Ashes, Oh Ashes

chapter 10

Turns out the damn bastard was now threatening the three of us over Ashley. What a moron. Apparently he was so thick-headed that he hadn’t gotten the point yet. The point we had made clear repeatedly.

I was shortly running out of patience with this guy.

“Seriously, just get a restraining order.” James said, like he had said many times.

Ashley just shrugged it off and didn’t speak another word on that. I waited until we were alone in privacy before I started pestering her with my own questions.

It took awhile to get her to talk, but when she did, it was meek and simple.

I wondered just how deeply this guy had scarred her.

Something else must’ve happened that I didn’t know about- that she hadn’t told us. What else could it be? Why else would he persistently go through such trouble and getting his ass kicked over and over if something wasn’t going on?

“It’s blackmail, alright?!” she finally snapped at me.

It was raining today, and the cold attitude matched the weather. We were in her room, sitting on her bed. She was in a simple, black, cotton dress with a v-neck and decorative buttons. She was wearing her favorite black-and-white-striped thigh-high socks and sitting cross-legged.

“How could he blackmail you?” I asked, noting her perfume as I always had.

She fiddled with the hem, staring intently down at it as if her life depended on it.

She was quiet. “He knows what I did. If I cut him off from anything, he’ll tell.”

“Tell what?”

Ashley shook her head, mournfully and quietly. “My psychologist worked too hard to keep me safe. I can’t let him ruin it.”

I pondered her words for a moment, letting the soft music from her stereo drone out my anger.

She cut it off with the stereo’s remote, right as I was beginning to tune into the lyrics.

“You aren’t telling me something.”

“You’ve been saying that for a year,” she mumbled.

I nodded. “I get it.”

Then she looked at me. Her russet seas stared at me with a concentration that I couldn’t define as anything other than what looked to be fear. Maybe she was still trying to guard herself from me, from her past. I only wish I knew so I could help her.

She didn’t speak for a long moment, and I was too afraid to look away. Sometimes, she scared me. Not in the way a bully would, but in the way that you worry for someone. You’re scared for them, but I wasn’t sure if I was scared for Ashley. It was hard to tell what to fear when she never told me anything about her past.

All I knew about her past was that she’s lived in three different states, her dad left her mother when she was two, her best friend (besides Lucille) is a girl named Carrie, she’s excelled in honors classes and that she’s in juvie now because of a reason she has yet to tell anyone.

I began to wonder if my being a pushover was keeping her from telling. But then again, I didn’t want to be an assertive asshole about it. Did that still make me a pushover?

“Matt,” she was still speaking softly. “Do you trust me?”

You’d think I’d be used to her enigmatic personality by now . . . but no. Even now her question makes me hesitate. I nodded.

“Like, really, really trust me?” hope began to brim in her eyes. I could see a fiery flame burning deep within her soul.

“Yes, Ash.”