Chapter 8
Beau
Today, I was supposed to cut three different lawns. However, I’d just called and rescheduled all of them moments before Ashton came running out of the woods and toward my truck. Last night had changed everything for me. I needed to tell her exactly how I felt but I couldn’t do it right now. I didn’t want to have that conversation yet. I just wanted to enjoy being with her. We were going to spend the day at the beach today and blend in with all the tourists. Hanging out together in town wasn’t an option. At least not until Sawyer came home and I talked with him. I couldn’t let her go. Not now. This one time in my life I wasn’t going to sit back and watch Sawyer have it all. I needed Ashton. I loved her in a way I knew my cousin never could.
She opened the passenger door and climbed inside. God help me, she had on a pair of tiny shorts and an even tinier top, giving me a peek at her belly button. The beach was a forty-five minute drive and she was going to make me crazy dressed like that.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling as she slid over beside me and straddled the stick shift. All worries of Sawyer fled my mind.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I replied and leaned over to kiss her. She immediately sighed and moved closer to me, running her fingers through my hair. It took all my self-control to pull back.
“Don’t you want to get out of here first?” I asked.
She pouted as if I’d just taken away her favorite toy and sat back, crossing her arms over her chest.
“How’re you feeling today,” I asked, pulling out onto the road. Her dimple winked at me. It took extreme will power to keep driving and not pull over so I could kiss that sweet spot.
“I’m fine . . . I mean, better than fine. I’m . . .” She paused and I glanced down to see her cheeks flush a pretty bright pink. I couldn’t keep from chuckling at the innocent blush on her face. Reaching down I gently pulled one of the small hands she was wringing nervously in her lap and threaded my fingers through hers while the first stirrings of possessiveness came over me.
“Are you sore?” I asked. I’d heard virgins were normally sore afterwards. However, Ashton had been the first virgin I’d ever been with.
She started to shake her head then her blush deepened. “Maybe a little.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, feeling a tug of protectiveness rear up inside me to go with the healthy heaping of possessiveness. She was turning my insides into a crazy war zone.
She gazed up at me and smiled shyly. “I’m not.”
God, I loved her. She wrapped her arms around mine and laid her head on my shoulder. It was one of the few times I hated my stick shift. I’d prefer to remain just like this without having to move my arm.
“Tell me you put on sunblock,” I said, glancing down at her lightly tanned skin. The sun on the beach was intense for even the best tanner. She giggled and nodded her head. All was right with the world. Once I pulled out onto the highway headed south I tucked my hand between her thighs and enjoyed the ride.
Normally I don’t enjoy the tourist-covered beaches. But today was different. I didn’t mind the screaming kids flipping sand in my face as they scampered along the sand or the obnoxious sunburned northerners who feed the damn seagulls. Ashton made everything better.
The sun was scorching hot and although Ashton was content to bask in the heat I kept pulling her out into the waves with me. Watching her laugh and play as we dove into the oncoming waves made it feel as if our years apart had just disappeared. There was then and now. The lost time in between was erased. Being with her made me feel complete. She’d always been the one to hold me together when my world crumbled around me.
“OH MY GOD. THERE’S A JELLYFISH!” Her shriek was followed by a humorous attempt at running through the rough water toward the sandy beach. I bit back my laughter and followed her. I didn’t doubt there was a jellyfish. It was time for them, but seeing her wide eyes and panicked expression was just so cute it was funny.
Ashton
“I always knew you would be irresistible once you stopped acting like someone you’re not,” Beau whispered in my ear as he wrapped his arms around me.
I was still panting from running through the crashing waves. I let out a breathless laugh and laid my head back against his hard chest.
“It isn’t easy hiding the bad girl inside me from the only person who knows she exists,” I replied. Beau’s arms tightened and his breath was on my neck as he rested his chin on my shoulder.
“No. I never saw a bad girl. You’re not bad, Ash. You’ve just been pretending to be someone else for so long. Just to make your parents happy and then Sawyer happy. The girl you really are is amazing. You’re kind yet you’ve got spunk. You’re brilliant but you never act superior. You’re careful yet you know how to have fun and you’re so incredibly sexy but you haven’t got a clue.”
It was hard to see myself the way he described me but hearing him say those things made me wish things were different. I hadn’t held back with him at all. When I was with Beau I didn’t pretend to be anything. I was just me. And instead of the bad girl he saw something desirable. I wanted the world to see me this way too but I knew only someone like Beau would find all my faults attractive qualities.
“I’m glad you see me that way. I’m not saying I agree but it makes me happy knowing you don’t see the flaws.”
Beau tensed behind me for a moment before his arms left me. I could feel his body shift away from me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, turning around to face him.
He just shook his head. I waited for him to speak and after a few minutes of silence he turned his head to study me.
“Why are you with Sawyer?”
This wasn’t a question I’d been prepared for. I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
He ran his hand through his hair, closing his eyes as if he were fighting to keep from saying whatever was on the tip of his tongue.
“You act like someone else with him. Someone you believe would appeal to him. A perfect good girl who follows all the rules. Yet you want to break rules, Ash. You aren’t a criminal, you just want to spread your wings a little and enjoy life. But you want him so much you’re willing to deny yourself freedom to be YOU, just so you can have him.” He stopped talking but kept his pleading gaze on me. I didn’t want to hear these things. They weren’t true. I was a good girl. I was the kind of a girl someone like Sawyer could love.
“I am good,” I managed to say through the tightness in my throat. I felt stupid saying the words when just last night I’d lost my virginity in the back of his pickup truck when I should’ve been home mourning my Grana’s death. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to force my thoughts of Grana away. I couldn’t think about that now. I wasn’t ready.
“I didn’t say you were bad. You’re good, Ash. Were you not listening to me? You have this warped sense of what good is. Wanting to sneak out with your boyfriend and wanting to know you’re desirable and wanted by your freaking boyfriend or leaving a damn buggy in a parking spot doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a human.”
Tears stung my eyes. I wanted to believe him. I’d lived with guilt for so long because I wanted to do the things I’d been told were wrong. But this was Beau Vincent. He drank too much and did things to girls in public places I’d never done in my life . . . until I’d started spending time with him. Mom had always told me Lucifer was beautiful.
“I’d thought the Ash I knew was completely gone. I mourned her for a long time. Then one day in the lunch room Haley kept coming up to Sawyer and flirting with him right in front of you as if you weren’t there. When she turned to walk away you tripped her. Sawyer didn’t see it, but I did.” A grin tugged on the corner of his mouth. “When she’d been splayed out there on the floor I saw the little smirk touch your lips before you bent down to help her up, apologizing profusely. Until that moment I’d thought you were lost. I realized my Ash was under all the polish and politeness somewhere. After that day I started watching you and enjoying the moments I got a glimpse of the real you slipping out while no one else was paying attention. It’s why I said the things to you I did. I wanted you to react to me. I wanted you to smart off at me. Those moments when you couldn’t take it anymore and snapped . . . I lived for those moments.”
“You were mean to me because you wanted me to smart off to you?” I asked.
He nodded his head then bent down to kiss the tip of my nose.
“You really like my ugly side don’t you, Beau?”
“Nothing about you is ugly. You’re just as beautiful inside as you are out, but you don’t see it. That’s what kills me. Sawyer’s my cousin and I’d do anything for him. But he’s insane for keeping you up on some damn pedestal. I want the real you. The one that likes shimming out of a pair of shorts knowing you’re driving me wild. The one who runs through the woods to my truck, smiling like nothing else matters.” He cupped my face with his hand. “The real Ashton Gray is perfect and I’m crazy in love with her.”
My gut clenched. I had feelings for Beau. We shared a history together and now we had this summer, but love wasn’t supposed to factor into the equation. There was Sawyer standing between us.
Beau’s lips found mine and everything else fell away. I didn’t care about all the worries and arguments in the back of my head. I just wanted to be me. In his arms, I knew I could be.