Chapter 10
Willow sat bolt upright in bed. She was going to be sick. Or maybe…
She fumbled in the dark in the direction of her bedside table.
“Yes! Thank you!” she whispered when she clasped the handle on the side of her tumbler and felt liquid move inside. She brought the straw to her lips and drank, and drank, and drank. She had a vague recollection of someone suggesting she finish the water before she fell asleep, but her thoughts felt like how trying to talk underwater sounded.
Good god. How much wine did she have at Eli and Beth’s? Considering she couldn’t remember her glass ever being empty, the answer added up to…a lot. It was still pitch-dark in her room, and when she tapped her phone’s lock screen, she understood why.
4:17 a.m.
The water helped, but she still felt like she’d been standing under a cottonwood tree on a breezy day with her mouth open.
She padded to the bathroom, tumbler in hand, her eyes thankfully adjusting to the dark so she didn’t have to accost her senses by flipping the light on. She brushed her teeth, remembering that the few times she’d been hung over in her life, a minty-clean mouth helped. Once again, it did. Then she refilled her tumbler from the tap and spun to collapse back into bed.
She gasped, raising the metal cup above her head, ready to strike, until—on further scrutiny—she realized the fully clothed stranger in her bed was Ash.
“Oh my god,” she mouthed. She could have actually killed him this time.
Hand to her chest, she breathed in and out…in and out…until she wasn’t shaking anymore. And then it came back to her, the one word she’d said—tipsy, pre-midnight—that put her in this predicament.
Stay.
And now Ash Murphy was sleeping in her bed. Her chest tightened, and her stomach protested for an entirely different reason than when she’d woken up. Or was that…butterflies? Her head swam with the memory of what she’d told her brother about forgiving Ash, with Ash telling her that he regretted what happened every day for four years. Realizing she was barely clothed, she set her cup on the dresser, scurried back into the bathroom and yanked down the shirt she’d hung from the hook on the back of the door. Ash’s shirt. On instinct she buried her face in it and inhaled the mixture of her familiar tropical-scented body wash mixed with fresh grass and something inherently Ash.
Goose bumps suddenly peppered her flesh, and Willow found herself sliding her arms into the sleeves and pulling the shirt closed over her torso as if she were hugging herself.
She needed to get back to sleep if she wanted to feel remotely human by the time the alarm went off for her to head to the farmers market. She needed to get Ash Murphy out of her bed and onto the couch where he belonged.
Willow climbed tentatively onto her side and slid back under the covers. Ash lay on top of the duvet and top sheet.
“Hey!” she whispered, poking him in the shoulder. “Ash! You fell asleep in the wrong bed.” He didn’t budge. So she grabbed his biceps and gave him a soft yet insistent shake. “Come on, Ash. Time to go nighty night on the couchy couch.” Still nothing.
If this had been anyone else, Willow would have accused him of faking it. But Ash Murphy slept like the dead…and sometimes talked in his sleep. She knew this not because she’d read it in a gossip magazine or seen it posted on social media. She knew he was a deep sleeper because one night four years ago, the side of the bed where he slept now was the side of the bed he shared with her .
She slid her hand from his arm, wondering how to regroup, but he grabbed her wrist midair. Willow gasped, and Ash pulled her arm to his chest, his hand now wrapped around hers.
“Don’t you sneak out on me, Wills,” he teased softly. “I just need five more minutes with my girl.”
She couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t Ash Murphy talking to Willow Morgan today . It was Ash Murphy four years ago in his tour bus bed. Instead of a tank, shorts, and now his plaid shirt, Willow had been in that bed too, and she’d been wearing nothing. Neither of them had. And it wasn’t just any morning either. Those were some of the last words Ash had spoken to her before she became a tabloid headline and some other woman became Ash Murphy’s wife.
He dipped his head, eyes still closed, and brushed his lips across her knuckles.
“Please,” he whispered against her skin. “I’m not ready to let you go.” Even in his sleep-addled speech, she swore she heard a crack in his voice.
“Ash!” she finally barked, full volume now, and his eyes flew open.
He blinked several times as his vision seemed to focus on her. Then they dipped down to the hand gripped in his.
“Shit!” he hissed, letting go of her like she’d suddenly caught fire and he didn’t want to get burned. “I’m sorry! I don’t know what…” He scrambled out of the bed. “It was an accident, Willow. I swear. I know what this looks like, but you weren’t feeling well, and I—”
“It’s okay!” Willow blurted out. “It’s okay,” she said again, gentler this time. “I remember asking you to stay until I fell asleep. I was too tipsy to consider that you might have been tired too.”
She was sitting up now, holding a pillow against her chest as what…protection? He couldn’t be farther from her unless he made an Ash-shaped hole in the wall and ran straight for the barn.
He let out a shaky breath. “Dammit,” he whispered. “We were doing better, right? Did I just set us back to square one?”
“No,” Willow assured him. “We’re fine. We’re…exactly where we were prior to me and the endless flow of wine.”
He let his head fall against the wall behind him with a thud. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.” He ran a hand through his hair and then strode toward the door. “I’ll head back to the couch where I belong.” His voice was rough, and he was moving so fast, Willow thought he wasn’t even going to give her a backward glance. But he paused two steps out the door, one hand on the frame, and pivoted back to face her. “Where exactly are we, Willow?” he asked. “Because Colt said…” But his voice trailed off and he shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m clearly still exhausted. Or something.” He tapped the doorframe twice. “Good night, Willow. Or…good morning, I guess.” Then he pulled her door closed.
She hugged the pillow tight and exhaled a shaky breath.
What had Colt told him? It didn’t matter because Willow had no idea where she and Ash were. All she knew was that he had just said all of that while staring at her once again wearing his shirt and that part of her wished she hadn’t succeeded in waking him. Because then she could have used his sleep-addled death grip on her hand as an excuse to snuggle close to him, to breathe him in and revisit what it had been like—once upon a time—when she was, in fact, his girl.
“Five more minutes,” she heard herself whisper. “Why couldn’t you have stayed asleep for five more minutes?”
Willow swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, hastily pulling her arms from the sleeves of the shirt she should not have put back on. She was clearly under the influence of…of…of the Ash Murphy scent. Or something. She needed it off her body and out of her room so she could get her head on straight.
She balled the shirt up in one hand and carefully turned the door handle so as to hopefully pull it open without making a sound. But something about the door felt heavier than usual.
She waited a beat but heard nothing.
“Ash?”
“Yeah,” he replied from the other side of the door, his voice pained.
Willow opened the door, and there he was, still in his T-shirt and jeans as if he hadn’t moved any farther from her room since exiting it.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, a tremble in her words.
“I don’t know,” Ash replied through gritted teeth. “No,” he amended. “That was a lie, and I don’t want to lie to you, Willow.”
She nodded slowly, then asked again. “What are you doing out here, Ash?”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “I’m wondering how we got to a place where I only get to lie beside you when you’re afraid you’re going to vomit and you might need me to hold your hair back.”
Willow shrugged and sniffed back the threat of tears. “You married someone else.” Why now, though, did it feel like she was missing part of the story?
He nodded, and in the pale moonlight that would soon turn to sun, she saw a muscle pulse in his jaw, like he was barely holding on anymore.
“Colt said you forgave me,” he told her. “I’m not asking you for anything else, Willow. I swear to god. But I just need to know if what he said was true, and then I will march back over to that couch and won’t bother you again.” He blew out a breath. “Do you, Wills? Do you forgive me?”
She should have been furious at him using her nickname after he’d promised not to. She should have been pissed at her brother for telling Ash something that was never meant for his ears. But the should-haves were just as exhausting as the hate, and Willow needed to let go of all of it if she was going to forge a path out of the woods she’d been lost in for too long.
“I think I do,” she admitted, and the wave of emotion that swelled in Ash’s eyes was her complete and utter undoing.
He swallowed. “Thank you,” he whispered. Then he nodded once and began to pivot toward the couch.
“Wait!” Willow cried, grabbing his wrist this time.
Ash’s hand clenched into a fist.
“Willow,” he pleaded, unable to meet her gaze. “You don’t want—”
“I do,” she interrupted. “Just… Tell me the truth.” His eyes finally met hers. “Were they really all for me? Your songs?”
Ash nodded. “Since I’ve known you. Every. Last. One.”
Correction. That was her complete undoing.
She threw her arms around his neck, his balled-up shirt still clutched in her hand. And then his mouth was on hers, hot and wild and filled with years of need…of regret…of whatever he was feeling that made him claim her and reclaim her with every brush of his lips, every sweep of his tongue.
He hiked her onto his hips and strode toward the bed, but even when she felt him knock against the bed frame, he didn’t put her down.
“I’m afraid to let go,” he said against her, his voice rough.
“I’ll still be here,” she assured him.
“Promise?” he asked, squeezing her tight. “Because I don’t think I’ll survive it if you leave me again.”
She sucked in a breath at how familiar and yet how terrifying it was to hear those words from him now. “I’ve got nowhere to run this time,” she admitted. God, she hoped those words were true.
He kissed her one more time, this one gentle, and then laid her down with so much care it made her ache with a longing she swore she’d locked away and buried the key.
***
Four years earlier, Willow had woken to lips softly brushing her cheeks, to the scratch of morning scruff she’d grown to adore.
“What time is it?” she asked dreamily, eyes still closed in the hopes of prolonging the night a few minutes—or if they were lucky—a few hours more before they had to get on the road to the next stop on the tour.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Ash replied. “I don’t want to waste another second sleeping when I could be awake and doing this.” He kissed her temple. “And also this…” He kissed the tip of her nose. “And—”
“NO!” she yelped, eyes wide open now as she threw a hand over her mouth. “Morning mouth!”
Ash groaned. “You’re killing me, Wills…” He sighed as she slipped out of the bed—still naked—and ran quickly to the small bathroom included in the bus’s master suite.
“Suite” was, of course, a relative term. It was a bus, after all, which meant the queen-sized bed was the room, and the toilet/shower/sink sort of closet was the bathroom. But to Willow it was her favorite place in the world because it was the place where she got to wake up to a man who—even after months on the road together—couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
She brushed her teeth and hurried back into bed in minutes to find Ash feigning sleep.
“Hmph,” she said, propping herself on her elbow to stare at a man who was adored by thousands yet walked offstage every night searching for her. “Guess I’ll get dressed and head out for coffee before we hit the road.”
She rolled toward her side of the bed again and threw off the blanket but never made it any further before he called her bluff.
“Don’t you dare leave me again, Willow Morgan. I won’t survive it.” Ash slid a hand over her hip, pressing his palm to her abdomen and pulling her to him. As he leaned over to kiss her jaw, she rolled her eyes.
“ You smell minty fresh!” she exclaimed. “Which means you l eft me for the exact same reason.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but you were still snoring away and had no idea I was gone.”
Willow scoffed. “I do not snore.”
“I’d still love you if you did,” he told her, sliding his hand between her legs.
She gasped.
“Is that because of what I said or what I did?” he asked.
Because they hadn’t done that yet…said that four-letter word that starts with L .
“Both,” Willow replied, squirming as he teased her with his finger. “You can’t just… I mean, we haven’t…”
But when he dipped that teasing finger inside, Willow lost all ability to speak, let alone reason whether or not it was too soon to say the thing that he’d just said.
He rolled her onto her back and brought his lips to hers. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Wills,” he whispered against her. “And I don’t hold back when I’m so goddamn sure about something…or some one .”
He slid out of her, so achingly slowly against her sensitive skin that Willow thought she might break into a million tiny pieces.
“Ash,” she whimpered, grabbing his wrist.
He always drove her blissfully mad, but this was different. The combination of his words mixed with his touch held a potency she wasn’t prepared to handle.
He had to have known it, too, because instead of stopping, he swirled his finger over her swollen center, and Willow bucked against him, gasping for air as her throat tightened and she wasn’t sure if she was about to have the quickest and greatest orgasm of her life or if she was going to burst into tears.
The former came first, and as the final wave of ecstasy rocked through her, the bedroom door flew open without so much as a warning knock.
“One hour until the missus arrives, Mr. Murphy!” Sloane announced. “Time to clean up your…mess and get yourself presentable so we can make the official announcement with a photo.”
Ash flew out of the bed, stark naked with a full erection, and crossed his arms as he stared at his manager/publicist. “What the hell are you talking about, Sloane?” he asked, and to his credit, he sounded almost as gobsmacked as Willow felt.
Sloane laughed, unfazed by her naked and still-aroused client. “Come on, honey. I appreciate the show you’re putting on for your little groupie, but you signed off on this last week—your ticket to a UK fandom.”
Something clicked in the recesses of Willow’s memory, a conversation she’d had with Ash early on before she’d even let him kiss her, let alone do the things he’d done to her last night and had begun to do again this morning.
“How do you put up with that?” she’d asked him once after Sloane had whisked him out of a local bar where their two bands had been unwinding after a show. She’d needed him for some international conference call that was supposed to garner him a sponsorship deal with an up-and-coming whiskey brand. Or maybe it was a sports drink. The product hadn’t mattered, but Ash’s take on it had.
“I learned quickly that everything I do is some sort of transaction,” he’d told her. “Everyone wants something from me, and Sloane makes sure I get something in return.” He’d shrugged the whole situation off at the time, and so had Willow. Now, though, she suddenly realized that she had been his something in return. For what, though? Willow opening for him on the summer leg of his tour?
“Oh god,” Willow said out loud, realization hitting her like a fist to the gut. “I’m one of them,” she added, stumbling out of the bed and wrapping herself in the bed’s top sheet.
“One of what?” Ash asked, and she could hear the panic in his voice, but the only sense her brain could make of it was that Sloane had beaten him to the punch in telling Willow that she’d served her purpose, on the tour and in his bed, and he was trying to save face.
“Good, good,” Sloane replied, all smiles. “We’re all on the same page. Willow, I’ll make sure you get back to your bus discreetly while Ash gets ready to greet his wife, and then we can finish our last few summer dates as one big, happy family.”
“Willow, wait!” Ash pleaded as she swallowed her pride and mermaid walked toward the smiling Sloane who would lead the way.
She gave him one backward glance and almost broke when she saw him scrambling back into his jeans as if he was going to chase after her and noticed what looked like genuine fear in his deep-blue eyes. But then she remembered that Ash Murphy had been a professional performer since his early teens, and she—apparently—had just been part of the show.
“For what?” she asked him, and for one tiny second she hoped he might actually have something to say that would change her mind.
But he just stared at her, speechless, the man of a thousand beautiful words that fans across the country—and now, she guessed, across the Atlantic—stood in line to hear.
“That’s what I thought,” Willow replied, answering her own question.
And then she turned back to Sloane, letting the other woman lead her out of Ash Murphy’s sight, her only saving grace that she hadn’t told him she loved him too. She knew better than to say those words out loud because she knew all too well the damage they could do.
She loved her mother, and her mother died.
She loved her brother, and the State of California separated them for seven years.
She dared to think she could possibly love a man who was already in love with a career and fandom with which she couldn’t compete, and in the span of seconds, it had destroyed her heart.
Willow did not finish the tour. And she never heard from Ash Murphy again.
***
The memory crashed over her like a wave, and she was suddenly caught in the undertow. “Wait!” Willow cried, and Ash froze where he knelt before her, where his lips had been kissing a trail from her breasts down the length of her torso.
Ash pushed himself up to standing and immediately backed away, his hands raised. “I’m sorry, Wills,” he told her, and she heard a crack in his deep voice.
She sat up, pulling her tank top down from where he’d pushed it up to her collarbone so he could cover her with kisses like he used to do all those years ago.
“You don’t really forgive me, do you?” he asked.
Willow grabbed a pillow and hugged it against her torso as she shook her head.
“I thought I did,” she told him. “I really thought I was past it but, Ash, you didn’t just hurt me. You humiliated me…and you broke my heart.”
He nodded. “I know. But…” He cleared his throat. “Did you ever once think of unblocking my number and reading my texts? Or replying to even one of my emails to at least let me know you were okay? Did it really mean nothing to know that everything that happened that day broke my heart too?”
She furrowed her brows and stared at him.
“Ash, I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he added before she could finish. “I realize the bulk of the blame is on me and that I probably don’t deserve credit for trying to fix what I never meant to break. But I did try, Willow. And I did love you.”
She shook her head, too stunned to speak. Only after Ash had backed out of her door and closed it behind him did she hear herself whisper, “What texts? What emails?”
She didn’t sleep the rest of the night, and when daylight finally broke, she called Colt.
“I need to borrow your truck,” she told him. “And I need you to apologize to Jenna for me for missing her at the market today. I promise I’ll be there next week, but something came up that I have to take care of today.”
“You can have the truck, Wills, but you’re kind of freaking me out. Do you need me to come with you wherever you’re going?”
“No,” she assured him. “I promise I’m okay, but I need to deal with this on my own.”
“Okay,” he told her. “I’ll have one of the ranch hands on duty meet me at your place and drive me back home after I drop the truck. And whatever it is, Jenna will understand. How long will you be gone?”
She opened the map app on her phone to double-check the distance. “I’ll be back by early afternoon,” she assured him. “Thank you, big bro,” she added. “You are the best.”
He let out a short laugh. “I know, but I still like to hear you say it.”
Willow smiled, grateful for the levity. Because however today went, her heart was bound to break all over again, but at least she’d have some semblance of the truth. Then, hopefully, she’d finally be able to move on.