Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
ASH
After our first night sleeping together, we fall into a rhythm—we start the night off on opposite sides of the bed, with Pip taking up the middle. Everything is fine and even fun while I watch her play her video games. Like we’re actually friends and not fake spouses.
Then at some point, she actually goes to sleep and migrates toward me. Something about her warmth helps me slide into a very light, restless sleep, and I wake up with my hard dick against her ass.
We leap apart, I apologize, and we pretend nothing happened.
Then I use the memory of her soft ass against me as fuel for my fantasies in the shower.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s been easy to avoid each other aside from our nights together because she wakes up early to go workout or to do some work on the computer before leaving for the hotel.
I’ve been puttering around, reading the employee handbook and information on the company, as JD requested.
Plus, Wes sent me some specifics about the bar to go over.
I got the first payment for starting my job at the company, so Dylan and I were able to send in the funds to start our case against Caro and Gordon.
Just knowing something is being done is helping me stay out of my head. The lower stress hasn’t killed my writer’s block yet, but it’s helping every moment feel less awful. I’ve kept myself busy enough to avoid Jada as much as she tries to avoid me.
But now, Mom’s wedding party is finally here. We can’t dance around each other anymore.
Mom managed to mobilize an entire party in a week and told us to show up dressed semi-formally. She even sent Pinterest boards with outfit inspiration because she’s never done anything half-assed in her life.
It helped, to be honest. I miss wearing clothes that aren’t T-shirts and jeans, so I choose one of my favorite printed button-downs and some necklaces and rings I’ve picked up in vintage shops over the years.
It takes me two seconds to get ready, so I go first, then let Jada into the bathroom. She putters around in there loudly, listening to music, clanking bottles together, and talking to Pip.
“Can you help me with my dress?” Jada says from the bathroom eventually, her voice small.
“Yeah.” I open the door a crack, then the rest of the way.
She’s holding her hands across her cleavage, which doesn’t do shit because the back of her dress is fully open. I can see the top of her panties and all the smooth skin of her back. The bright dress contours to her ass in ways that make my mouth bone dry.
I’m going to have to beat my dick clean off my body every single day to survive, aren’t I? Either that or I’ll be so hard that my cock will shatter like something dunked in dry ice.
“The zipper is caught,” she says, glaring at me in the mirror. Pip chirps from where he’s sitting on the top of the toilet tank.
My eyes flick from the tiny pink waistband of her panties to what I should be looking at—her zipper. They’re panties. Panties that are perfectly fitted to the greatest ass I’ve ever seen, but they’re panties. I need to get a fucking life and help her.
I’ve fixed a lot of zippers before, so it only takes me a second to wiggle the tiny zipper from where it’s gotten caught on the fabric.
Zipping up the dress makes it hug Jada’s body to perfection.
I lock eyes with her in the mirror. She’s done her makeup, too.
It’s subtle, but with a bold lipstick that I like.
I’m not sure how long we stare at each other for, but Pip hops onto the counter and knocks over some of her lotions.
“Pip.” She sighs like this is something that happens all the time. She rights them with one hand while petting Pip with the other.
“We should go,” I say, clearing my throat. I want to compliment her, but the words get stuck. “Dylan is here and he’s going to ride with us.”
“He’s already here?” she asks, grabbing a spritz bottle and spraying her face to set her makeup.
“Yeah, he’s in his van,” I say. “I’m not sure where he got it, but it’s been retrofitted to live out of. He drove up from Florida.”
In our band’s breaks in the past, Dylan goes on random side quests.
He traced his family’s history on both sides, going to Korea to find out more about his dad’s family, then Scotland for his mom’s.
He went to a Muay Thai training camp in Thailand for a month even though he’s never done the martial art in his life.
He even went to the Australian outback with the brother of one of our producers to study reptiles.
He just goes. I’m surprised he’s stuck around at his parents’ farm when he has the van, but he’ll tell me more when he’s ready.
“Sounds mysterious.” She quirks an eyebrow. “That’s his thing, isn’t it?”
“You’ve looked him up?” I smirk, and she looks a little embarrassed.
“I mean, why wouldn’t I have googled your band?”
Even the slightest look at our band’s presence pulls up a lot of videos of me in various states of near nudity on stage.
At first it was practical—we did a lot of shows in hot venues—but it became something I just did because it was my thing.
The idea of Jada going down that rabbit hole pleases me, then worries me.
It’s a shit show of rumors, too. Only some of them are true.
“C’mon. Let’s go get him,” I say, instead of asking her more.
We head outside and find Dylan looking up at one of the trees that lines the sidewalk. It’s jarring to see him here in Jepsen, but I’m glad to see him regardless. I can’t imagine going through all this bullshit with the band and our legal issues without him on my side.
He’s cut his ink-dark hair—he’s always managed to cut his own without it looking like shit—and shaved, but besides that, he looks the same as he did when we parted ways before Thanksgiving.
He grins at me, then looks at Jada.
“Hey, you must be Jada,” Dylan says. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” She gets slightly flustered the way most people do when they meet Dylan. The combination of unnervingly handsome and warm gets people and only deepens when they realize he’s actually pretty chill.
Out of everyone in our band, he should have been the one to let all the attention get to his head. But he didn’t and didn’t even like all the attention.
“Congratulations.” He tucks his hands into the pockets of his pants and looks between the two of us. “I never thought I’d see the day that Ashley Beauregard Stryker settled down.”
“Fuck you,” I say without heat.
Jada’s grin is adorably goofy. “I’ve never known anyone to be less like their name before.”
“I know, right?” Dylan grins back. “Except for after he’s had a lot of drinks and the accent comes out.”
I glare at him for real this time. I’ve managed to lose most of my accent since I left Jepsen but drinks bring it roaring back as much as I try to suppress it. Jada’s eyes sparkle with curiosity.
“We need to go,” I say, unlocking my car.
Dylan and Jada exchange a look but get into the car, too.
“Half of Jepsen is probably at my parents’ house right now,” I say as we pull out of the lot, just to get the thought out of my head.
“You sound so thrilled,” Dylan says, his tone dry. “You always fuck with a party.”
“Yeah, but the big difference is that my mom didn’t put those parties together.
” I unlock my car and open the door for Jada, who gives me that cute, shy look she gets when I do something she’s not expecting.
“You didn’t get my mom at full blast when you met her, but you’ll understand.
This is going to be almost as bad as Calabasas. ”
“Almost as bad as Calabasas?” His eyebrows go up.
“Maybe not that bad, but not good, either.”
“What happened in Calabasas?” Jada asks, looking between us.
“You didn’t tell her?” Dylan asks.
“Not directly. We didn’t get into that,” I say, shooting him a look. “We both got our hearts ‘shattered’ and got fucked up,” I say lightly. “Early twenties BS. Looking back, it wasn’t even that serious for me. A three-month fling. Not worth mentioning.”
It’s easier to make it a joke and play it off than get into the real feelings. Dylan knows that it wasn’t anything like I said, but he also knows that I don’t dig deep into that terrible night. Not even with him, and he was there.
That night was the worst one of my life. My brain has squeezed it into a black box of horrible memories so nothing in particular will jump out and hurt me when I least expect it.
“Oh, so someone did get to your heart?” Jada says, matching my light tone. “I thought you were impervious.”
“I was in my early twenties, like I said,” I say. “I was a different person back then.”
I shift the attention over to Dylan rather than The Worst Night of My Life.
He’s been in a somewhat similar rut since the band fell apart, but in less annoying circumstances—living at his parents’ regenerative farm, helping out there, and trying to figure out what the fuck to do with his life now that our music career might be over.
Except his family’s farm is incredible, and his parents are the kind I wish I had. They’re a little out there, but good people.
And he doesn’t need to be married. Not that I think he’d ever get married. After Calabasas—which was also one of the worst nights of his life—he’s been as single as I have been, minus all my random hookups.
Mom, as expected, had zero chill or restraint when putting this party together.
For having done this last minute, it’s a lot.
The long driveway has elaborate balloons intermittently alongside it until we reach the house.
People are parked along the road and it’s stuffed with cars, more cars than could reasonably fit our immediate family.
So she invited her friends—half of Jepsen.
“She went even further than I thought she would,” Jada says to me as I park. “I should have known.”
She takes my hand over the car’s console and squeezes it, probably out of nerves. It puts on a good show for Dylan.