Page 60 of Liar
I was content not talking, but Sawyer apparently wasn’t. He took Will’s place beside me, leaning to whisper, “Travis told me what you guys did over winter break. Not that I’m hoping for anything to change, but…I went last week.”
“And?”
“I’m clean,” he told me, shoving his hands in his pant pockets. “I was always good about using protection. No bastard Salvatore babies running around.” His jaw set, something unreadable flashing behind his green gaze. “I think if I ever would’ve told my father I got a girl pregnant, he would’ve killed me.”
I’d met James Salvatore on many occasions, every time I went over to their house to hang out with Sawyer. Most recently, the times I saw him were not good occasions, and it was during those horrible occasions that I saw, for the first time, just how broken the Salvatores were. Sabrina was manic. Angela hid her emotions behind the guise of shopping, always coming home with the newest thing. James was a drinker, and after Sabrina died, he drank a lot more.
He…he wasn’t a nice drunk, so I could only imagine the things he’d told Sawyer, what he did.
Sawyer never really talked about it much, but after Sabrina, he and I hadn’t exactly been friends.
“He’ll kill me when I tell him I don’t want anything to do with his company,” Sawyer muttered, clearly unhappy.
“You’ve already decided, then?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from Ash and Travis in the water—who were currently in each other’s arms, chest-deep, making out—and watching the man who used to be my best friend.
“I never wanted anything to do with it, but until now, I never had any reason to tell him no.”
Ash. I knew he meant Ash.
Sawyer shook his head gently, saying, “He’d never let me be with her, you know. Any woman I bring into our family has to come from something. A self-starter, old money, it doesn’t matter. I always assumed they would find me someone, pretty much force me to marry them, to carry on the family legacy. But now…”
“But now you don’t want to.”
He gave me a long, hard look. “Can you blame me?”
It was a long while before I whispered, “No.”
Sawyer was silent for the longest time, brooding, pensive. He was no longer the Sawyer who did things without thinking. This new Sawyer did things only after thinking too much. “When it happens, it’s going to be explosive.”
“Well, when it does,” I spoke, pausing to glance to Ash, who, still in Travis’s arms, now waved at both of us, calling for us to come in the water, “we’ll be here.” Comforting Sawyer was in no way my responsibility, and yet there I was, saying we’d be there for him when we couldn’t be there for each other when Sabrina died.
That was a horrible time. We both did bad things.
We had to move on, for our sake. For Ash’s sake.
Later that night, when everyone was winding down, taking showers, and getting ready for bed, Ash pulled me onto the back porch, sliding the glass door shut, separating us from everyone else still inside. Her hair was wet from her recent shower—as was Will’s in the house, since they’d taken it together—and she leaned on the deck railing, running a hand through it before looking at me.
“You okay?” she asked, giving me the tiniest of smiles. A bit of moonlight streamed through the canopy, but most of the light came from the cabin behind us.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I immediately spoke, standing beside her. Less than two inches were between us, and I fought my instincts to close it, to pull her to my chest and hold her close. “Why?”
Ash shook her head.
I could tell something was on her mind, though. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” she told me. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Obviously it’s something, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought it up.” When she still said nothing, I whispered, “Ash…” I set a hand on her lower back, and she leaned into me, breathing me in.
“I love you, Declan, flaws and all,” she said. “And I know that, sometimes, it’s better to keep the truth to yourself, for the ones you love.”
A sinking feeling began to grow in my lower gut, my heart dropping. “What…” I couldn’t even get the question out, not as Ash disentangled herself from me, stared up at me with those stormy grey eyes, and said what she said next.
“When Ray had me, he told me some things, and all this time I wondered whether what he said was true,” she went on, drawing a hand down along my arm, my muscles tense under her palm. “But now I know it doesn’t matter. What does matter is what’s here and now. Not the past.”
She knew.
Of course she knew. Why did I expect anything different? Why did I assume I could sweep that entire night under the rug? My memory was hazy, but that was just because of the blood loss.
