Page 48 of Hiding In the Dark (The Righteous 4)
“Me? What do you want to know?” she asked as a nervous sweat broke out on her hands and she discreetly wiped them on the blanket.
“What do you do for work? I don’t see a ring on your finger or a man pounding down the door to try and kill me, so I assume you’re not with anyone. Do you still hang out with that weirdo girl from high school?”
Ashley laughed, happy that he picked easy topics. “Trish is not a weirdo, well no more of a weirdo than I am, at least, and yes, we still hang out, but she’s an award-winning photographer now and is barely in the country anymore. As for work, I’m a physiotherapist for people who have been in severe accidents or had a stroke, or really anything that requires them to learn how to live in pain.”
“I thought you wanted to be a doctor or a veterinarian—how did you end up in physio?”
Ashley’s face flushed bright red, and she cleared her throat before speaking. “Senior year was tough for me. You were always going to be gone, but it was just….” She sighed and looked away, not wanting to bring up his prom again. They’d already been through that. “I decided to drop out. It took me two years to get my high school equivalency.” She gave a shrug and braved looking him in the eyes. “When I made it into college, it only made sense to take something that required fewer years and less money to complete since I lost all my scholarship money.”
“Why the heck would you drop out? You had the best average in the entire school. The teachers tried to find issues with your work and couldn’t. You used to have perfect test scores and even got the bonus questions right.”
Ashley sucked in her bottom lip and couldn’t look him in the eyes. It was embarrassing.
“Wait a minute, is this because of me? Please don’t tell me you dropped out because of the whole prom thing?”
“Not entirely, but that didn’t help.” She drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “My mom had breast cancer, and we found out after you disappeared. Between worrying about her and feeling like I somehow drove you away—I just couldn’t focus. My grades slipped, and I just needed some time. Dropping out gave me time to help my mom while she was recovering. She’s fine now, but the surgery and the chemo were intense.”
“Ashley, I’m…fuck, I’m so sorry. I would’ve been there if I could, I swear I….” Kes balled his fists, the anger palpable as he stared at the wall.
“It’s okay. I get that you physically couldn’t be there.” She smiled and patted his arm. “As for dating. You, sir, put me on a path of crash and burn in that department.”
She laughed even though Kes’s serious face turned dark.
Nervously, she kept talking. “It’s been a string of bad decisions, really. The last guy I dated, I ended up having to file a restraining order on, so my taste hasn’t improved.”
Kes’s eyes narrowed into slits, the muscles in his body flexing, and for a moment, she thought he was going to pounce on her. That look was so intense. “What did he do to warrant a restraining order?”
Ashley swallowed hard as Kes continued to stare at her like he was peering into her soul. “Can we just change the topic?”
“Not until you tell me what this guy did and his name.”
“Why? What are you going to do? It’s all in the past, long forgotten.” She tugged at the blanket, smoothing out the wrinkles. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she’d put money down that if she told him Kevin’s name, Kevin would end up with two broken legs.
“The organization I work for now is a group that puts guys like that on a list, so if they hurt anyone else, we are ahead of the game and can bring them in faster.”
“Like bounty hunters?”
Kes rubbed his jaw, the corner of his mouth curling up. “Yes, very similar to bounty hunters.”
She couldn’t quite decipher the look he was giving her, and she wasn’t sure she believed him, but she found herself saying his name anyway. “He got drunk and hit me, but it was only once. I kicked him out. The restraining order came into play because he didn’t like being told to get lost.”
Kes’s jaw muscles twitched, a dark hatred burning in his eyes. She swallowed hard as she spoke next. “His name is Kevin Matthews, but Kes, seriously, it happened over a year ago. I doubt that he’s ever going to be a problem again.”
“You’re right. I doubt very highly he is,” Kes said, but the way he said it had her blinking and her mind running to see if she could find a double meaning in his facial expression. He sat there quietly and simply stared back, but the hair stood up on the back of her neck like the energy in the room had shifted.
Giving up, she swung her legs over the bed. “I’m going to go get a glass of water. Do you want anything?”
“Water would be great.”
Nodding, Ashley stood and took two steps when her next stride simply didn’t happen. The force of the missed stride sent her flying forwards, and she caught her shoulder on the bed and then landed hard on the floor in a heap. She cried out as she landed on the wrist that had already taken a beating with her last embarrassing fall. Mortification raced through her body as Kes suddenly appeared by her side.
“What happened? Are you okay?” His voice was so soft, so concerned, and that was her breaking point. All the emotion she’d managed to push down or ignore over the last month stormed to the surface in a turbulent rush that she couldn’t control.
The shower of tears was immediate, and she smacked at Kes’s hand as anger mixed in with the other brewing emotions.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” She batted away his hand again as he tried to touch her. Even though she could barely see through the tears that were making everything blurry, she looked up at Kes. “I bet you’re loving this,” she spat out in between the sobs. “My greatest humiliation, and you get to witness it. Have your laugh, Kes Reynolds. Come on, do it,” she yelled, shying away from his touch as his hand tried to move the hair out of her face. “Just go away, Kes. For fuck’s sake, just leave me alone.” Testing out her legs, she pulled them close to her body and hugged them tightly as the crying intensified along with the pain of rejection that pressed in on her chest.
She expected him to stand and storm out as she yelled again for him to leave, but instead, he cupped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Tell me what’s wrong, Ashley.”
