Chapter 17
Zelda
One more thing to warn you about was my stupidly tolerant nature. It coordinated nicely with my occasional obliviousness, like a dress that always looked just right with an old jean jacket.
I had a storied history of accepting the worst behaviors from others and keeping myself in harmful situations past the point of reason.
Part of the trouble was I couldn't help but accept everyone as they came.
I believed everyone was doing their best with their circumstances.
Believed it past the point of knowing better.
Believed it past the point of self-injury.
That was stupidly tolerant for you. It wasn't until someone else showed me the toxic sludge I was choking down that I was able to see the poison I'd chosen for myself this time around.
No, I couldn't have helped the circumstances I was born into but I did the best anyone could've expected from a child and I made it through.
Though it hadn't been until trading small teenage tragedies with my camp counselor confidant Gunnar DeWitt when I was nineteen that I'd opened my eyes to the reality that my family life was marked by abuse and neglect.
I could remember her reaction as clear as if it'd happened yesterday.
I remembered every minute of it. There was no mistaking the face people made when introduced to homemade horrors.
It was one of shock and distress but it was also pity.
Always pity. The worst part of pity wasn't feeling powerless or small.
It was the shame that stole the oxygen from my chest and blocked out the sun.
In keeping with our usual late night gatherings, Gunnar and I surrounded ourselves with chips, cheap wine, and gossip.
But that night, I'd tripped into a well of honesty when I told her about the worst sunburn of my life.
I was fourteen and I'd tried to develop a base tan on my torso before debuting a new summer bikini.
But I'd missed the mark and scorched my skin far past the point of an average sunburn.
There were blisters and cracks and an alarming amount of peeling skin—it was gross.
It hurt like nothing I'd experienced before and my body treated the entire incident as if it was suffering from the flu.
But the real victory, the success of this experience was my ability to conceal it from my parents.
I'd slathered myself in creams, kept a cool, damp cloth layered under my clothes, and popped painkillers around the clock until I could exist in my skin without crying. And they never suspected a thing.
I hadn't expected the words to flow as freely as they had and I knew I'd said too much when Gunnar blinked at me, the wine bottle frozen on its way to her lips and pity scrawled over her face.
She'd wanted to know why I hid the burn, why I hadn't asked my parents to bring me to a doctor, why hadn't they helped.
Parents were supposed to care for their children, even when those children did boneheaded things like frying their skin off in the name of beachwear.
Then she'd wanted to know everything else about my home life.
She'd informed me it was curious that I'd spent most of my high school years staying with an assortment of friends and only visiting my home once every few weeks.
It wasn't okay for my mom to drink to excess every day and say cruel things to me.
And leaving me to figure out how I'd get to and from school as a kid wasn't a practical experience in self-reliance or independence.
It was abuse—all of it was abuse—even if it didn't leave cuts or bruises.
I hadn't mentioned the sister-mother piece. I didn't tell anyone about that.
Gunnar was the first person who told me it shouldn't have been that way and it didn't have to continue being that way, and I could change it.
I hadn't realized how detrimental it was until she'd shown me, just as I hadn't known my life in Denver had simmered down to the same type of scorched terrible until Leesa Bruno, the owner of the spirituality shop, started pulling tarot cards one uneventful afternoon.
She asked about grad school and I was forced to tell her I'd put a hold on my studies.
Like any good witch, she wanted to know why.
Explaining a flawed, fractured relationship to someone unaware and uninvolved had a way of pulling apart the scar tissue of shame until the whole thing broke in my hands.
Shame was the root of it all, of course.
It wasn't the shame that followed an awkward moment or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
This was the shame that accompanied me everywhere, a parasitic passenger determined to weigh me down until I stopped moving altogether.
Leesa had listened, just as Gunnar had. She'd pointed out the problems, the fallacies, the unacceptable behaviors too. She'd tapped her finger on the cards and told me it was time for me to go into the world and find my way again.
Then she'd fired me.
Ash propped himself against his doorway to his office, his back pressed to the jamb while he crossed his arms over his chest. He did this exact thing several times each day. He'd leave his desk, walk to the door, and say nothing while he settled into the Hot Boss pose.
I couldn't determine whether this was a performance for me or an innate mannerism not unlike a jaguar perching in a tree to study its prey in the most comfortable pose possible.
Either way, I'd learned to pay this behavior little attention.
I didn't spin my chair around to watch anymore.
I didn't prompt him to speak. I stayed focused on my work until the last moment because the Hot Boss pose was the best and worst type of power play.
It was both best and worst because Ash was already in control here.
There was no dispute in that matter and he didn't have to roll up his shirtsleeves or pace his office while on conference calls or station himself in the doorway to communicate his authority.
It seeped out of him and scented the air.
I could no sooner avoid it than hold my breath all day.
There was an extra layer of goodness because he didn't do any of these things with the intention of being arrogant or outwardly dominant. It came as naturally to him as his mercurial moods. He had no idea how much raw, assertive confidence shone like a halo around him.
I had to admit there was another reason I didn't give him my full attention during these moments.
If I devoted any time at all to watching him lean against the door or stand behind his desk with a hand on his waist while he frowned into a phone conversation, I'd probably rip his pants off. No exaggeration.
"My mother texted just now," he announced. "She'll be here in fifteen."
I shot a glance at the wall clock. "Wow. Where did the afternoon go?"
"You can skip this dress fitting thing for my sister. I'll take care of it."
Still seated at my desk, I asked, "Are you offering because you think I can't handle your mother and sister or because you don't want to go to the doctor alone?"
"I know you can. I'm saying you don't have to," he replied, dodging all talk of his visit to the specialist. All day, he'd insisted his shoulder was nearly back to normal and when he didn't think I'd notice, he hit up the tiny bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever in his desk drawer.
"And you don't want to visit the doctor all by yourself," I added, busy organizing documents for tomorrow. I needed everything in place now because I didn't want to be running around crazy while the first part of my plan to get Ash's office functioning at top speed launched.
He made a noise, something that suggested he wouldn't admit anything of that sort, then said, "If you're sure about doing this dress thing, I'll meet you there when I'm finished."
"You don't have to make it sound like we're parting for sixteen years." Finally, I swiveled my chair around to face him. "It's only a few hours, Ashville. You will survive, I promise."
"I know that," he grumbled.
"You're in a mood." I eyed him, the haughty fold of his arms, the scowl dug into his face, even the broody way he cocked his hip. "What's that all about?"
He lifted his brows by way of explanation, his eyes widening as if that were adequate in defining the afternoon's issues.
"Mmhmm." I shifted back toward my documents and files.
I couldn't say I understood everything about accounting but I'd figured out how to tee it up for the people who did.
I'd also figured out a few things about Ash's moods.
He was obsessively efficient but if he didn't feel like tackling a task, it didn't matter what his schedule required of him, he wasn't doing it.
He brought his A game to meetings and calls but he fell quiet once they ended, as if he was running low on words after spending so many. Cookies helped with that.
It shouldn't have surprised me after he'd released his inner filth monster but Ash devoted full minutes to growling as he watched me move around the office.
Perhaps that wasn't indicative of his moody tendencies so much as the zealousness of his libido.
I should've known from the moment I sat down beside him on the plane that anyone as tightly wound as him would be an almighty beast in bed.
"I'll meet you at the dress place," he said. "We'll get dinner somewhere. I owe it to you after last night."
He meant the part about leaving me to brave the big bad city on my own while he was out for a posh business dinner, not the part where he snuggled me up like a baby doll when he arrived home to find me passed out between loads of laundry.