Epilogue #2
She ignored me, her eyes never leaving Ash’s.
“I’ve been searching for you,” Ash croaked as he took a single step forward. “Fuck, look at you.” He pushed a hand through his hair, holding it at the top of his head, his nostrils flared. “Thought I’d never find you.”
It clicked then.
And the detonation was just as devastating as the pain growing in Ash’s eyes.
“Holy shit,” Carrie breathed. “That’s—she’s—”
The preacher’s wife.
“I have to go,” the woman finally said, her soft voice rocking Ash. He flinched but thankfully recovered.
“No, wait. Please, wait!” Ash begged as she pushed off the window and ran for the door. He started after her, but Gray and I were there, restraining him.
“No,” Grayson grunted, pushing him back with me.
He fought, but fuck, he fought like hell to run after the woman who’d been haunting his dreams for the last two years. Ash roared then, becoming like the bear we’d always compared him to. “No! I can’t lose her again!”
“You chase her, she’ll run,” Gray barked. “You cannot scare her!”
“Take it easy,” I grunted, pushing against him. When he finally had his back against the bar, I looked at Margo. “Go after her, baby. Make sure she is okay.”
She nodded, bolting out of the store with Sarah and Carrie in tow.
Ash was trashing and fighting against us. “No! Fuck! She was here!” he screamed as we dragged him to the back.
“Rossy, lock the fucking door! No one in or out unless it’s one of our people,” Grayson ordered over his shoulder.
I kicked open the door, and we got Ash inside the room. Grayson blocked the door, and Ash was in his face, seething. “Let me out,” he growled.
“Easy,” I warned, standing beside them. “Take a breath, Doss.”
He ignored me, and with a sigh, I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. We struggled, but eventually, I had him pinned against the wall. I knew under normal circumstances, Ash would have beaten me to the ground if I was trying to control him. But this wasn’t normal.
This was detrimental and he knew that.
“You just let me corner you because you know if you chase after her, she’ll disappear forever,” I clipped, raising a finger to his face. “That woman escaped hell, Doss! Don’t you force her back into it.”
He was covered in sweat, his eyes on the wall behind me. He wasn’t here. He was in Devil’s Den, the place he’d gone in search of her. I shook him. “Ash, look at me.”
Nothing.
“Dammit, Doss!” I barked, slamming him against the wall. “Eyes on me. That’s a fucking order!”
Slowly, his eyes came to meet mine. “I thought she was dead.”
I stiffened.
“I’d given up on her, man,” he confessed on a deathly, shameful whisper. “I told Jake last night to close her case.”
“Fuck,” Grayson growled. He was beside me a second later.
He put his hands on Ash’s shoulders. “You did what you thought was right, and no one—not even Hayes or me—can fucking blame you for that. Ever since you coded in the fucking hospital on us twice, you’ve been a shell of a man.
” He pointed to the door. “That woman out there? She is important to you, making yourself whole, but I will not stand here and let you ruin your life over her. You get me?”
“Gray,” I urged.
His dark eyes slid over to mine. “You know I’m right.”
“I just want her name,” Ash said after a few minutes of silence. We had given him some space, and his legs had given out. He was sitting against the wall in a helpless heap, staring mindlessly at the blue carpet underneath him. “All I want is her name.”
“Her name is Angel.”
We all looked over to the door, finding Margo standing there. Her hair was down and windblown, her cheeks tinted pink from the heat, but she was calm.
“What?” Ash murmured, chest heaving, his hands hanging off his knees. “What did you say?”
Margo moved to me, grabbed my hand, and held on for dear life as she said, “Her name is Angel.”
Ash scrambled up to his feet then. “Angel?” he repeated softly, testing the name out.
“Ash, listen to me,” Margo urged, stepping forward.
He looked down at the love of my life. “You talked to her?” he pressed.
“Yes. For some reason, she would only talk to me. Not Carrie or Sarah.”
Perhaps it was my own happiness that caused a flicker of hope to bloom inside me. A hope that Ash and Angel could come together and heal from the painful memories they shared.
“Is she all right? Do I need to go to her?”
Margo shifted her weight. “Ash…”
He waited.
“She doesn’t want anything to do with you,” she murmured, her voice shaking. Our friend stumbled back as if Margo had struck him. “She’s here to forget the past, and that includes the man who saved her life.”
His throat worked, a wave of anguish hitting him. “But—”
“Angel came to Astoria to heal.” Margo cut him off, putting her hand on his chest. “She has asked that you leave her alone.”
He turned his head away from her and scrubbed a hand down his face. We watched him stare at the wall for a few seconds, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “Is she safe?” he asked, his voice distant.
“Ash—”
“Margo, is she safe?”
She nodded. “Yes, she is safe.”
“All right,” he muttered. “That’s all I needed to know.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and moved over Gray and me. “I’m heading back to Portland. Angel wants me to leave her alone, but I need--”
“We’ll keep an eye on her.”
This came from Carrie, who was now in the doorway.
Ash nodded, walked to the back door, looked over his shoulder, and said, “You guys are the family I never had.”
Then he disappeared for five hundred and forty-seven days.
To be continued…