19. ashton
nineteen
ashton
. . .
What If We Don’t - Ashley McBryde
I can’t help the grin that spreads across my lips as I walk along the creek back to my cabin.
I don’t even walk, not really. It’s more of a skip.
A glide, where my feet barely touch the ground, where I feel like I’m following my body from somewhere above.
I let myself into my cabin and spin on the spot with my arms outstretched, a giddy squeal falling from my lips.
Tonight has been something straight out of my teenage dreams. Brooks Hart, slamming his lips against mine, his hands all over my body.
Riding him, taking him in my mouth… there’s a nagging voice in the back of my mind that doesn’t want me to get too comfortable, but if twelve-year-old Ashton could see me now, she’d scream.
I was convinced at twelve, but now I’ve had a taste, I know it. Brooks Hart might not be the settling down type, but he’s the only one I want to settle down with.
I head straight for my bathroom, toss a lavender-vanilla shower steamer into the shower pan, and turn on the water. I take a quick shower, just long enough to sluice the sweat from my skin and clean myself up after the evening’s activities, and crawl straight into bed.
I wake up to a sharp pain reverberating through my skull. Just the effort of opening my eyes hurts like hell, and I squint against the shard of light slipping between the blind and the window frame.
Ugh.
This is miserable.
I roll over, and every single inch of my body protests as I reach to my nightstand for a glass of water.
It’s empty. I distinctly remember filling it last night.
I must’ve been thirsty, but I’ve never felt more dehydrated.
Or sick. My stomach lurches and I drag myself out of bed, pulling the bedsheets with me as I fly into the bathroom.
Nothing has ever made me move faster than that telltale clench.
I make it just in time to empty the contents of my stomach, before sitting back against the shower door.
The glass is deliciously cool against my skin and for a moment, everything—the pounding in my head included—is still.
Until another pounding begins. This one shakes the walls of my cabin, and my brother’s voice accompanying it shakes my eardrums.
“Ashton Faith Tanner, get your ass outta bed!”
I moan lightly as I tip my head from one side to the other, desperately seeking the coolness from the surface of the glass.
“She never locks her fucking door.” Brooks’s familiar grumble travels through the cabin, followed by a thud.
“Well, her boots are still here. She’s never late for ranch work,” Everett states.
He sounds concerned. I want to call out and tell them to leave.
Tell them they don’t need to be here; they shouldn’t see me like this.
But another groan is the only thing that comes out of my mouth as I pull my knees to my chest, bringing the trailing bedsheets with them.
I’m shivering, despite breaking out in a sweat, and I wrap the sheets around myself as best I can.
“Ash?” My bedroom door opens slowly and quiet footsteps cross the room. “Oh, Ashey.”
My brother is on his knees in front of me before I can tell him to stop. He grasps my face, cool fingers holding me gently as he tests my cheeks and forehead with the back of his hand.
“She’s burning up,” he murmurs. He adjusts his jeans as he stands, moving to the sink and grabbing a perfectly-rolled washcloth from a wooden crate I hung as a display piece.
I don’t have the energy to tell him those aren’t the washcloths we use.
They’re the ones I spent an hour watching a video to learn how to roll for display purposes only.
He runs it under cold water as another figure moves in.
Before I know it, I’m floating above the ground. I might throw up again.
“C’mon, little devil.” I’m in Brooks’s arms. The place I’m pretty sure I spent a good portion of yesterday evening.
The place I’ve dreamed about. I’m surrounded by the scent that haunts my dreams and I can’t help but relax into his hold; he has one arm beneath my shoulders and one beneath my knees. “Let’s get you back into bed.”
An embarrassing whimper leaves my lips as he places me down on the mattress with such gentleness, such care, and the bedsheets slip away, revealing the threadbare shirt I’ve been sleeping in.
It’s an old Tri-towns harvest festival shirt from at least ten years ago; holes in both armpits and frayed at the collar and hem.
It just barely covers my hips, and my period underwear isn’t exactly the sexy kind.
Mercifully, if either of the two men see anything they shouldn’t, neither says a thing. Brooks pulls the sheet to my chest and Everett places the cold washcloth on my head, unrolling it just enough to cover my aching eyes.
“Are your meds in the cabinet, Ash?”
I have a momentary panic—one that sends my pounding head spinning and has me swallowing hard against threatening bile—that the meds Everett is talking about are in my nightstand. With the vibrator I’ve been using a lot lately. The one I’ve used while thinking about his best friend.
But my brother knows me better than anyone.
There are always meds in my bathroom cabinet.
They were in the bathroom cabinet when he and I both lived with our parents, and after I moved into my own cabin, they’re in the cabinet here, too.
This isn’t my first rodeo with a migraine, and it’s not Everett’s first time feeding me medicine and tucking me back into bed.
I so badly want to fall back to sleep, but the quiet hum of hushed conversation is jackhammer-loud, and all I can smell is the combined scents of Brooks’s and Everett’s cologne mixed with fresh dirt, and I can’t stop wondering if Brooks has ever seen me with a migraine like this.
I’ve lived with migraines since my teens.
They usually show up without fail right after my period starts, and then at random whenever they feel like putting me through hell, but for the last four or five months, they’ve hardly bothered me.
I’ve even had a month or two completely headache-free, which hasn’t happened since I was about fourteen years old.
Needless to say, I wasn’t planning to spend today bedbound when my period showed up a day earlier than expected in the middle of yesterday afternoon.
I used to warn my family in advance, so they knew not to expect me for breakfast or ranch chores.
They’d check in on me during the day; bring me water and pills, and soup and crackers for the especially bad days when I could barely keep anything down.
The days that extended into nights, and sometimes into the next day, too.
Those were the days I didn’t see anyone who didn’t live in my house.
“Here,” I hear. The voice comes from right beside me, and I force one eye open just enough to see the spiky, blurred image of Brooks’s tattooed hand holding out my empty water glass. The faucet runs and stops, and then I feel a large hand taking mine. Pressing a cool glass into it.
“Hey, little devil. drink some water, ‘kay? Ev’s got your meds.”
He snakes a hand between my body and the mattress, encouraging me to sit up a little.
The hand stays there to support my weight as I take the water, thumb drawing a circle between my shoulder blades.
My brother presses two round pills into my other trembling hand and I toss them both into my mouth with a gulp of water, taking a deep breath and bracing, scrunching my eyes closed before I tip my head back and swallow.
The water traces a cold line down my chest as Brooks eases me back against my pillows.
“Think she’s asleep again already,” I hear Brooks’s hushed whisper as I slowly drift away from my body. I feel the air shift as he stands, and then it shifts again, settling my brother’s cologne like a blanket as he leans in to press a gentle kiss to my forehead.
“I’ll check in later. You get some rest. Love you, kid.”
When I wake again, that shard of light is much lower, casting long shadows across my bedroom. I lift each limb slowly, experimentally. There’s significantly less pain involved in movement now than this morning. I open my eyes fully and allow them to adjust to the dim light of my bedroom.
The water glass beside me is mostly full, with a strip of regular Advil beside it.
Now that the worst of the migraine is over and my vision has cleared, I’m left with a dull, heavy ache that spans my entire body, a moderate-level headache, and a general fuzziness, so I pop two pills from the foil and swallow them down with the water, draining the glass and then swapping it for my phone.
It’s after five in the evening already. I’ve slept the entire day away.
Not gonna lie, though. I feel better for it.
Hesitantly, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
I’m still a little unsteady on my feet, but that’s normal.
I’ll be fine once I’ve been up and moving for a bit.
I rummage in my dresser drawer for a fresh set of pajamas—a matching pair this time; a red tank and shorts with big white hearts—and head for my bathroom.
Exactly as I expected, warm water sluicing over my skin is doing the absolute most to rinse away what’s left of this migraine. I run conditioner through the length of my hair and then turn to my favorite, most luxurious bottle of body wash. Soaping up my hands, I run them over my skin.
The same way Brooks ran his hands over my skin last night.
That was a thing that happened.
In the haze and agony of this morning, I managed to tell myself it was nothing but a fever dream. But it was real.
As real as the way I can feel my core clenching at the memory. His strong, thick thigh pressing hard against the seam of my shorts, providing the most perfect friction. His cock, bigger and thicker and more glorious than I ever imagined, in my hands. In my mouth.