The news he’d received tonight was the closest he’d ever come to concrete information about one of his friend’s whereabouts. Luke might be in New York City. Even knowing how many millions of people lived in the city, the fact that he and Luke might see each other soon set his heart pounding. Once again, he allowed alcohol to numb his fear. He was such a goddamn coward. That’s why he’d pushed Drew away, or tried to, at least. At the thought of Drew, he drank a little more vodka. How many did that make tonight? Not nearly enough to dull the pain that seared through him, remembering how he’d basically thrown the best man he’d ever met out of his apartment.
Could he finally let someone share his hurt, his life? Could he tell Drew about what really happened to him as a child and young man? He grasped the edge of the countertop, then pulled open the drawer. He was a little drunk, to be sure, but in the twilight of early morning, he knew the ritual and could do it with his eyes closed.
The smooth edge of the knife handle comforted him in a macabre sort of way. Still holding his drink in his left hand, he slid to the floor, his legs pressed up into his chest so his chin rested on his knees. With deliberate care, he placed his drink on the floor, then rubbed his right arm, searching for a smooth, yet unblemished spot.
As the thin blade slipped into his skin, he welcomed the sting. A thin line of blood appeared, and he smiled.
Absolution.
Each cut on his body reminded him not only of how he’d failed his friends, but in a twisted way gave him strength to push the nightmare of Paul Munson’s abuse behind him. Now he could add the cruel and callous way he’d treated Drew to his litany of failures. It didn’t matter if it made no sense to anyone. He knew. It was his body and his choice to do with it what he wished.
The knife clattered to the white tile floor, sending tiny drips of blood splattering across the pristine surface. He watched with almost clinical disinterest as the tiny rivulet of red trickled down his arm to land on his knee. Years of experience now enabled him to judge when to stop to prevent losing too much blood. In the early years he’d had some close calls and the heavier, deeper scars to show for it.
Drew would know how to help him prevent further scarring, but he wanted them, needed those scars to prove he was still alive and capable of feeling pain.
Most of his life, he’d felt nothing at all.
Being the selfish bastard he was, until he’d spoken with Esther and understood the horror she’d not only witnessed but endured and triumphed over, he never thought about anyone else’s pain. That tiny woman had wormed her way under his skin like no one else had. After leaving her house yesterday, he’d planned to hurt himself, badly, but then Drew had come by.
Drew. It all came back to him and that damn sweet smile he couldn’t get out of his mind. “I really fucked up, didn’t I?” he groaned to no one in particular. Maybe not. Feeling more tired than drunk now, he lifted himself off the floor and, after rinsing his arm off in the sink, picked up the phone on the counter.
After four rings a husky, sleep-roughened voice answered. Shit, the man sounded so fucking sexy, even half-asleep.
“Ash? What the fuck are you calling me at six in the morning for?”
Half-asleep and angry as well. He suddenly lost his nerve and swallowed hard.
“Are you all right?” Now Drew sounded awake and anxious. “Do you need—”
“I need you, Drew.” He leaned against the countertop, the hard edge digging into the naked skin of his back. “I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”
“Hold on a minute.” In the background he could hear rustling, and all Ash could picture was Drew naked in bed. Though his mind ached with vodka and tiredness, his body proved itself wide awake as he looked down to a large, healthy erection bobbing in front of him. He walked to his bedroom and lay down, slowly stroking his cock.
“I wish you were here with me.” His lips pressed against the receiver as he breathed the words into the phone.
Drew sighed into the phone. “Come on, Ash. You told me to leave, dismissed me, as a matter of fact. Let’s leave it at that.”
“No, I can’t.” He continued to stroke himself and couldn’t contain a groan that came from his lips.
“Are…are you jerking off, while you’re talking to me?” Drew’s voice rose with incredulity. “Seriously?”
“I wanted you so bad tonight. I can’t stop thinking of your body and your cock. You tasted so sweet.” His hand was slippery with all the wetness leaking from the engorged head of his cock. It was easy to slide his hand up and down, faster and faster.
“Ash, please.” Drew’s voice came through the receiver, pained yet curiously short of breath.
“Are you hard too, baby? Did you like it when I took you in my mouth, hmm?” Ash’s hips thrust upward now, pushing his cock through his fist.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this over the phone.”
“Touch yourself, baby. Go on. Do it where my mouth was and pretend I’m there with you now. Remember how my mouth was on you? All hot and wet and tight?” Ash jerked his cock a few more times, and then his orgasm came upon him, thundering in his chest and lighting up his balls. He spurted hot, creamy jets across his stomach and chest.
“Did you, um, come?” Drew’s voice, strained and thin, only made Ash wish he was with him in the flesh, able to touch Drew’s sinewy, tight body.
“Mmm. Yeah. I was thinkin’ of you, baby. Of your hot sweet mouth and your tight ass.”
He heard Drew choke over the receiver. Now it was time to give this man some pleasure. “Hold yourself, baby. Rub your cock hard while you think of me and what it would feel like for me to be inside of you. I came all over myself thinking of you.” There was no sound, and for a moment he feared Drew had hung up.
“Are you there?”
A heavy sigh blew in his ear. “Yeah. I don’t know, Ash. We have so much to talk about.”
“Talk is overrated. Stroke yourself, come on. Harder and faster. Think of how good it felt before. Remember me licking you, sucking you, and touching you all over? Your skin is so soft, baby. Like a juicy ripe peach.”
A small sound came through the earpiece. “Aaaash.” Drew moaned. “What the hell?”
“I wanted you so bad tonight, Drew. I wanted to sink into that beautiful, creamy white ass of yours and take you over and over, hard and fast, pound you into my bed. I wanted to make you mine. Can you imagine me inside you, baby? Are you hot and hard for me?”
The sweet little grunts and groans he heard through the receiver let him know Drew enjoyed his dirty little phone talk. He wished he was there to help Drew clean up the mess, starting with kissing every inch of Drew’s pale body.
“Are you there, baby?” He could hear the heavy breathing as Drew struggled to catch his breath.
“Yeah. That was crazy.” Drew still sounded winded, as if he’d returned from a hard run. “I’ve never, ah…”
“Had phone sex?” He chuckled. “Obviously. But everything I said was the truth. I know I fucked up earlier.”
“Well, I know how you can make it up to me.”
“You’ll come over tonight, and we can finish what we started?” The pleading tone in his voice at one time would’ve made Ash’s skin crawl if he’d heard it from another man’s mouth. How quickly things changed, how he’d changed. But the fact remained that he wasn’t yet willing to let Drew slip out of his life.
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
With a sinking heart, he knew exactly what the good doctor was thinking. “Oh?” His casual tone didn’t fool himself. It certainly wouldn’t fool Drew.
“Look, Ash. Like I said earlier, aside from whatever this physical thing is between us, tonight disturbed me on so many levels.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
The frustration in Drew’s voice came through the phone receiver loud and clear. “Are you fucking kidding me? I know something terrible happened to you when you were young. Your arms are covered with self-inflicted scars, and you say there’s nothing to talk about?”
“It’s not for you to get involved in. It’s my personal life.”
“You are fucking unbelievable.” Drew laughed, but there was zero humor in him. “I shouldn’t get involved because it’s your personal life? Ash. My dick in your mouth is about as personal as two people can get with each other. Shit, if things had gone on…”
He swallowed hard, and Ash closed his eyes.
It seemed as if they were two immovable objects banging against one another, neither willing to give up an inch. Like a wave smashing against a rocky cliff, the wave would forever pound against that immovable wall, but the cliff would always stand strong and battle it back.
“It’s my life, Drew. There are certain parts of it I don’t share, not with you, not with anyone. I can’t.” He got off the bed and, still naked, pulled the curtain back and stared out the window. Park Avenue was already alive, even at this early morning hour, with the cabs beginning their early morning pickups.
“What are you afraid of? Can I at least ask that?”
Letting the curtain fall, he turned his back on the window and returned to the bed. “I don’t know. My whole life I’ve been afraid. When I was younger, I was afraid to be alone, without a family. Then when I was taken in”—his voice caught, and he coughed—“I was afraid for the younger boys in the house. After a while I became afraid of the person I was becoming.”
“What type of person? I’m not afraid of you, even though you try and hide behind a mask, like you don’t care about anyone or anything.” Drew’s comforting voice had Ash curling up in his bed, hugging the pillow to his chest. This was nice, talking to Drew, almost normal, but he knew it was all a facade.
“Someone without a soul. Someone who wouldn’t think twice about killing another person.”
“But I’m sure you had a reason.” No hesitation or doubt in Drew’s tone. Like he agreed with him and was restating the facts of a case like an attorney.
“My fear and selfish actions left my friends,
my brothers
alone with him and defenseless. I should’ve been stronger and fought back, or found another way to deal with it.” Funny how talking it out now released a bit of the tightness in his chest. For the first time in forever, he could breathe a little deeper.
“Ash, how old were you when all this happened?”
“I was eighteen when I left there.” Eighteen, scrawny, and scared to death. He’d never even been out of the small town in Georgia until he ran away that night.
“You were a kid, for Christ’s sake. Stop beating yourself up over it.”
“You don’t understand, Drew. I left because I couldn’t take it, and I knew if he kept coming to me, one night I was gonna kill him. So I left when I shoulda stayed and had it out with him.”
Drew scoffed. “Don’t be an asshole. You said the guy was a cop. He would’ve put you in jail or killed you himself and made it look like an accident.”
Visions of Luke’s tearstained face flooded his mind. He’d never forget how he’d pleaded with him not to go. “Maybe it would’ve been the best thing.” No more pain.
In the yawning silence from the other end of the phone, Ash’s heart throbbed in a gruesome concert with the throbbing in his cut arm.
“Is that why you do it? Hurt yourself.”
The man should’ve been a psychiatrist, not a plastic surgeon. Ash blew out a harried breath. “Drew, like I said before. You’re good, and I’m not. I’m bad, and if you get too close, bad things will happen to you. I should’ve stayed away from you, and from now on I will.” He looked at the clock. It was now almost six thirty in the morning. The room had lightened around him, and the angry honking of the cars on Park Avenue filtered even up to his floor. “I have to get ready for work. I’ll see you at the clinic.”
“But, Ash—”
“Bye, Drew.” He set the handset down on the bed and rolled over, still hugging the pillow, staring at nothing for a very long time.
Chapter Fourteen
It had been weeks now, and Ash continued to avoid him. No matter when he showed up at the clinic, if Ash was there, he was either meeting with kids or managed to slip away before Drew could catch him to sit and talk. The one time Drew had swallowed his nerve and gone back to Ash’s high-end apartment building, he was informed by the concierge that
“Mr. Davis isn’t home for visitors.”
The one thing he couldn’t deny was how good Ash was with the kids, especially the ones who came in, leery of the clinic’s good intentions, and disbelieving that anyone could help them. Then they met with Ash, and something resonated between him and those kids that validated all the hard work Drew had put into setting up this clinic. They talked to Ash, and he gave each child his life experience, giving them hope they too could escape and become a success.
Everything he’d ever dreamed could be accomplished in his life was happening.
Rachel had submitted her doctoral thesis, and she and Mike were stronger than ever. Jordan and Keith were planning a wedding in the not too distant future, as Keith had proposed to him over the summer. As usual, he was the one left alone.
He finished his chart on the last girl who’d shown up with a facial laceration she said she received from banging into the door when she woke up in the middle of the night. To Drew, the mark looked like the cut from the sharp edge of a ring, as if she’d been slapped and it cut her face. Though she vehemently denied it, she wouldn’t let them call her mother, coming instead with her older brother who stood to the side, his jaw clenched and hands fisted.
Drew knew that pugnacious look. The young man was spoiling for a fight, and Drew had no doubt he would go home and want to beat the crap out of whomever he thought had done this to his sixteen-year-old sister. He’d had Rachel talk to the two of them, and by the time they’d gone home, both had calmed down, and Rachel later told him she’d given them the number of someone who would talk to them free of charge about family abuse.
He threw down his pen and took off his glasses to rub his tired eyes. As it so often did when his mind wandered, he found himself thinking back all those weeks ago to that one amazing, intense night with Ash. Nothing could have prepared him for the feel of Ash’s mouth on his cock. No blowjob he’d ever gotten from a woman had even come close to the blinding, white-hot desire that had flamed through him. The mere thought of it set his cock twitching, swelling with an insistent need he’d neglected for far too long.