Page 19 of Psycho

As long as she didn’t lock me out completely, I’d be fine.

I made my way downstairs and cleaned up the mess on the door, waiting for her to come down, and when she did, looking far too good in clothes that belonged to Sawyer, she asked, “Why are you here, Travis?” Her nipples were hard, poking through the white fabric of the T-shirt. The shorts threatened to swallow her up.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. I’d moved to the living room, now sitting on the couch. A hand patted the couch beside me. “Declan’s on his way. Once he gets here, I’m going to force you to tell us everything.” I paused as she sluggishly moved to my side, sitting down and curling her legs under her. She was practically a ball on the couch.

“You don’t have to force me,” Ash said. “I’m going to tell you everything.” Her eyes lifted to me, and even though she was merely a foot away, she felt miles apart from me in that moment. “There’s a lot you’re not going to like.”

Oh, that much I was certain of. She didn’t need to warn me to prepare me. I already knew my little Ash had been hiding things from me, from all of us. If she planned on coming clean, she best come clean about it all. I didn’t know exactly how she was involved with Ray, but I knew she recognized him. I knew she knew who he was.

My Ash was not the innocent bird she pretended to be.

Chapter Ten – Ash

It was a mistake to let Travis in like that, before I told him the truth. How was I supposed to refuse him, though? How was I supposed to look that tattooed man in the eyes and tell him no? He smelled of tobacco and fire, and even though he was just like Ray, I found myself needing him. Needing to be with him. Needing to feel wanted.

Stupid, considering who I ran from. Even more stupid, considering how Travis thought I was his to command.

He didn’t want me running away again. Well, no shit, Sherlock, I didn’t want to run away again either. It wasn’t like I ran away and had loads of fun. No, I went to a house whose owners were murdered by my ex, slept with my ex, and regretted every single bad decision I ever made in my life. It wasn’t a vacation. I didn’t go skiing or to the beach. No Disney World trips for me.

No, Travis wasn’t going to like what I had to tell him, and Declan…I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to see Declan right now, but it sounded like he was on his way over. I still had no idea why Travis was in Sawyer’s house, however, and so while we sat there in wait for my roommate, I tried asking again, this time in a different manner.

“I thought you and Sawyer weren’t talking to each other anymore?” I asked.

Travis’s lips were drawn into a line. It was hard for me to imagine those lips on mine, swallowing me up with pure passion, his lean body holding me up. It was one of the hottest things that had ever happened to me, but still. It was probably a mistake. My eyes fell to his tattooed arms, and I ran my tongue over my bottom lip.

Those tattoos were ridiculously sexy, weren’t they? Not to mention the clear, crisp hue of his blue eyes, and the way his black hair was messed up—undoubtedly from me needing to run my fingers through it while he was pounding away at me earlier.

Oh, God. Now that we crossed that line, we could never go back.

“It’s not like I’m here because I want to be here,” Travis remarked, eyeing me up. “I’m here for you, Ash.”

“Why would you be in Sawyer’s house for me?”

“Because you obviously care for the prick more than I’d like you to, and I’ve come to the realization that I can’t change how you feel. You are…insanely bull-headed and stubborn, and I’d have to be crazy to believe that I could change you.”

His blunt words nearly made me gasp. “I—I do not care about Sawyer.” Damnit. A lie. I was supposed to stop lying. The lies were supposed to be in the past. That one just slipped out without me realizing it. Whoops.

Travis stared at me, his sapphire gaze unyielding. “You were dropped in the middle of us, and it seems you’ve somehow leeched onto all of us, regardless of our feelings on the matter.”

“Leeched?” I repeated. Did he really have to describe me using that word? Ew.

“I know what happened at the party, after the incident in the basement,” Travis muttered, turning his gaze to the window on the side of the living room. A muscle in his jaw clenched, as if it pained him to say this next part, “I’m sorry you saw what you saw. Seeing your friend and Sawyer together must’ve hurt.”

It was my turn to move my head and stare stoically off to the side, except instead of a window, I only ended up staring at the kitchen. “I’m assuming Declan knows too?”

“He does. He met me here. He helped me with Sawyer and Kelsey.”

My eyes squeezed shut as I remembered my best friend’s face, plastered in ecstasy as Sawyer fucked her from behind. Was bleaching your brain a thing? If not, it so needed to be, because that was something I wanted to clean my mind of. “And Kelsey?”

“I texted her using your phone. She’s home, safe. She thinks you’re pissed at her, but…you are, so I assumed that was fine.”

“My phone?” I distinctly remembered tossing it from the car window as Ray drove off, not wanting anyone to find me or text me. I threw it out, and Travis had it? That could only mean…

Travis watched me with an intense expression. “I found it on the curb. I watched you leave, Ash. I was a minute too late to stop you from going, but I want you to know that if I would’ve gotten there sooner, I wouldn’t have let you go with him.”

Oh, fuck. Things were just too complicated right now, weren’t they?

His sapphire gaze fell to my neck, the scab on it. Next were my hands, my knuckles to be exact. The only thing he didn’t linger on was my feet, and that was because he’d seen me come in shoeless. “Did he hurt you?” It probably pained him to not ask me right away. He was trying to wait for Declan, but he had to know, and he had to know now.

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