Page 22 of Keeping Mr. Sweet

CHAPTER EIGHT

ASH

Train wreck? Is this some cruel payback for my behavior? Making me apologize, torturing me with his words and his hands, and then telling me we’re a train wreck? What he really means is I am, and I don’t need him to explain that to me. I’m fully aware of it, especially since right now I want to race out of his office and back to his bed, where I can hide from the weight of reality. I want to chase the ugliness of what I’ve done away with a bottle of vodka and cajole him into taking back the truth.

Sam simply watches me, waiting for me to prove his point. Waiting for me to let him down again while I throw myself into another bad situation, or throw myself at him. Knowing that I will because I have a track record that tells him so. What’s worse is I can’t refute it. I can’t pretend that I don’t hurt the people who love me. I’ve been doing it my whole life, since the moment I was born.

“I care about you,” he says. “I’m always going to be here for you. Just not like that. Touching you like that...I shouldn’t have. It was the last time. It won’t happen again. But you’re okay to stay as long as you need.”

Does he have any idea how much worse that is? I hate him for being so unshakable, so constant when I don’t deserve it. I hate that he makes me want to try to be worthy. One day he’s going to give up on me, and I hate how much that scares me. Even though we can’t be together I don’t want to push him away. At the moment I might possibly hate everything but the bacon I can smell through the door, so I grasp onto it like a lifeline. “Ru’s waiting for us.”

“I doubt it.” Sam’s lips twitch as he opens the door for me, and we catch Ru with his mouth full, and more on his fork.

“What?” He pauses long enough to swallow the food in his mouth. “You were taking forever.”

***

Sam excuses himself once breakfast is finished to go for a run before Sweet N Soul opens, while Ru takes our dishes and goes back to what he was doing when I walked into the kitchen this morning. I’m out of place and out of sorts. There’s nothing for me to do here. And Sam’s words keep circling like vultures in my head, creeping under my skin until I can’t take it.

I slip out of the kitchen while Ru has his back turned and fly up the stairs to Sam’s room. The door slips from my hand and bangs against the wall as I enter and march over to my carry case. I don’t need Sam. I don’t need anyone. I’ve managed on my own all my life. I toss the case onto the bed and cram the silk dress that’s crumpled on the floor into it. Jam the cards that are tumbling out of my purse back in and toss that on top. Breathing hard, I scan the room. There’s nothing else to pack. I’m leaving nothing behind. Except Sam, the one person who refuses to give up on me despite everything I’ve done to him. How can he still care?

I suck my bottom lip between my teeth to keep it from shaking as I stare at the open case on his bed. I am so close to disappointing him again. Is this the time he’ll realize I’m not worth it? I want to be worth it. He keeps saying just this once, like he knows anything we do differently won’t last, but just this once I don’t want to give him a reason to give up on me. I sink down on the mattress beside my case. So I’m staying then?

Even if this isn’t my home, and Sam doesn’t want me in his bed, and I have no idea how to behave now that he’s changed the rules, I still want to stay. I can’t believe I’m thinking it, but it’s true.

Picking up my phone, I call my dad. He doesn’t answer, not that I expected he would. It was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d take my phone call anyway, whether he knows about the video or not. Eventually his phone goes to voice mail and I leave a message. “Dad, it’s me. I mean it’s Ashleigh. I-I know you hate when I leave messages on your phone, but could you please call me back? I really need to talk to you.”

I hang up. Fight the stupid disappointment that settles over me. Nothing changes when it comes to Robert Durum. After that I decide I need clothes. There are a few cute little stores a couple blocks away from Sam’s, but I’m not ready to venture out in the light of day.

Besides, I would have to walk past Eat Me, the cupcake and chocolate café where Summer’s boyfriends work. I’m not ready to see them, or Summer, or even Mandy. I just can’t face them and see how much I’ve let them down. Especially since Summer’s been trying to call.

I use my phone to go online and buy enough clothes to get me through the next week. After that, I promise myself, I’ll go and see Summer. Then I pull the sheets off Sam’s bed, bundle them up and toss them in the corner before searching out the clean set in his closet so I can remake it. Once I’ve done that, I head back downstairs and put my case in Sam’s office. There are several people in the kitchen, though Sam still won’t be back for another twenty minutes if I remember correctly from all the runs we used to go on. He’s always been constant, and I wanted so much to be like that too.

“Still here, Mischief?” Ru asks.

I rub my hands up and down my biceps. If I couldn’t then, how am I going to now? “I need something to do.”

“Nothing to do,” he says. “Not in the kitchen anyway.”

“I can serve.”

He looks up from the pastry he’s working, his hands dusted with flour. “We’re okay in that department.”

“I suppose it’s too early for bar staff?”

“You really want to do something?” He rubs his hands together, flour falling like snow onto the counter.

“I need to be useful,” I say.

“All right.” His lower lip creases and he nods as though he’s concluding that I might actually mean it. “Just got a delivery. I put the boxes in the pantry to be inventoried and unpacked if you want to do that.”

“Okay.” I cross the kitchen toward the pantry he pointed out.

“Let me know if you need help,” he calls out after me.

“Who is that?” I hear another guy ask as I enter the second room, filled floor to ceiling with shelves and bins and an entire wall of fridges. Beyond that a heavy metal door marks the entrance to the freezer, beside which is the tower of boxes that Ru wants me to unpack. “She looks so familiar.”

He’s seen the video too, then? My stomach sours and tries to give up its bacon.

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