.” Her words were killing him, her tears sliced him, and his emotions
bounced all over the place, making it impossible for him to settle on just one.
Was he sad? Hurt? Confused? Angry? He didn’t know. All he did know was that he
needed to get to her to comfort her. He needed to alleviate her pain, to
somehow absorb it. He didn’t care how he did it, as long as he never had to see
her look like that again.

She felt his presence a split second before a Mylar blanket
slipped around her shoulders and his firm body pressed up against hers. She
hadn’t realized how cold she was until there was a modicum of relief from the
bitterness.

“Ashley, baby, why are you apologizing to Leo? Why, even for
one second, would you think that he would blame you for what happened to him?
And what, besides being a stubborn pain in the ass, have you done to me?”
I
love him,
that was the first thought that shot through her mind. Her
insides were bleeding, her soul was crying but this man made her want to smile.
Still
. Two times in one night, the box labeled “past” was being dropped
at her feet and the key placed in her hand. She knew then, in that moment, that
it was time. It felt like Leo himself was begging her to finally open up and
let go of the burden she was carrying. Looking at the devastation in front of
her and feeling the warmth and love of the man beside her, she knew, she’d
never be granted this chance again.

The cold rain sluiced over her face as she turned to stare
in the dark pools of understanding. The only lights were those still set up by
the emergency units. Her mind buzzed with hurt, pain, and guilt, but she
couldn’t escape the need to watch the beautiful man sitting there, unwavering
in his support like he had been through most of their lives. As she eyed him,
she found the hurt, the pain and the guilt replaced with the warmth, the
security, and the peace that was…
home
. Wrapped in the arms of the only
man she had ever loved, Ashley Kynde allowed the impenetrable walls that had
been separating them for so long to finally come crashing down.

“Everyone expected perfection,” she said, staring at the
rubble while the cold rain poured down her face. “I expected it too. Leo, he
was the free spirit…everything I was too scared to let myself be. I was busy
trying to make my parents see me.
Really
see me. Leo should have been
enough—I realize that now—but I wanted them too. By the time we were in high
school, everyone saw me as sweet, innocent Ashley who could do no wrong.” She
turned her head and met his soft brown gaze, “Do you have
any
idea how
hard it is to keep up with that expectation?”

“Princess, I never saw you the way you saw yourself, but we
can get into that later.” He cupped her hands, his skin felt so warm on her
frozen fingers, “please continue.”

Before she could say another word a police officer
approached and told them they had to evacuate. He gave them both a ride to
Ashley’s abandoned car and Ryan carefully drove the pair of them home. Lost in
her thoughts, Ashley continued to speak and he continued to listen.

“When you and Leo became friends”—he watched as her eyes
danced with the memories—“I was so happy. Not just because you were super hot,
but because Leo finally had someone he could relate to—someone like a brother.
He always told me that our parents’ neglect bothered me more than it did him,
but I couldn’t imagine how that could be the case. So, you were like the family
I’d always wanted for him.”