15. Rick
Chapter fifteen
Rick
I ’m jolted out of sleep the next morning, and at first, I don’t know what time it is. The office is closed up, but I can tell there’s enough sunlight coming in for it to be late morning.
I have no idea when I fell asleep other than it was sometime in the very early hours of the morning. Maybe two or three. I never meant for it to happen. My back feels like the unholy death of hell from sleeping at an obviously awkward angle in this chair.
I’m instantly tuned in to the sound of Aspen’s voice coming from down the hall.
“No, Mom, it’s okay. I just texted you yesterday. It’s all good. No, yeah, I’m not at the apartment. Not right now. When will I be home? Well, that might be a little bit complicated.”
I freeze as she’s quiet for a pause, and then she launches into the whole story. I guess she’s been found out. I knew she was doing damage control via text, and I didn’t think it would actually work, but I wasn’t going to tell her how to run her life or handle her family. It’s not like I have one of my own to tell her how it should or shouldn’t go.
From the way Aspen’s voice becomes louder and rises in pitch, I can only surmise that whoever is on the other end is freaking out.
“Mom, no. Put dad on,” she says into her phone.
I guess it’s her mom.
“Whoa, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to come all this way. I’m fine. Yes, fine.” This pause is the longest yet. “It’s what Jace wanted. I know I should have told you all about it, but you wouldn’t have let me do any of this. I had to come alone.” She snorts. “Work wouldn’t give me time off, so I had to quit. No, Mom. I’m not having a crisis. I told you about the letter. It was more than that. It was more like a will. If Jace asked you to do something, you would have done it without question, just like Dad or his mom would have. It’s the same for me.”
I should go and help her and save her from the verbal chewing out she’s getting and is probably going to get from her dad when he comes on the line.
I can only imagine her parents showing up here and giving me more than a verbal beatdown. They’d ask me what I’d done with their daughter, and I’d have to tell them that I made her my wife. I’m not sure if they know that part yet. Aspen only mentioned coming here and the letter, or so I’ve heard. Her parents would probably shit enough bricks to reconstruct half a city if they found out she’s married…married to me. I’m a total stranger to them. I’m halfway across the country, and for all they know, I’m holding their daughter hostage, and she’s got the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome that ever existed. I can’t tell them that I haven’t touched their daughter. That I don’t crave her, and I don’t want to get wildly inventive when it comes to ways I’d like to pleasure her.
Fuck.
If I’m going to have to meet the parents and explain myself, then I’m going to have to do it freshly showered and changed into a good old clean Henley.
Aspen’s voice continues as I walk to the bathroom. I feel more than guilty about all this. I never should have let it get this far. I never should have opened my door for her and let her into the house. But I did. And I agreed to the marriage, sham or not. I let Aspen touch me. I let her in, into the cracks that shouldn’t exist.
Also, just by existing, I’ve become the thing in her life that shouldn’t exist.
I strip down and get into the shower. I’m so focused on what an arsehole two thousand I am that I don’t hear the bathroom door open. I’m not the kind of person you can easily sneak up on, so that proves how distracted I am.
I have both hands braced against the tile when Aspen clears her throat.
“Hey.” Her eyes are surprisingly dry and clear. She hasn’t been crying. She looks focused and determined. She looks like pure sugar and sweetness. She looks like a good wind could blow her right over, but she’s so much tougher.
I’m so naked.
She slips out of her T-shirt and shorts and joins me in the shower. This might be the last time. It should be the last time. No, there should never be a last time because there shouldn’t have ever been a first time.
“Your parents think you’re impulsive. They’re worried about you. They probably think I’m a carnivorous monster,” I mutter.
She shakes her head at me, smiling of all things. “Well, you have eaten me before. You could do it again…”
And that’s how the shower goes. It goes and goes because I can’t say no. Because I don’t know if I even want to say no anymore. I had this life, and I was set in my ways. They might not have been good ways or the right ways, but perhaps I would have figured it out. Now there’s Aspen, and when she leaves, there will have been Aspen, and I won’t ever be the same.
She dries me off after like I’m a child, and I don’t fight her. When she kisses me, I kiss her back because god help me, I want to. I don’t want to tell her I’m dirty anymore. I don’t want to chase her away. I don’t want to protest and come up with a thousand reasons why this is wrong. I don’t want to keep trying to put up ineffectual shields to keep her at bay. Because they don’t work. She only tears them down.
“I’m staying because I want to stay,” she tells me, completely naked and utterly gorgeous. “Needs and wants, Rick.”
“Are your parents going to show up here? Is your dad going to break down my door? It won’t be the first time I’ve dodged bullets, but I like to know in advance what kind of battle I’m going to have to face.”
“No,” she says as she wraps a white towel around her slender body. Her wet hair drips all over her shoulders. She’s still coated in water droplets, and I want to lick every single one of them off of her sweet, soft skin. “I mean, they could show up, but they won’t be firing at you. I do promise that. They told me they were going to calm down, and we’d talk about it in a few hours when they had time to process, but I can’t guarantee they won’t get on the first flight here.”
“They don’t have a tracker on your phone?”
Aspen gasps. “Goodness, no. We don’t have that kind of technology. We’re not spies.”
“It’s an app, Aspen. Parents use them all the time.”
“Oh.” Her chin wobbles, and her eyes nearly pop out. “Oh, shit. Okay, well, they might show up then. I don’t really know. If they do, though, it’s fine. They still won’t come armed.”
“If I have to take a black eye for the team, I’ll do that.”
“My dad doesn’t hit people,” Aspen says.
“What about your mom?” I ask.
“Gah! Definitely not my mom.”
She’s not even dressed, and we’re still in the bathroom, but I feel like it’s only appropriate that I try again to be the asshole that makes her see reality. “I’m afraid you have this starry-eyed wedding bells fantasy, and that’s not how this is going to play out.”
“Don’t worry, Patrick McDonald. I know you’re only in it for the sex.”
My mouth drops. Aspen, on the other hand, throws her head back and laughs. What a wicked, wicked woman she can be. She’s disarmed me and put me in my place with that laughter. I just said I like to know what kind of battle I’m fighting, but nothing on earth could have prepared me for her. She’s the battle I’m not going to win. She might be the one I won’t survive. She’s the one who could truly wreck me, even after everything I’ve lived.
I’m astonished, dumbfounded. I don’t know how this happened. It happened so fast. Like getting that knife in my side. In a few seconds, it could have been over. It could have hit something vital. I think she’s hit something vital. It hurts in my chest where it never used to hurt at all. No, I’m a liar. It did hurt before, but not in the same way this hurts.
“I’m not…that’s not true!” I do feel the need to rise to this, even if it’s only in a very poor attempt to defend my honor.
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot we’re going to be friends after. You did say that was going to be a thing.”
“I’m worried you still think I’m going to change my mind. I’m not just in it for the sex, but we can’t…we can’t stay married. We can’t be that kind of friends.”
“Goodness. You seem very certain of that.”
“I’m serious. Take it seriously, Aspen,” I say exasperatedly.
Her eyes dance. Her left hand holds the towel firmly closed between her breasts. “I am taking it seriously.”
“I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt your feelings.”
“You did say I’m the kind of person who gets attached. You meant that you aren’t, but I don’t think you really know what you mean. I don’t think you know that much about yourself. I think you’ve been so busy hardening yourself and shutting the world out that you have no idea where you want to go in life, who you want to do it with, or what you would or wouldn’t enjoy.” She waves a hand at the shower. “You enjoyed that.”
“For Christ’s sake.” I wish she would just slap me for being vulgar, for being an asshole, being disappointing, and being the prick who inevitably hurts her when she’s far too wonderful to ever deserve being hurt. “You should go back to San Jose. I can file for the annulment tomorrow.”
“We’ve had sex, though,” she points out.
“They don’t need to know that. We can pretend we didn’t. I’m doing it to protect you. I’m doing it because you need to be far away from here. You have this beautiful life to live and a beautiful family to get back to. They’re worried about you. You don’t need to be here. I’m setting you free.”
Aspen’s nose crinkles up so crinkly that she temporarily looks like a little old woman. “Ewwww, with your money? You think your money is going to make me free? Do you truly think I can just go back to Atlanta with a suitcase of cash and never think about you again?”
“I would just transfer the money electronically. No suitcase needed.”
“I’m not a bird in a cage. I’m free right now. There’s no setting involved. And anyway, that would be a butthole thing to do.”
I brace my arms on the sink and whirl away from her. “Yes, I’m a butthole. I’m a butthole who’s no good for you. I was a soldier for too long. I can’t stop. I can’t make myself soft. I can’t be what you need. I’m just better off alone. I never had a family, and I don’t need one now. I’ll sell this house and figure out what I want to do. I’ll be fine, and so will you.”
“You don’t know what I’ll be,” Aspen says.
“I do. You’re not a quitter. You’ll keep at it until you’re good.”
“Good? Until I’m good? I’m not good without you. I want to…to be here for you.”
“That’s exactly the one thing you shouldn’t want.”
“But I do want it,” she says stubbornly.
She throws her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my back. The bathroom is hella humid, and we’re both damp. I can feel her wet hair soaking through my Henley and the damp towel. I can feel the endless heat of her and her curves pressed tightly to me. I want to spin around and devour her. I want to be inside her again. I want to be inside her over and over and over again. I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want it to expire. Maybe I want her inside me too. Like in my soul and shit, for the love of get-your-mind-off-inappropriate-things.
“Don’t,” I choke. Soul shit isn’t stuff I mess around with. Chest shit and heart shit are a definite no either. “Don’t do that. Don’t hope. Hope makes a mess of everything. It’s an illusion, and it’s the disappointing kind. I’m the magic trick after it’s already been figured out. Simple. A letdown. Not magic at all.”
“That’s mean. Don’t say mean things about yourself.”
“I can say them if they’re true. I’m only going to disappoint you. I’m a solitary man. I’ve been solitary for a long time. I never had a family, so I didn’t get taught how to love, and that’s the shite you probably need to learn from a young age.”
Am I afraid? I’m terrified. I’m terrified that all the things I’ve told myself for so many years are true. That I can’t change. And what I just put out there is my fate for the rest of my life. My own flesh and blood didn’t want me. Why should anyone else? I abandoned Jace to come back here. I abandoned the man whose back I should have had. I know he’s not here, and it’s not because of me, but I’ll feel the guilt for the rest of my life. He was more of a family than I ever had, and I just left. I don’t deserve to even lick his sister’s toes. I know how kinky that sounds, and yeah, I totally don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to even get close enough to lick the ground around her.
“I think you’re a little bit scared.” I knew she’d call me out. I’m not afraid to admit it. Being scared only makes you aware of everything around you. It helps you prepare. Fear is a natural response, and it shouldn’t be ignored. It can be transformed and bent to one’s advantage. It can be changed to adrenaline. But this? I know less than shit about all this. “You’re scared of being free from all the things you never wanted to feel in the first place. You want to hang on to that bitterness instead of forgiving.”
Forgive? We’re going there? Fuck no. I wish I could ask for forgiveness from Jace, but I can’t, and who the fuck else deserves it? Anyone who could have begged me for it is gone. “No one has ever asked me to forgive them. Never once.”
“I know,” she whispers as her arms tighten around my waist. “I’m sorry they didn’t. But you can still forgive them without them asking.”
“They’re dead for the most part, so it would be quite difficult for them to do so.”
“Giving forgiveness is what would make you feel better. It’s not for them.”
“Alright.” My hands flex on the sink. I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I can’t look up and see Aspen holding on to me so tight. I can’t look because I’m afraid I’ll see she’s the one doing all the holding. Keeping me upright, keeping me standing. That she’s the one with all the strength right now. “Alright, you win. I’ll work on the forgiveness part. But the violence? That’s ingrained in me. It’s trained into me. The dirt and the blood and all the sins on my hands and soul…that’s a real thing. You don’t need to get near that. I’m not talking about anyone else. I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. They might not have felt that way, and I’m not saying they lived or died in the same way, and I can’t speak to where they are now, but this is me. I know me, and I can speak for myself.”
“I think you’re more than you can ever imagine. You don’t have to work at it. You already have it. You just have to find it,” she says in response.
“Dig deep into the old, unused, unknown parts of me, is that it?”
“Yes. That’s it exactly.”
“Alright. I’ll do that. I’ll do that, and you’ll leave, and you’ll have a lovely life, and we’ll keep in touch like we planned. You can follow up on my progress. I’ll get some self-help books—”
“Stop it.” She swats at me but grasps my arms and makes me turn to face her. She does the face-cupping thing, so I have to be brave enough to look at her dead-on. “You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. If you want to do that, then I’m glad. But I’m not going back to Atlanta. I’ll find my own apartment and a job here. I’ll make my parents understand.”
She’s hinted at this before. Throwing her life away for something she thinks she sees in me. “You can’t do that,” I say.
She cocks a brow. “I’m pretty sure I can do whatever I want. It’s my life, or did you not just say that?”
“I think that’s an argument of semantics again,” I say with a sigh.
“And I think you should leave this house and come back to Atlanta with me. Come and let me find you a place to stay. Come and stay with my parents until you’re settled, or rent one of those long-term stay hotel rooms. Come back with me. We’re family, and we want you. You’re more than what other people have spent years turning you into. Jace knew that, and he wanted us to know it too. He wanted us to know you. He wanted you to be a part of us.”
“No. I was his insurance plan. He knew I had too much of a sense of honor to turn him down when he asked me to protect you because he couldn’t do it. Fair or not, I’m roped into it now. I’m going to be connected to you for life.”
If I was going for hurt, it doesn’t register with Aspen. She dodges the blows I try to stick and land. Ones that I need to stick and land. “We tell ourselves stories, Rick. About who we are and where we came from, and then we live that, and it dictates where we’re going.”
“Don’t say we can change the narrative. It’s not that easy.”
“We can change the narrative. You know we can. Having people worry about you and care about you is not such a terrible thing,” Aspen says softly.
It is a terrible thing. It’s a terrible thing because it’s the one thing I’ve wanted my whole life. I did want it, but then I made peace with not having it. If someone is denied something for long enough, they stop missing it. Eventually, that phantom limb pain is going to fuck off, and you’re going to be left with a hard deadness in its place. Maybe we all need more of that—that hardness. Not less. Maybe the happy tra-la-la that a large portion of the self-help inspirational world is selling is bullshit.
What?
The world has collectively gotten a lot of shit wrong in the past. They could be wrong on this one too.
“I think you want to stop. You told me you wanted to leave, even before your grandpa got you home. You told me you wanted out. That means you wanted to stop fighting. You wanted to stop being a soldier.”
I can’t stop. I got out, but I haven’t ever really stopped. I haven’t lowered or released the burdens I’ve been shouldering long before I ever became an adult.
“Rick?” So soft. The way she says my name. God, I love the way she says my name. It makes me warm and unbrushed-teeth- style fuzzy on the inside. Ugh, maybe fuzzy-blanket-style fuzzy. The other one is too gross. “Do you want to stop? If you do, we’ll help you. We’ll all help you. Even if it’s not easy, you can get there. You can just lower all of it down, set it all down, and just be you. You can stop fighting and let us take care of you. You can let us be your friends, and you can let us love you. You might not think you’re capable of love, but you are capable of being loved.”
If I stop, will it make every death of every friend I ever had, of every brother and sister who served with me pointless? Does it make it all useless? I can’t just set it down. Because where would that leave me? It would leave me open to any kind of attack. Any injury. It would leave me open to complete and total destruction. No one just sets it all down. No one.
“We could go anywhere. If you don’t want to be here or in Atlanta, we could travel. We could pick a place. If it’s not in the States, that’s okay too. We could go off and learn how to live.”
“Very new age,” I comment.
“Seriously though. Isn’t everyone? I hope so.”
“Because the second you stop learning, that’s where you’ve really gone wrong?” Does it get any dryer? I don’t think so. Does it get any more asshole? Probably not. I’m setting the bar high right now.
Aspen is too good. She keeps insisting she can save me from myself, but what if the whole notion of needing and wanting to be saved is total bullshit? It’s just such a gross concept to me. Relying on others, letting down my guard, and letting them or some professional fix the broken parts of me. That’s likely not even possible. It’s corny. It’s terrible. It’s so mushy and romantic, and not in the sense of anything that has to do with love but more in the spirit of unrealistic expectations. It means being gentle with myself, but the very idea of that goes against my nature. I don’t want to be gentle with myself. Soldiers, even ex-soldiers, are not gentle people.
But in the shower I was just thinking about how Aspen is already under all those layers. She’s already past the fact that I’m not gentle. She doesn’t think I let her brother get killed by not being there to have his back. She doesn’t hold me responsible. She offered me her family even though I’ve shown her the worst of myself. She fed me, held me, and even helped me sleep. She had sex with me, but she also loved me with her body. And she’d love me with even more of her if I let her.
She’s made it clear that if I stopped fighting, that would be okay and not cowardly. She’s one of the gentlest people I know, but she’s a warrior in her own right. If I just couldn’t do it anymore, she’d probably pick up the mantle or pick me up and carry me and all my burdens.
I’ve been too quiet for too long.
“Okay.” She holds up her hands and backs off. “You don’t have to decide today. I know it’s a long process. I’ll leave, even though I don’t want to leave. I’ll go back home and pack up and get ready to move. I’ll talk to my family. They’ll understand. I’m coming back here, though. I’m getting an apartment, but I don’t need your money to do it. I have some savings, and it will get me through until I can get a job.”
“Too good to take it, are you?” I purposely look at the floor because she looks far too enticing in that damn bath towel.
“I’ll ask you for it if and when I might need it, but right now, it’s not what I want. You’re what I want.”
How does she do that? How does she make that sound so believable? She could take as much money from me as she wants. She could go anywhere in the world. She could buy herself whatever she desired. She could literally live in her dream home and drive her dream car and never have to work a day in her life again. My money could provide her with anything, but instead, she’s looking at me like I’m what she wants, and she’s doing it with total conviction. And not for a lack of imagination or ambition. Not for a lack of intelligence or drive or an inability to make life into a bigger picture. That’s the easy road. But looking at me with such sincerity and honesty? Definitely not the easy road. I’m the crap chute.
“I don’t need you to come back here,” I say to Aspen.
“Yes, you do,” she insists.
“I could stop you.”
“No, you can’t. It’s a big city. I can move anywhere in it as it fits my budget and as I please.”
“You’ll break your parents’ hearts.”
She blinks hard at that, but like everything else, she swats it away and refuses to break. “I won’t. They’ll miss me, but they’ll understand. It’s not forever. I’m a grownup, and there are many varied and reliable methods of communication. We’ll all learn how to be okay.”
No. I can’t let this happen. It doesn’t matter how much I might want to believe her or stop literally and figuratively fighting. She can’t possibly know I’m what she wants. She can’t throw her life away. She can’t come here. Not for me. I can’t believe her. I know that, at the heart of me, I’m unwanted and unlovable. I’m stained.
If shoving her away to protect her is the only option left, then that’s the option I’ll have to take.
“I don’t want you to. I don’t want you, Aspen. I. Don’t. Want. You,” I say harshly.
The hurt is bright in her eyes, and it’s a lance to my heart. The lesions are instant. I’m bleeding out on the inside and drowning in my own blood. God, it hurts.
And then.
She laughs.
She laughs so hard that she has to grasp her towel in the front and bend over.
She laughs so hard that she snorts.
She laughs so hard even as she does a little dance from foot to foot. “Oh god. Oh my god,” she wheezes. “I’m going to pee myself if you don’t stop that. Your attempts at being big and scary are so funny. For the love of rotisserie chicken, Patrick McDonald, yes, you freaking do want me to come back here. You do want me to stay. You do want to be wanted, and you do want a family. You do want good things out of life. And you do want beauty. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have let me in the front door. You wouldn’t have married me. And even if you’d realized your mistake too late, you could have put me in the pile of stuff to donate and then shipped me out of here, but you didn’t. Right now, you’re only fighting so hard because this is the breaking point. This is the point where it all feels worse before it gets better. I promise. Just come back to Atlanta with me, and you’ll see. We’ll figure things out from there. You’re my friend for life, no matter how foul you want to try and be.”
I don’t know what happened. One minute, I’m standing here completely in awe of this woman, and the next, I have to stumble back to the counter and catch myself. One look in the mirror confirms everything I was afraid of. I don’t look like me. My eyes are far too shiny, too misty, too hopeful. I can see everything she’d laid out in my mind. All I have to do is reach for it. Believe it. Say yes. Trust.
Jace gave me the greatest gift he could have ever thought to give. His family. He knew I needed one. He always knew I’d need one. I thought I left him alone by getting out, but he knew that when I left, I’d be the one alone on the outside.
I don’t say anything, but Aspen knows. She wraps her arms around me again. They barely reach, but she holds on so freaking tight. For all she’s worth. I drop my head and breathe in the scent of my shampoo in her hair.
“I’ll come to Atlanta.” Sure, I can go. I can try. Fuck, I think I’d even dig around in dirt like she suggested if she wanted me to. I’d probably do just about anything for Aspen.
“Yay, Rick!” she exclaims against my chest. “I promise it will be even better than the rotisserie chicken.”