Chapter 6 Ash
Ash
I wake up alone in Boone’s bed and spend fifteen seconds in the warm, stupid haze of forgetting before it all rushes back. The porch. His confession. His mouth on mine, his hands on my skin, his body pressing into mine.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, mortification crashing over me in waves.
I slept with my ex-boyfriend’s father. The sex was so good, I went somewhere inside my own head that I still don’t understand, and he had to coax me back like a man drawing a frightened animal from a corner.
Then I passed out on his chest and probably drooled, because, of course, that’s exactly how last night went.
The sheets still smell like him. Like us. I need to get out of this bed before I do something even stupider, like bury my face in his pillow.
I spot the borrowed sweats on the floor and pull them on.
Teague’s t-shirt lies balled up at the foot of the bed, the one Boone peeled over my head last night with those delicious hands.
I tug it on and face the mirror on the back of his door.
I look like someone who’s been taken apart and reassembled wrong: puffy eyes, swollen lips, hair beyond saving, and a bruise on my hip shaped exactly like Boone’s grip, peeking above the waistband of the sweats. I tug the shirt down to hide it.
I have a plan. Step one: coffee. Step two: composure.
Step three: deliver a speech along the lines of, “Last night was intense and beautiful, but this can’t happen.
You’re his father, I need to figure out my life, thank you for everything.
” I pace down the hallway, rehearsing the lines over and over in my head.
The scent of fresh coffee wafts through the air, already brewed by someone else, and my throat tightens with gratitude.
I move straight to the pot and select a green mug, avoiding the blue one with its memories still raw.
The first sip scalds my tongue while I lean against the counter, eyes closed, hands wrapped around the ceramic warmth.
"Morning, sunshine."
Teague's voice pulls my eyes open. He leans in the doorway to the mudroom, coffee in hand, his grin spreading across his face like spilled honey.
Work clothes hug his frame, jeans and boots with flannel rolled to his elbows.
His hair glistens damp from a shower, his cheerfulness radiating through the room at this ungodly hour.
"Morning," I mumble, the word barely escaping my throat.
"Sleep okay?" His question carries a knowing warmth around its edges.
Heat crawls up my neck. He knows exactly where I slept last night most likely from that uncanny radar he possesses for other people's business. I lift the mug to my lips and hide behind another long sip.
"Fine. Yeah. Good." The coffee burns down my throat.
"You look good." He pushes away from the doorframe and moves behind me to refill his mug. His hand brushes my lower back as he passes, fingers trailing across the borrowed shirt fabric with casual intimacy, as though touching me belongs in his morning routine.
I shift sideways until my hip presses against the counter edge.
He continues without pause, fills his mug, sips, then leans against the counter beside me.
His body hovers close, his shoulder nearly touching mine, his presence filling more space than appropriate for someone who should be merely his brother's overnight guest.
“There are eggs if you want,” Teague says. “Ledger made a pan before he went out. He won’t tell you he made them for you, but he made them for you.”
“Thank you. I’m okay with coffee for now.”
“You should eat.” He reaches past me for the sugar bowl, his chest brushing my shoulder, his arm crossing in front of me.
I feel the heat of him, smell his soap, and my whole body goes rigid.
It’s too much. Too close. I don’t understand why he’s touching me like I’m part of this household, like I belong here, like last night gave everyone permission to put their hands on me whenever they want.
I take a full step away, and this time it’s obvious. Teague pauses with the sugar bowl in his hand and really looks at me.
“Sorry,” I say automatically, because that’s what I do. I flinch away from people who are being nice, then apologize for flinching, which makes it worse, which makes me apologize again. Marcus identified that cycle early and made good use of it for two years. “I’m just… it’s early, I haven’t—”
“You don’t have to explain,” Teague says, his voice dropping a notch, his grin softening into something more careful. “I’ll keep my hands to myself if that’s what you need.”
“It’s not that, it’s—”
“Good morning.”
Boone’s voice fills the kitchen from the hallway doorway.
He’s in jeans and a dark henley with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, and his eyes find me immediately.
He looks at me like he’s checking that I’m real, that I didn’t climb out a window at dawn.
Whatever he finds satisfies him, because the corner of his mouth turns up and he says, “Morning, Ash,” in a voice that sounds like it owns me.
God, I’m in so much trouble.
My skin burns from chest to hairline at the sound of his voice. I grip the counter to resist the magnetic pull toward him as he crosses the kitchen. He stops beside me, his warmth radiating against my arm, and places his hand on the back of my neck.
The firm pressure of his fingers lingers for two seconds before he reaches past me for a mug. Everything in the room shifts with that casual touch. My prepared speech dissolves on my tongue while I clutch my coffee and struggle to remember basic vocabulary.
"Teague," Boone says as he pours coffee into his mug. "Ease up on him. He's not awake yet."
"I wasn't doing anything."
"You were doing the thing you do. The thing where you touch first and ask later."
"It's how I say good morning."
"Say it with words until he tells you otherwise."
They discuss me as though I belong in this kitchen, something to be managed and tended. My fingers tighten around the ceramic mug while I stare at the floor, warmth spreading through my chest.
"Ash." Boone watches me over his mug rim, his eyes darkening slightly. Eight months ago, he looked at me exactly like this across this same kitchen. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask if you were fine. I asked how you're feeling."
Heat crawls up my neck as I meet his gaze. "Confused. I don't understand what's happening."
Boone nods like that’s exactly the answer he expected. He sets his mug down, crosses his arms, and looks at Teague, something passing between them. Teague settles more comfortably against the counter, like he’s been given permission to stay.
“I’m going to explain something,” Boone says, “and I want you to hear all of it before you react. Can you do that?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“I know. Hear me out anyway.”
“Okay.”
“This house works differently than what you’re used to.
My boys and I, we’re close. Closer than most families.
We share our lives, our work, and when someone comes into this house that we care about, we share them too.
” He says it so matter of factly, like telling me about the weather.
But he just said that... no, that’s impossible.
“Teague touching you this morning wasn’t him being forward.
It’s how we are. It’s how we’d be with you, if you wanted that. ”
I stare at him, the flush spreading up my neck now moving across my face. I must look like a tomato. “When you say share,” I start, my voice an octave too high. I clear my throat and try again. “When you say share, you mean—”
A tight grin spreads across Boone’s face. “I mean what you think I mean.”
“All three of them?”
“All three of my sons. And me. If that’s something you want.”
The kitchen falls silent until it’s just the little noises, the clock ticking, a horse neigh from outside, my own heartbeat thudding in my ears.
Boone watches me with a patient expression, though Teague’s expression is a bit warmer, like he already knows the answer and is enjoying the slow journey of me getting there.
"Is that something you'd want?" Boone asks.
"I can't think when you're looking at me like that." I press my hands against my face because the heat coming off my skin is ridiculous.
"Like what?"
"Like you already know what I'm going to say."
"I don't know what you're going to say. I know what I want you to say. Those are different things."
I drop my hands. The honesty in his face is so plain and undefended that it hurts. He's not playing a game. He's not manipulating me or testing me to see if I'll give the right answer. He's standing in his kitchen offering me something I didn't know existed five minutes ago and he means every word.
And Teague means it too. And somewhere outside Ledger made me eggs he'll never admit to, and Cass looked at me last night like I was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen, and all four of these men are offering me the thing I've been starving for, which is to be wanted fully by people who have no intention of apologizing for it.
"Yes," I say quietly. "That's something I'd want."
Teague exhales beside me, but Boone's expression doesn't change, though something deepens behind his eyes.
"But I can't stay," I add, because the reasonable-person speech is still in there fighting for air. "I can't just move into your house. I need to figure out my life, Boone. I need to deal with Marcus and my apartment and—"
"Two weeks."
"What?"
"Stay for two weeks. I know for a fact you’ve got time saved up to take off because you never do.
We give you anything you want, everything you need.
You don't think about Marcus, you don't think about your apartment.
For two weeks you're here and you're ours and we take care of you.
" He picks up his coffee and takes a sip like he hasn't just rearranged the entire foundation of my life.
"After that, I set you up wherever you want to go.
Money, transport, whatever you need. You walk out that door free and clear and you never have to see any of us again if that's your choice. "
Two weeks. An end date. A container with walls that makes this finite and safe and something I can say yes to without it meaning forever, because forever is not a word I can hold right now. I start nodding before I've decided to, because two weeks I can do.
"Okay," I say. "Two weeks."
"There's one more thing." He sets his mug down and his expression shifts to something a little more serious. "I need you to pick a word."
"A word?"
"A word that means stop. Not slow down, not wait. Stop. Everything stops. Whatever's happening, whoever you're with, the second that word leaves your mouth, it's over. No questions, no convincing, no negotiating."
My nose scrunches up. "You mean a safeword."
"That's exactly what I mean."
I look at him and then at Teague and back. "Why would I need to stop?"
Boone's jaw tightens. It's subtle, a flicker of something hard crossing his face before he smooths it, but I catch it.
"Because you're allowed to," Boone says, his voice more careful now, each word placed with intention.
"Because if something doesn't feel right, or you're overwhelmed, or you just don't want to, for any reason, for no reason at all, you say the word and it stops.
And nobody in this house will be angry or disappointed or gone in the morning. "
"But why would I—"
"Has no one ever given you that before?"
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I think about Marcus, about two years of sex I didn't want and dinners I didn't enjoy and the word ‘no’ living in the back of my throat.
I think about all the times I could have said stop and didn't, because stopping meant silence.
The cold afterward. Days of being looked through.
"No," I say. "Nobody's given me that before."
It soon becomes obvious that the tightness in Boone’s jaw isn't frustration with me. It's anger at Marcus, the kind that doesn't burn out because it's not running on impulse. He's been angry about this longer than tonight.
"Pick a word," he says, gentler now. "Something you'd never say during sex. Something that doesn't belong anywhere near a bedroom."
"Meridian," I blurt out. I don't know where it comes from except that it's the name of the road where Marcus left me and it tastes like the end of something.
It will never come out of my mouth by accident in this house, because Meridian is where I was before Boone came and I never want to go back there.
"Meridian," Boone repeats, committing it. "Good. Now drink your coffee and eat Ledger's eggs before he comes in here and glares at both of us."
I pick my mug back up as Teague heralds me to the kitchen table and scoops a healthy serving onto a plate.
The idea of being wanted doesn't feel like it's going to cost me everything I have.
It just feels like morning. It feels like the beginning of something I can afford to walk toward instead of away from.
Two weeks. I can do two weeks.