A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Valentine's Day

A few weeks had passed, maybe it had been a month, but I wasn't keeping track anymore. I was healing. Sienna was lying low. School had gotten better and better with each day that went by. I wasn't the weirdo, outcast that everyone looked at like a freak. I was going back to normal and unnoticed Sage. That was how I liked it.

I thought I had spent plenty of time with Ashton before we made our relationship official, but I was wrong. Now we spent almost every day together. He'd find any excuse for us to be together. Homework, food, or finding my random belongings in his room. Arrie spent a lot of time away from the house. He would always be around during school hours, but once school was out he was away doing something way more important than sitting around at the house and watching movies like he usually did. I didn't bother to ask him what he was up to. He was still processing the loss of Sam, so I took a lucky guess that Arrie no longer wanted to hang around the house that Sam grew up in.

We spoke about Sam a week or two after he passed. Arrie was a lot closer to my brother than I probably ever was in the eighteen years I had been alive. They'd known each other for about a year maybe a little bit more than that. Arrie said they both knew joining Mud was a bad idea, but they stuck through it. Wherever Arrie was you could find Sam. They watched out for each other more than the club watched out for them. They talked about moving to Miami once they were both out of Mud. They wanted to open up a restaurant together, Sam even considered going back to school over there. And Arrie resented the fact that he came out perfectly fine from Mud, while Sam got the shit end of the stick. The conversation ended as quickly as it started, I didn't get a chance to put in my thoughts or offer him a shoulder to lean on because he was already closing my bedroom door as soon as I opened my mouth.

Now our conversations were down to hey's and what's up's. Sometimes we'd ask for dinner suggestions if Ashton wasn't hogging me, but other than that it was like Arrie and I were two strangers to each other. I wasn't upset or bitter about it, I understood the space he needed because I needed it too, I just couldn't get it. Ashton had a fear of leaving me by myself too long out of worry that I would go crazy and do something stupid. To that, I reminded him that there was nothing more stupid that I could do in my lifetime because nothing could top the fact that Sienna killed her own son.

7:00 in the morning, I ran a pot of coffee. Dad was at work and Arrie had left a note that he was job hunting, but I didn't believe it. I watched as the coffee streamed down into the pot, the smell carefully filling the kitchen and bouncing around my nostrils to wake me.

Today was one of those day where I didn't want to be awake so early, but I needed to be. The police department was stopping by for their weekly check in with me. They wanted to know how I was, what I did during the week, who I saw, who I spoke to, and if I had any leads on Sienna. I couldn't speak to them. My dad had only been here for one of these check ins and he almost got into a physical fight with one of the officers because he felt his privacy was being invaded. After they had left, my dad told me not to speak to them. If they wanted to know where Sienna was, they would have to question a lot more than us.

I hated to be in a house full of police by myself because I never knew if they'd frame me or kill me and make it all look like it was my fault. We all knew how they worked these days. So today I called Harley to come over and help me deal with the awkward tension and stares I would receive. This wasn't how I pictured starting my Valentine's day either. I never knew when the check ins would occur. They liked to surprise us in hopes that they'd find Sienna hiding here and get the opportunity to arrest all of us living here.

"Living a lot more comfortably than I ever have." She said in disbelief as she walked into my house, staring at everything like she was a kid at Disneyland. Harley only knew the club house and a shitty apartment of off Northeast 42nd street that she shared with Harper. She never invited me over because that part of town wasn't cut out for someone who had never held a gun or gotten in a fist fight in their life.