Now or Never ⇀ John B Routledge [1]

vii. mind over matter

The crackling fire mesmerized Ashtyn as she sat at John B's side, lost in thoughts of their earlier encounter. The two teens had successfully avoided the most important question and now it was haunting the brown haired sixteen-year-old like a bad dream.

Her blue eyes shift to the right, catching John staring at the fire just as intensely as she had been, hands clutching his kneecaps as he watched his father's work go up in flames, literally.

After falling into an anxious silence, John took himself out of the equation, leaving Ashtyn alone in his stuffy bedroom with her thoughts. She had taken a few minutes for herself, analyzing their conversation over and over until it made her head hurt.

Had she said something wrong? Did she upset him by so willingly discussing their past?

She knew that she currently had more pressing matters to deal with, but the small possibility that the boy next to her still wanted to be more than friends made it impossible to think about anything else. He made Ashtyn's heart rate increase anytime he looked at her, and she knew that this reaction was unusual.

Throughout her life, Claudia set Ashtyn up on numerous blind dates with young boys that met all expectations and never once had they made her feel the way John B did. When she was near him, her skin felt like it had been drenched in gasoline and ignited with a nearby match. She was on cloud nine with the surfer and always felt like she was falling through the cracks to hell with the bland business monger children.

John accidently nudged the girl with his knee when he jumped to his feet, pulling the mainlander from her confusing thoughts. She opened her mouth to protest when he took a step closer to the flames, but bit her tongue when he rushed to the tree-line to grab a metal rebar, using it to pull out the cork board with the Routledge family tree tacked to it.

"Ash," Her eyes locked on to John B's thin frame as his pointer finger ran over the name of the only female on the board. "We need to go."

Her eyebrows scrunched together, "What? Where? Are those goons coming back to finish the job or something?"

He must have noticed the panic in her voice, spinning around on his heel to clutch her shoulders in his hands. "Please, just trust me okay? I don't feel comfortable leaving you here alone after the mess we came back to and I really need to get on this. It has to do with my father."

"I thought..." His brown eyes held pain at the mention of his father, showing a hint of desperation that she'd never seen before. "You think he's still alive?"

His bottom lip was tugged on by his front teeth before he responded. "Ashtyn I think he's trying to tell me something. If he was gone I'd feel it right? Something would be hollow, missing... I don't know, but I think my dad is still out there and he needs my help."

His eyes and tight grip plead for her to follow without question, but something from the dark place in the back of her mind was worried. What if today's dangerous encounter had been brought on as a result of his determination to find his father? Ashtyn could tell that there was more going on here than Big John's disappearance alone, so how could she believe that going into town again would be safer than staying at the Chateau?