Chapter 9
NINE
JADA
My walls are way too thin.
I can hear everything Ash does. I can hear him clearing his throat, talking on the phone to who I assume is JD based on their conversation, then to someone else. Maybe his bandmate?
I can’t ignore him. And I neglected to tell him about Waylon’s invite to dinner. Waylon must have told Bianca immediately, who told Rose—Rose lives on the other side of their duplex with Wes. They immediately blew up my phone and I gave them the same spiel that I’d been giving everyone else.
Were they hurt? Rose seemed more upset than Bianca did, but they were both confused. I tried to seem excited, so they gave me a pass. I’ll see how they really feel when we have dinner tonight.
I blow out a breath. I need to tell Ash now instead of squirreling away in here.
Eventually I throw myself out of bed, Pip on my heels.
I find Ash on the couch, frowning at his laptop screen.
At some point he changed clothes into what looks like a red silk robe, no shirt, and shorts.
He has more tattoos on his chest, which is nicely sculpted without looking like he’s tried to achieve that look.
I can’t believe he can pull off a silk robe. How am I supposed to live with seeing his bare chest all the time?
“I thought the rule was clothes on unless you’re in the bathroom,” I blurt.
He looks down at his bare chest. “A robe is an item of clothing. And I’m in shorts.”
He’s technically right. Ugh.
“Whatever, we have somewhere to be for dinner,” I say.
“What? Already?” he asks. Pip hops up on the arm of the couch and looks at the spot above the ceiling.
“Yeah. Waylon asked if we wanted to come to dinner. Wes is cooking. It’s a normal thing. A thing a fiancé would be expected to go to.”
Ash looks up at the spot Pip is staring at, more out of exasperation than curiosity.
“Fuck.” He runs a hand over his face. “Waylon’s pissed at me.”
“I know. But we have to do this now while it’s fresh. Show them that we’re really in love,” I say.
“I guess.” He closes his laptop and puts it on the coffee table. “But you forget that we hardly know each other.”
“How could I forget that? I just said yes because I miss my friends.” I rest a hand on my hip.
“Do you not see them all the time?” He leans back into the couch, which Pip takes as an invite to crawl into his lap.
“It’s been a while. I’ve kind of been…” A terrible friend? Flaky? A mess? “Distant. After my grandparents. And just all the stuff with work since I had to take over for them.”
“Mm.” He nods. “What else have you been up to for the past six months?”
I sigh. How can the past six months be both a blur and a drag at the same time?
“Working. Grieving. Being a mess trying to figure out this whole inheritance thing,” I say.
“Sit down and stop hovering,” he says. “Pretend to be my wife.”
I glare at him and sit down. Pip doesn’t bother to climb into my lap. Instead, he lightly baps Ash on the chin and squeaks.
“You really like attention, don’t you?” Ash asks, petting Pip between his ears. Pip purrs louder than he squeaks.
“He’ll wilt away into dust if he doesn’t get it.” I try to get comfortable on the couch, but Ash’s presence feels huge. “Anyway, that’s about it. Just working at the hotel, managing it. Dodging the real world because it’s been too much without…”
A stupid lump in my throat appears, even though I tried to play it cool. I’ve literally never played it cool in my entire life, so why do I try to start now? Will I ever be okay enough to talk about this without being all messed up?
“Without your grandparents,” he says. I nod. “I’m sorry for your loss. Sounds like you loved them a lot.”
I swallow again and pat my lap so Pip will come to me. He finally slinks over and I rub the white patch on his chest.
“They were amazing. So full of life and charismatic. But older, of course. They weren’t going to live forever.” I clear my throat. I can’t cry in front of him this early on. “Anyway, what about you? What have you been doing?”
He blows out a heavy, heavy sigh. “I started suspecting that something was up with our money around Thanksgiving. There was this whole big blowout when we were starting to work on our next album, and Dylan suggested we look at the contracts again. We found that they’d split songwriting credit, so we’re getting half of what we should be.
So we fought even more and I decided to come home to regroup. ”
Pip decides I’m not petting him hard enough, so he stretches out across both of our laps.
“And by regroup, I mean we had an argument and Dylan and I decided to sue,” he says. He winces when Pip extends his claws into his thighs.
“That’s messy,” I say.
He sounds resigned to it, though. Like this whole thing was inevitable.
I can’t imagine how rough that would be.
Ash was always “the one who left Jepsen” and made it big.
He always had a reputation in high school for being trouble, so running away and joining a band felt on par for him. Like he was cool.
Going from traveling around, playing sold-out shows, and doing things most people would only dream of to this must be some serious whiplash.
“Yeah. We’ve always been a bit all over the place but this time has obviously been the worst.” He rubs the back of his neck.
“I fucked around for a few months, traveling to try to shake some writer’s block.
But it all felt kind of worthless because, y’know, we were being ripped off and we could hardly stand being in the same room as each other.
Then my grandfather passed and I realized that I couldn’t just keep traveling forever. Now we’re here.”
“So we’ve both had the worst past six months ever, basically.”
“Basically.” He snorts and grabs a throw pillow to put on his thighs. It’s Pip’s favorite, so he stretches out across it instead of Ash’s bare thighs. “So hey, we have one thing in common.”
I snort, too. Pip’s purring is the only sound in the apartment, aside from its usual creaks and groans.
My couch is a normal size, but Ash isn’t—he takes up space in a way I’m not used to, and I can feel the heat from his body. My own body starts warming up like a damn oven.
“Are we going to touch?” I blurt. “In front of everyone later?”
“Presumably. Wes and Rose are all touchy-feely. So are Waylon and Bianca.” He rolls his eyes. “Why, you want to make out? Have our first kiss?”
His smirk turns my thirsty heat into mild rage. Just when I was feeling bad for him, he reminds me why I shouldn’t let my empathy take over.
“Our first kiss was back in high school,” I say before I can stop myself. God, I sound bitter as hell. It was back in high school. I was fifteen, for fuck’s sake. Who even cares about what happened in high school anymore?
I do, apparently. How mortifying.
Ash bites the inside of his cheek, then blows out a breath.
“Do you even remember?” I ask. If he doesn’t…
“Of course I do.” He looks at me as if I’m nuts, even though it’s a very reasonable question.
“Sorry for asking when you ignored me the next day and told me to pretend it hadn’t happened.”
“Well yeah, I’ve felt like a dick about it ever since, even though it was ages ago.
” He rubs at a blurred tattoo between his fingers like he does it all the time.
“Sorry for being an asshole to you back then. I was…I don’t know.
A fuck-up and an asshole. A kid too embarrassed to look even slightly uncool. ”
He meets my eyes and I think he’s going to say something more. He even opens his mouth for a second but closes it.
But he apologized and acknowledged it. Good enough. If we’re going to stay married this whole year without fighting all the time, I need to take my wins where I can get them.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods, resting his hand on Pip’s back half. “You still want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Kiss,” he says. “Reclaim the moment. Get used to my touch.”
My heart races, as much as I don’t want to admit it. We need to kiss. Right? At least once. I don’t know how I’d feel if our first kiss was in front of all my friends.
“Just a kiss,” I say. “No making out.”
“Alright.” He doesn’t hesitate—he gently grips my jaw and tugs me toward him, pressing his lips to mine.
Oh god.
I’m so glad we did this in the privacy of my home, because if any of my friends heard the little whimper I let out, I’d die of embarrassment. I miss kissing and touching and I’m mad that he’s the one who’s giving this to me.
I’m even more pissed that I want to keep going. It’s literally the most chaste kiss, too, just a casual brush of the lips. But it makes my whole body tingle from head to toe, radiating from where he’s cupping my jaw.
He pulls back, still smirking like he knows exactly what he did.
Dick.
“I think we’re set,” he says.
“More than set.” I scoop up Pip, who digs his claws into the throw pillow. I gently extract him. “Anyway, it’s okay, right? We’re okay? For tonight? Meeting my friends?”
His smirk turns into a little smile. “Yep. When are we leaving?”
“Four forty-five.” I avoid his gaze. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I check it. It’s Waylon, asking to reschedule. I’m both relieved and slightly stressed at the sudden change in plans.
“Great, never mind,” I say. “Waylon’s rescheduled. They’ve gotten a bunch of cats at the shelter who need immediate attention.”
“So we did all of that kissing for nothing?” Ash chuckles, still giving me that heavy-lidded gaze. “We could keep practicing.”
“Uh, no.” My body is saying yes but she’s a dumbass. “I need to…do work.”
“Do work. Yeah.” He leans back on the couch, looking as satisfied as Pip does when he successfully tears open a catnip mouse.
“I swear, Ash. We aren’t even married yet,” I say.
His chuckle turns into a full-on laugh as I walk to my room.
It’s going to be a long year.