Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
Max
I lay on my bed staring up at the flapping roof. Ash would be hating this. She’d never been one for feeling scared. She hated horror films, hated roller coasters, and anything else that made her anxious or fear for her safety. I knew this need to always feel safe came from her little sister’s freak death when Ash was only thirteen. It had been a tragic choking accident, the kind no one could ever imagine happening. Ash had seen the whole thing happen, seen her mother trying to save her sister. It had affected her profoundly, devastated her, and since then, she didn’t like feeling even vaguely unsafe or scared. And this wind, this howling storm that was shaking the tent, I knew it would be making her feel just that. The need to go over there and make sure she was okay had me on my feet, pacing the room. But I wasn’t sure she would want me there . . .
“Fuck it!” I said, exiting my tent. Whether she liked it or not, I was going to make sure she was okay. She could kick me out if she wanted to, but I just needed to know she wasn’t freaking out. It was hard to walk straight down the wooden path as the raging wind battled with me, knocking me sideways off my feet. I finally made it to her tent and tried to scream her name above the wind, but my voice was carried away. I squeezed my way through the heavy canvas weather sheets and then found a small slit in the tent that I climbed through. And there she was, sitting on the floor in the middle of the tent, holding on to the pole.
“You okay?” I had to stop myself from running up to her and scooping her into my arms.
“Yes! No! Sort of,” she said. “I figured that the safest place to be when the roof and sides blew off would probably be here. So here I am.”
“Can I join you?” I asked tentatively.
She shrugged. “Sure. Why not. At least I won’t die alone.”
“No one is dying tonight,” I said with as much authority as I could.
I walked over to her and sat down, careful to keep my distance, but close enough so that if, God forbid, something did actually happen, I would be able to do something about it.
“You’re not holding on to the pole,” she pointed out.
“I’m confident we’re not going anywhere.”
We sat in silence for a while, her still clutching the pole while the wind outside raged. More claps of loud thunder and then the rain. It was as if the sky had ripped itself open.
“God, if we’re not blown away, we’ll drown in raging flood waters or be incinerated by lightning.”
“You’re going to be fine,” I promised her.
“Sorry,” she blurted. “I must look ridiculous, a grown woman clinging to a pole—”
“Never apologize!” I cut her off. “Cling to as many poles as you want.”
She nodded slowly. Her shoulders relaxed a little and my heart felt as if it had just expanded tenfold and was about to rip out of my chest. We sat in silence for a while and I looked around her room. It was similar to mine, but bigger and nicer. I’d asked them to give her the better one, just as I had at the villa too.
“Oh, look, African Dreams.” I got up and grabbed the bottle, turning it over in my hands. I’d seen the storyboard, read the advert, but had never actually seen the product in real life. “What does it taste like?”
“I have no idea,” she replied.
“Wait, you’re shooting an ad for a product you’ve never tasted?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “That’s like asking a male cinematographer who is shooting a tampon commercial why he’s never tried the product.”
I laughed. “I can’t argue with that logic, but I am going to taste it.” I walked over to the bar fridge and pulled out the ice tray, then took out two tumblers.
“Want to experience some African Dreams?” I asked, waving the glass at her.
“Mmm, undecided. I’ve never been a fan of creamy liquor.”
“You didn’t like anything creamy. You hated ice cream and never drank milk.”
“You remember that?” she asked, a small smile tugging on the corners of her lips.
“I remember a lot of things,” I said, pouring myself a glass. “Do you?” I asked as casually as I could, but it was a loaded question.
“You hated runny eggs—you said the liquid gave you the creeps. You had the biggest sweet tooth and were always chewing on sweets or sucking on something. You hated fish! To eat and to look at. You could eat an entire box of cereal after dinner—you called it your ‘second supper’—and thirteen years later I still haven’t met anyone who eats as much as you did. And you loved sweet-and-sour pickles. See, I also remember a lot of things.”
A loud clap of thunder put a punctuation mark at the end of her confession. It felt apt, almost as if it had been planned, purposefully and perfectly timed. Because the silence that followed was so loud and resounding, for a moment it seemed to drown out the entire storm. I stared at her, fighting an urge to walk across the floor, pull her into my arms, and tell her that I remembered everything too. But I didn’t.
“I’m impressed,” I said instead.
“Don’t be. I think I remember some of those because I have some PTSD from you spilling an entire bowl of cereal on me in bed, and then you dropped that pickle on the floor once and I stood on it barefoot in the dark and got the fright of my life because I thought it was a slimy animal.”
I burst out laughing. “I remember that. Sorry.”
She smiled at me. It was the biggest smile she’d given me so far and I felt incredibly lucky.
“I’m pouring you a glass of African Dreams, by the way,” I said. “I insist you at least taste it. Perhaps it will inspire a different way of lighting it .”
“Oh God, please no. No more lighting talk.” She let out a small laugh, her first one, and my heart did a backflip.
I walked the drinks back to her and sat down on the floor. I passed her the tumbler of thick, creamy liquid and she peered inside it, then grimaced. She raised the glass and swirled it around. The creamy liquid coated the glass in a way that was very off-putting.
“I think I’m going to hate this.”
“Me too,” I said. “Also not a big fan of creamy alcohol. On the count of three?” I raised my brows in question.
She nodded at me, now smiling very openly over the rim of the glass. I was glad she’d let go of the pole.
“One, two, three.” We both sipped at the same time, holding eye contact, and then once the liquid had gone down, we continued to look at each other for a while.
“Huh! It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” I finally said.
“I know. It’s not that creamy. And not too sickly sweet like these liqueurs can be.” She took another contemplative sip. “Would you judge me terribly if I said I actually liked it?”
I laughed and topped her glass up without asking. She took another sip and nodded at me. “Not bad! Not bad.”
“Do you feel more inspired now for the shoot? Ideas that would make it more ‘cinematic’?”
She laughed. God, it felt good to make her laugh again. “I wouldn’t take it that far.” She eyed my glass thoughtfully. “You never used to drink that much.”
“Still don’t. Only on special occasions.”
“And this is a special occasion?”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
She looked up at the tent roof and then at the walls. “For now.”
“Don’t be such a Negative Nelly,” I said, and she laughed again.
“I haven’t heard that in thirteen years.” I laughed too and when it petered out, we were staring at each other again. “What are you doing here anyway?”
I shrugged, trying to make it seem casual, make it seem like I hadn’t been overwhelmed by that caveman instinct to run through a storm to protect her.
“I knew you wouldn’t like this.”
“So you came to rescue me?” she asked. “Because I’m more than capable of handling myself, you know. I’m not the girl I used to be who always wanted you by her side because it felt better that way. You haven’t been around for a long time—not many people have, apart from my friends. I take care of myself now. I’ve had to.”
I sensed big emotions swelling in her. “Your parents?” I asked softly.
“My parents,” she stated coldly.
“How are they?”
“Not great.” She looked down at her glass, moving the ice cube around with her finger. “My mom went into another depressive cycle. But she hasn’t really emerged from it this time. They’ve tried different medicines, even ketamine—nothing’s worked.”
“I’m so sorry. Your dad?”
“Well, you know how he enjoyed drinking. Especially after . . . what happened.” She cleared her throat nervously. “So my mom’s depressed and my dad is angry and drunk.”
“Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t know it had gotten that bad.”
“How would you? You weren’t there.”
A knife twisted in my gut. “I’m sorry about that.”
She made a show of brushing my apology off, as if it didn’t matter. As if me not being there hadn’t been an issue, but I could see now that it had. For the first time ever, the real and very raw consequences of me leaving were apparent. And I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive myself for abandoning her to deal with all of that alone.
I looked down at her arm. “Sunflower tattoo,” I whispered softly.
She nodded and ran her fingers over it.
“Do you still put a sunflower on her grave every year?” I asked. When we were together, I’d gone with her to her sister’s grave to do it. “It’s the seventeenth of August, right?” I asked, and she nodded. But I already knew the answer to that question. Because the seventeenth of August was the one day a year that I willingly let my mind drift to her. I always thought about what she was doing, and hoped she was okay.
“If I can,” she said. “I’m not always around, so thought I would get this.” She held her arm out for me and I admired the intricate work.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, remembering that photo of her sister dressed in a yellow and white sunflower dress.
She shook her head suddenly, as if shaking off a memory and then quickly changed her demeanor. “Top us up.” She thrust her glass at me. I could see she no longer wanted to talk about this, and I obliged her.
“Bottoms up,” she said, and we both threw the liquid back. Again, our eyes met.
“Thirteen years,” I mused out loud. “It’s crazy how fast time goes.”
“As you get older, it seems to go faster.”
“In the blink of an eye,” I said.
“It’s been so long that it’s hard to imagine a time when we ever actually existed.”
“We did exist,” I insisted. “And for most of that, we were really good.” I topped up our glasses again. The alcohol was definitely making me buzz now.
She paused and took a long, slow sip. “Yes. We were good.” She licked the corner of her mouth with her tongue and the action was so fucking sexy that I had to cross my legs, because I could feel something stirring in my pants.
“We were really good together, weren’t we,” she continued, her words slightly lubricated with alcohol now.
“We were.” I refilled our glasses. “We were good on email too, before we knew who we were speaking to.”
She nodded at me thoughtfully. “Do you think if you weren’t Logan, and I was just Leigh Smith, not Ash, and we met at a film shoot, we would hook up?”
“Do I think that our emailing would have led to a date and then probably led to us having hot sex in a tent like this?” I asked, locking eyes with her with as much intensity as I could.
She nodded and bit her lip at the same time. The gesture did not escape me.
“Yes. I do,” I said.
“So then why do you think we weren’t able to have hot sex all those years ago?”
“We were so young and totally inexperienced.”
“And we’re not young and inexperienced now?” she said. Her tongue came out to lick the corner of her lips again and now it was more than just a stirring. I was hard. And if she continued licking her lips like that while she talked about how “experienced” we both possibly were now, I was not going to be able to get rid of it.
“No, we’re not,” I repeated slowly.
“Do you think if we’d tried again, it would have gotten better, or do you think we’re just fundamentally not sexually compatible?”
This was the ultimate question, wasn’t it? And it had been the main reason that I’d made a very conscious decision to become good at sex. No, not just good, the best. And right now, looking at her like this, licking her lips, cute unruly hair that seemed untamable, just begging to be pulled at, tight tank top that showed the outline of her nipples and loose-fitting sleeping shorts that you could slip a hand into so easily, I had an overwhelming desire to show her just how fucking good I’d gotten—again and again and again—and just how sexually compatible I knew we would be!
“I can’t answer that,” I said instead.
“It’s weird, because before we tried to have actual sex, things were hot between us. It’s not like we hadn’t done things, and the things we had done were . . .” She took another sip of her drink. As she talked, her face was getting more and more flushed. I didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or from this conversation. “They were really good. And I think you’re so sexy.”
“Think? Present tense?” I shuffled a little closer to her.
“I meant thought ! I thought you were sexy. Past tense. You know, when we were dating. Thought!”
“So you don’t think I’m sexy now?” My dick felt as if it was going to burst through my pants.
“I’m not drunk enough to answer that,” she said with a smile that was definitely flirtatious. In fact, it felt as if we were right back to being two people flirting with each other over email.
“Well then, have some more.” I topped her glass up almost to the brim and did the same for myself. We locked eyes while we drank. I wanted to get fucking naked and swim in her eyes if I could.
“Do you think I’m sexy?” she said in a slightly small voice, as if I was almost not meant to hear it. But I did hear it and I was going to let her know in as many uncertain terms as possible, just how sexy I thought she was. I put the glass down on the floor and crawled towards her. Her chest expanded as she sucked in a quick gulp of air. I leaned in, bringing my mouth close to her ear. She let out the tiniest sound that was not lost on me. Sexiest sound I’d heard in thirteen years. I gently grazed her ear with the side of my face, but not too much, just a little. But enough to illicit another tiny sound from her.
“You’re even sexier today than you were then.”
Her breath quickened. More color rushed to her cheeks and I could feel warmth radiating off her. I brought my lips all the way up to her ear now, letting them drag against it. She used to like being touched there. “In fact, I think you’re the sexiest woman alive, Ash.” I kept my lips there and she began to turn slowly. Her head moved towards mine until we were centimeters apart, looking at each other.
“You say that like I should believe you,” she whispered into the tiny space between us.
“You should.”
“You say that like you didn’t walk away from me once and don’t have photos of gorgeous models on your phone.”
I pulled away from her a little. I knew how that photo must have looked. And she would have been right about it, but she would also have been very, very wrong. They hadn’t meant anything. They were a one-night distraction. Something to take my mind off the one thing that it just kept coming back to . . . her. She’d always been there, and maybe I hadn’t been fully conscious of it, but now that she’d come back into my life, it had become crystal clear to me. All those years, those women and meaningless nights, what I’d really wanted—needed—had been Ash. And the more time I spent with her now, the more all the memories of us and the feelings I’d had for her, were flooding back. Nearly everything I’d done for the last thirteen years had been to try and cope with the pain of losing her. To try and escape it and forget her. But she was unforgettable.
“You’re way sexier than they could ever be.”
She poked a finger in my chest and looked at me very seriously. “Number one, I don’t believe a word you just said, because I also have eyes, and two, more important than number one, even if I did believe you—”
“You should,” I interrupted.
“Even if I did believe you, don’t interrupt me, it means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. Because I am officially on a dating detox. So you can be as flirty and hot as you want, I am not moved!” She downed her glass and I watched her closely, noticing a slight wobble in her hand. I took the glass from her gently.
“Let me make you a cup of coffee, Ash.” I walked the glasses away and she let out a loud sigh and flopped onto her back.
“You okay?” I asked, but clearly she wasn’t.
“I’m on a full-on dating detox!” she mumbled, her words slurring together.
Fuck! I should have noticed how much we’d drunk, but I’d been so swept up in the moment we were having, which had felt just like old times, that the entire bottle was almost finished. I turned the bottle around in my hand. Shit , that was a much higher than expected alcohol content. I pulled a bottle of water out the fridge and walked it over to her. I looked down at her lying on the carpet and she smiled up at me.
“Max, Max, Max. No matter how sexy you are, and how flirty you are on email and in person, and no matter how many orgasms you give, ‘apparently’ give, ‘allegedly’ give, women, maybe even more than one at a time,” she laughed as she did dramatic air quotes in the air above her head. “I remain unmoved by you and your overtures.” She suddenly grabbed my ankle and squeezed it. “God, your ankles are big. How the hell did you get so sexy? Seriously? Max? Maximillian Adam?”
I knelt down, pulled her into a sitting position and then held the open bottle of water to her lips. I really shouldn’t have kept pouring her drinks!
“And you have facial hair now too.” She laid her hand on the side of my face and I closed my eyes momentarily and breathed in the feel of it. I knew this wasn’t the right time to be enjoying a moment like this, but I couldn’t help it. I put my hand over hers and she brought her face closer to mine as if she was inspecting me now.
“Your eyes are the same, except for these . . .” she traced her finger around my eye and then stopped at the side. “Cute little wrinkles.”
“Cute?” I smiled at her.
“So small and little.” She was clearly drunker than I’d initially thought she was.
“You also have muscles now.” She let go of my face and her hand traveled down my arm, squeezing as she went. And I swear, if she didn’t stop doing that, I would have her naked and pinned to this pole in about five seconds. But I also didn’t want her to stop either. Feeling her hand on my body after all these years must be akin to what a man who’d just crawled through the desert feels like when he drinks water for the first time. She ran her hand up to my hair and laced her fingers through it and I think I died ten times in a row.
“You have hair now too.” She moved even closer to me, I could feel her breath on my lips now.
“I’ve always had hair,” I whispered in some kind of strange daze. She fucking had me now! Had me under her spell. I was putty in her hands and she could do anything she wanted to do with me. And there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her either. Do to her. She tightened her grip on my hair and pulled me so close that our noses touched. Sexual tension, like hot thick magma rose up between us. I felt it, and I knew she felt it too as she tightened her grip on my hair and her eyes moved down to my lips.
“Ash,” I whispered her name against her lips. It was a plea and a promise.
“I think you should kiss me now,” she said, and I registered the overwhelming smell of alcohol on her breath. I put my hand over hers and unlaced her fingers from my hair. I immediately sat back, creating the distance I needed between us. Her face fell and I watched a journey of emotions wash across it. Shock, embarrassment, anger.
“Come, let’s get you up, hydrated and into bed.” I didn’t wait for her response, instead I pulled her to her feet.
She scoffed and tried to pull away. “So much for your so-called honesty earlier,” she said. “ You’re so hot, Ash. You’re so sexy, Ash .”
“You are hot and sexy. Trust me—that is not the issue here.”
“What’s the issue?” she asked as I put my hands on her waist and guided her towards the bed.
“The issue is that you and I have had too much to drink and you also made it quite clear you were on a dating detox, and I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret in the morning.”
“Detox shmetox.”
“Here we go. Have a seat.” I lowered her onto the bed, knelt down on the floor in front of her and started unlacing her shoes.
“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to wiggle free from my grip.
“Taking your shoes off.”
“My shoes like being on!” She tried to kick me off defiantly, but it was too late, her shoes were off.
“Drink some more water.” I passed her the bottle again and she gulped some more. I could see she was going to be unconscious very soon. I maneuvered her onto the bed in a lying position and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. She grabbed one of the pillows and clutched it. I smiled. She used to sleep like that, clutching a pillow as if she was hugging it. She put her face on the pillow and her heavy eyes started to close.
“I’m tired,” she said through a yawn.
“Then sleep.” I pushed away the strands of hair that had fallen into her face and she let out a happy, contented-sounding sigh.
“Sleep tight,” I said.
“Okay, angel,” she replied.
My chest tightened at the sound of my old pet name, and that was it. The moment.
If I was in any doubt about how I felt about her, it was all confirmed in those two words. I was no longer slipping. I had slipped and she had me completely. Maybe she’d always had me, maybe I’d been able to push that away just enough to convince myself I was over her. I wasn’t.
I leaned down and pressed a small kiss to her forehead. I closed my eyes and let my lips linger there for ages.
“Good night, baby,” I whispered as softly as I could.
I stood up and walked over to the chair in the corner of the room. The storm was still raging outside. Kicking my shoes off, I pulled a blanket over my lap and lay my head back. Resisting Ash tonight had probably been one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but it had also been the right thing. I didn’t want her waking up with any regrets tomorrow. I didn’t want there to be any more regrets between us. I already knew she was going to feel terrible about this tomorrow as it was.