Chapter 15 Ashton
ASHTON
Everything worth anything has the potential to break your heart.
If you only protect yourself from pain, you’re protecting yourself from love too.
It’s time to decide if it’s worth it.
—Ashton’s Secret Thoughts
Ifight back the tears filling my eyes before I take my next jagged breath.
Fear wraps its sharp claws around me, digging in and dragging me back to hell.
Back to that night, kicking and screaming.
If I close my eyes, I still see it all. I feel it with every inch of my body and every ounce of my soul.
The humidity in the air as I waited for Evan, Jamie, and Finn to pick me up from ballet after their football practice.
Dad was already coaching for the Kings, and Mom hated driving at night, so as soon as their high school practices were over, they always swung by to get me.
The other girls and a few guys always waited with me for a chance to see the guys.
To flirt. To try. And who could blame them?
Jamie and Finn were gorgeous. And Evan .
. . even from a sister’s point of view, I could see how they’d find him handsome.
He was as tall and broad as Jamie, and as smart as Finn, and he loved to flirt with the girls at the studio. He loved to flirt with everyone.
It was a normal thing. A normal night.
Everything about that day was as boring as it could be.
Until it wasn’t.
September practices never ran as late as that one did.
Summer sessions took forever, but after-school practice never lasted that long.
I was starving by the time they picked me up.
But that was normal too. Something Jamie loved to tease me about.
He’d always say he could hear my stomach growling from the front seat and then bug me to get something to eat when we’d inevitably stop at the store on the way home, so the guys could grab whatever super unhealthy crap they were eating that week.
But he didn’t that night.
He barely looked at me even as he got out of the front seat of Evan’s Dodge Charger and flipped it forward so I could climb in the back with Finn.
No dumb comment. No sarcasm. He didn’t even look at my outfit, and I may have picked it out that day because I swear he always smiled when I’d wear my white leotard and skirt.
Somehow, I had it in my mind he liked it.
Liked me in it. But he didn’t say anything that night.
There wasn’t a smile. He just got back in the car and shut the door.
I still remember the disappointment sitting like lead in my stomach because I’d thought . . .
It didn’t matter what I thought, though, because Jamie Murphy was one of the most popular boys at Kroydon Hills Prep. He hung with the coolest kids, was friends with the world’s biggest pop stars, and had girls throwing themselves at him at every party and in every hall of the school.
He was a junior. A year younger than Evan but still two years ahead of Finn and me in school. And I was just a girl he was stuck with because our parents were friends. Because he and Evan were friends. Because Finn and I were friends.
I’m not even sure if Jamie and I were ever friends.
Could you feel the way I felt about a friend?
What the hell did I know?
I was fifteen and thought I was in love with my best friend’s brother.
I was young and naive and disappointed that the cute boy hadn’t looked at me.
And an hour later, none of it would matter. Not that I had any way of knowing that then.
Then, it felt wrong. Off. Everything about that night just didn’t make sense.
Even Finn was quiet as he sat next to me, texting someone. A girl probably, but he wouldn’t tell me who.
Jamie and Evan were silent as we drove the short distance to the convenience store.
I remember thinking how odd that was. They were never quiet. Never. The two of them never shut up. Jamie was the only person I’d ever known who was as outgoing as Evan.
The air was sticky, almost damp, when I got out to follow them into the store.
The humidity clinging to me as I stepped out of the air-conditioned car that smelled like dirty football pads and the disgusting air freshener Evan hung from his rearview mirror, like that did anything to mask the stench.
Finn didn’t want anything, so he stayed behind.
God, how I wished we’d all stayed back.
Just skipped that night. Went straight home for once. If we’d just done that . . .
If I’d have just skipped practice. Or hadn’t insisted on training at that fancy studio in Philly instead of Hart & Soul . . . Hadn’t desperately wanted the challenge. Hadn’t wanted to get noticed so I could move to New York or Chicago . . .
We wouldn’t have walked into that store.
It wouldn’t have been on our way back home.
We wouldn’t be broken.
“Ashton—” I don’t notice I’m crying until Jamie drags his thumbs over my cheeks, wiping away my tears as he tries to bring me back to the present. “Don’t go there.”
I swallow, trying so hard to keep it together. To keep quiet. To not wake Kyrie. To not let the darkness bury me, but it’s too late, and I’m too raw. And it’s all right there. The shattered glass. The pool of blood. The metallic scent of the gun firing . . .
The nightmare I can’t wake up from.
“I go there every night in my dreams,” I whisper, blinking between the present and the past. “Every. Night. I remember every single second. Can see it—us. Like it happened in slow-motion. Walking into the store. Walking into your back when you and Evan stopped in front of me.” I try to blink away the tears, but now that they’ve started, they won’t stop.
“The way the scream was ripped from my throat like glass raking its way through my flesh when I saw the gun swing our way.” I swallow down bile, unable to stop myself.
“Before you tackled me to the floor. Before you covered me so I couldn’t see or breathe or do anything to stop Evan from stepping in front of us. ”
I drop my hold on Jamie’s wrists and flatten my palms against his chest, then ball them into fists just like that night. Counting the beats of his heart against my hands as the world around us stops making sense. “I see it every night . . .”
“Me too,” he admits softly as his arms wrap around me, dragging me impossibly closer against his chest. Until there’s no space left between us.
Until my cheek is pressed against his heart where my hands just were.
Holding me so tightly, I can barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Ashton. I wish I could have done something differently, but there wasn’t time.
I didn’t think. Just acted. I needed you safe. You had to be okay.”
The most horrific thought I’ve ever had crashes into me like a boulder, crushing me beneath the weight of it. “Jamie,” I gasp, horrified. “Tell me you don’t blame yourself for Evan’s death.”
His chin rests on the top of my head as his fingers tangle in my hair, the silence settling between us that hurts my heart in ways I didn’t know it could ache. Stretching on for what feels like an eternity.
“I know it’s not my fault as much as I know it’s not yours or Finn’s or Evan’s.
It’s no one’s fault but the man who pulled that trigger.
Evan wanted you protected. He always did.
If he’d have been the one right in front of you, he would have been the one to throw you to the floor instead of me.
” He falls silent again, and I let him. I don’t push.
I don’t even try. I just wait, knowing that night .
. . the worst night of our lives, shaped us.
It shaped all of us. Broke all of us in different ways.
“That night . . . in the locker room . . . I told Evan I was going to ask you to Homecoming.”
Air whooshes from my lungs, but I don’t dare lift my head. I wrap my arms around his waist and wait as my heart breaks again for everything that was stolen from all of us that night.
All the unfinished business.
All the memories we never got to have.
All the life Evan will never get to live.
“He told me to stay away from you.” He drags a gentle hand over my head reverently.
“He was so pissed I’d even consider asking you out.
Pissed I wasn’t asking permission. He told me I wasn’t good enough.
I wasn’t serious enough. That I wasn’t ready.
That you weren’t ready. I never saw him so pissed, Ashton.
” I feel his muscles tense and tighten against me as he forces out every word, and I can’t stop it.
Stop him from— “He died protecting us both, and he did it pissed at me.”
Oh. My. God.
Jamie’s shoulders shake with silent tears as my world splinters.
“No,” I force out and lift my face to his, cupping his cheeks in my hands. Needing to give him this. “He loved you.”
“He did. But that last conversation—”
“Jameson Murphy, I’ve spent a decade in therapy working through that night, so listen to me when I say this.
Evan loved you and me and Finn. He was a protective bastard, and if he’d have dropped to the floor the way you and I did, he might still be here, but he chose to stand in front of us.
That was his choice. Not mine. Not yours.
His. You have to let him have that choice. ”
“But that choice made you hate me.”
The agony in every word rocks me to the darkest depths of my soul, and I force those brilliant green eyes to look at me. “I’ve hated you for a long time, Jamie, but I never blamed you.”
I drag the tips of my fingers along his jaw, knowing hate was never the right word but unsure what actually was.
“Bullshit,” he bites back. “You can’t rewrite history, Ace. Everything changed that night, and you never looked at me the same after.”
“You left,” I sob, wishing I could catch the words and shove them back down before he can hear them, but it’s too late. They’re out, and I can’t take them back.
I can’t unsay them. Can’t unhear them.
And I can’t stop the ones that keep tumbling from my lips.