Page 1 of Smoke

Chapter One

Smoke

“No! No! Please!”

Screams woke me from a deep sleep. I jumped from my bed, grabbed my gun, and rushed toward the sound. It took me far too long to realize that I was in my own home and the screams were coming from my stepsister’s room.

“Fuck,” I mumbled, putting the safety on my weapon and tucking it into my gray sweatpants.

Pushing open her door, I rushed into her room and sat on her bed. “Hey, hey. You’re okay. You’re okay,” I soothed, trying to capture her failing arms.

“Hey, Ash, baby, it’s just a dream,” I tried again.

Slowly she started to come around. She struggled with the covers. I moved them and helped her sit up.

“You’re safe, baby. It was just a dream,” I promised, once I thought she could hear me over her panic.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly, tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her hair was a tangled mess. She scanned the room, her eyes still wide with terror before they locked on me.

“Dawson!” she cried out, flinging her arms around me.

“That’s right, I’m right here. It was just a dream.” I rocked her back and forth waiting for her to get her bearings.

She trembled in my arms and the familiar hollow pain filled my chest again, just like it did whenever her past haunted her through her dreams.

She pulled back and looked at her arm.

“It was just a dream,” she whispered to herself as she pulled her sleeve up and examined her arm. It was still marred with scarring and the hollow feeling was quickly replaced with anger.

“It was just a dream,” I reassured her again. Hate for the son of a bitch who caused her so much physical and emotional pain consumed me down to my bones. Seething rage filled every inch of my almost seven-foot body and every day that Ash struggled with her past, I longed to dig up the pile of bones I refused to call my father, and kill him all over again for his sins against her. It made no difference that he was my blood. It hadn’t when I put my gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger, and it didn’t at the moment. Not that the traumatized woman in front of me would know I killed the bastard. She didn’t need to know about the darker side of me. Lying and saying he’d been killed in a shady drug deal was better for her tender heart.

When Ashley was fourteen, her addict of a mother married my dealer of a father. I’d been in prison and hadn’t known about the marriage until months later, far too late to stop it. When Ashley was fifteen, my father caused an explosion in the house they were living in due to a meth lab he had built in the basement. Ashley had been the only other person home and she had suffered burns to thirty percent of her body. It was a miracle he hadn’t killed her. She spent her sixteenth birthday in a burn unit, and her seventeenth testifying against my father. She had been removed from her home and sent to live with her grandmother. Guilt that I hadn’t been able to help her still ate at me. I was ashamed to admit that was what it took to change me. I’d loved her since the first time my father brought her to a visitation, even though I’d hated that she was exposed to such a traumatic thing like prison because of me. Having her come into my life gave me a better outlook on life, having someone so pure being tainted by the drug world was a hard pill to swallow. Then when I found out she’d been hurt, I channeled all the disgust and anger into becoming the brother she needed. A few months ago her grandmother died, and Ashley’s mother came snooping for an inheritance she thought she was owed. Ash called me, unable to deal with any more blows, and immediately I moved her to Strickland. The baby just needed some peace. I hadn’t expected my feelings toward her to change so rapidly. Long gone were the feelings of an almost-paternal love, now a deep sense of possession and even deeper romantic interest flowed. It was getting harder and harder to control, but I would die before I shared my feelings with her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Ash. I’m just sorry you’re so scared.”

“My arm hurts and I thought…” She shook her head and studied her arm. “I think it fell asleep and I dreamed I was inthe fire again.” Her left arm had been the worst of her injuries, though over forty percent of her bore the scars of his choices.

“Oh, honey, that sounds terrible.”

She nodded, wiped her eyes, and sat back in the bed.

“Does that happen a lot?” I knew she had nightmares, I heard her cry out through the monitor I’d hidden in her room, but I didn’t realize they could be triggered by pain in her arm.

She averted her eyes. “Sometimes.”

“Ash, look at me.” I waited until she met my eye before I cupped her chin in my hand. “How often is sometimes?”

“A couple of times a month. Like if my arm goes to sleep or something.”

“Oh, honey,” I soothed.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“Have you talked to your therapist about it?” I asked after releasing her chin.

“I did. She prescribed me some medicine to help me sleep at night, but it makes me so groggy the next day,” she said, shrugging.

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