Fire And Ash Read online

  We clean up in silence. She doesn’t mention what just happened between her mom and Derek and I don’t either out of politeness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Thank You Ash

  I leave Cassie’s in time to stop by my house to change clothes and make it to Mick’s gym before four.

  When I get there I see Derek at the front of the gym wailing on one of the punching bags that hang from the ceiling. I don’t know what makes me do it but I have fifteen minutes until my beginner’s MMA class starts so I walk over to where he is and hold the bag steady while he continues to punch and kick it. A steady bag absorbs more of an impact and makes for a better instrument to work out pent up frustration on than one that moves every time you strike it.

  “Feel better now?” I say when he finally lets up.

  I say it even though I know he is going to respond with some dickish or snarky comment because well he is Derek and that’s what he does when it comes to me. He surprises me when all he says is “a little.”

  He surprises me even more when he asks if I want to grab something to eat with him. That would be something friends do and Derek and I are not friends. I’m pretty sure us making out last night was a fluke or a calculated move on his part to have something to use against me later.

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “But the MMA class I teach is about to start in a minute.”

  He shrugs his shoulders apathetically.“That’s cool.”

  “But if you want you can stay and help me out with it and we can go get food after it’s over.” The words rush out of my mouth and I have no clue where they come from.

  He looks at me curiously. I wait on the mortification that is going to come from his rejection. After a beat he picks up the gym bag sitting beside him on the floor and says “okay.”

  I discreetly pinch myself because I am pretty sure the whole ordeal has to be a dream. None of what just happened would really happen in real life. It’s either that, hell has frozen over, or pigs are flying outside.

  During my class I find myself concentrating more on Derek than the actual instruction I am giving. I use him to help me demonstrate several basic moves and counter moves. But every time he touches me I think about last night and then I have to fight back the flush that wants to spread throughout my entire body. I quickly regret opening my mouth and suggesting that he stay and help me.

  After the longest sixty minutes of my life the class ends. I am glad for the reprieve that driving our respective cars to Cal’s Diner gives me.

  I order a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate milkshake. Derek adds bacon to his and asks the waitress for a Coke. We sit in semi-awkward silence until the food arrives. I am glad when it does because it gives me a non-awkward excuse for not talking. Cal’s cheeseburgers and shakes are way too good to eat and to talk,

  Halfway through my meal I catch Derek looking at me in amusement.

  “What?” I ask defensively.

  “You don’t eat like a girl?”

  “What? I wasn’t aware there was any specific way girls are supposed to eat.” The space between my eyebrows wrinkle together because I’m trying to figure out if I should be offended or not.

  He swipes a fry from my plate.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t steal my food because you’ve already scarfed yours down.”

  His lips tug upward into a smile. “See, that’s what I mean by you don’t eat like a girl. Most girls wouldn’t care because they’d be too busy trying not to look like a pig in front of me and most girls wouldn’t swallow a double cheeseburger whole for the same reason.

  The bunch of fries that are headed towards my face stop mid way. My mouth hangs open. He did not just say that. Now I know I should be offended.

  “Nice to see you’re in better spirits. Back to your normal jackass ways,” I tell him in a sickly sweet way.

  He laughs and swipes another fry off my plate. The next time he does it I am going to put the fork lying untouched beside me to good use.

  “I am actually…thanks to you,” he says after a beat.

  “You’re welcome I guess. Though I think I liked you better when you weren’t.”

  He laughs again.

  “Not to be nosy but how does hunters killing your dad and sister relate to you being an Enforcer for the Council?”

  He sighs. “In Mom’s eyes the level of danger is the same. It was hunters that attacked us and killed them but it could have easily been rogue phoenix too. She fought with my dad about being an Enforcer all the time because she said it was too dangerous and he was unnecessarily exposing himself and the family to an additional risk. I get her point, but it’s something she knows I have to do. It’s my duty just like it was Dad’s duty and his father’s duty before him. Enforcers are generational. That is the way it has always been since back when phoenix were organized into tribes and the Enforcers were initially picked from the strongest of the bloodlines. Since they were the strongest of the phoenix the Enforcers were also usually the Alphas of the tribes too. I can’t just not be an Enforcer. It would be a betrayal to my dad’s memory, everything he lived and died for, and everything he taught me.”

  “I understand,” I say. “He would never admit it, but I know my dad feels similar to that about being a hunter. It’s his duty and something he has to do, except he doesn’t really want to. Him and my mom used to argue about it a lot when she was alive. She was okay with it until my cousins’ mom who was also her best friend was killed by a phoenix. Then I think she started feeling like your mom does. She would beg him to walk away from it, he would tell her he couldn’t, and then a fight would start up. When I was six I was the one who found my mother with her neck broken in our backyard. She wasn’t a hunter, but she got caught up in the middle of my dad’s duty all the same. Her death was what made me so adamant about wanting to be a hunter even though my dad has always kind of tried to shelter me from it. My grandfather is the complete opposite. He lives and breathes the lifestyle to a militant extent. I was more influenced by my grandfather’s attempts to make me into the hardcore hunter my dad has never really been than by my dad’s attempts to coddle me because of a sense of duty to help protect innocent people, like my mom was, from the monsters that prey on them. But after meeting you and Cass and your Mom my conviction in that duty isn’t so clear anymore. I grew up being told all phoenix were like the rogue phoenix and now I know that isn’t true. From what you say the majority are not and it is only the minority that is. That makes you all more like the human population I took it as my duty to protect and hunters more like the monsters that prey on innocent lives. Your dad was innocent and so was your sister. If my family ever found out about yours, my dad might not act on it but my grandfather and my cousins wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, your mom and Cassie for wrongs none of your have ever committed. Maybe my Dad struggles with being a hunter so much because he has always felt the same way I do now.”

  I realize that I’ve been talking for probably a long time and that I’ve gone on more than one tangent while doing so. Oh God, I think. Who is sitting at the table across from Derek and what did she do with the real Ash? I just told him things I have never and would never tell anybody else. Becca hasn’t even ever heard any of what I just said.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to unload like that.”

  Derek looks at me in a weird way. Like he is seeing something he thought he knew more clearly or in a different light for the first time.

  “It’s cool,” he says. “Seems like we both have a lot we’re dealing with. You maybe more than me.”

  We’re both quiet for a beat. I’m trying to think of something to say, but Derek talks first.

  “I’m planning on going to Lake Leeland when I leave here. You want to come?”

  “Why?” I say more abrasively than I mean to but the questions throws me for a loop as much as him asking if I wanted to get food with him did.

  “To go fishing. It always helps me feel less…weighted down,” h
e says ignoring my knee-jerk response.

  I arch an eyebrow at him. “You fish?”

  “Yes.” The look he gives me challenges me to say something negative about it.

  It is too good of an opportunity to pass up. I owe him for the you don’t eat like a girl comment.

  I snort for effect. “You know that’s something a seventy year old man does right?”

  “Whatever. Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s actually fun.”

  “What could possibly be fun about sitting in a boat or on a dock for hours dangling a pole in the water?”

  He arches a brow at me in challenge. “I could tell you or I can show you.”

  I find myself agreeing to go to the lake with him and telling myself that it is not at all because I want to spend more time with him. It’s only because I have nothing better to do with the rest of my day.

  ******

  “I am not touching those!” I recoil from the bucket of worms Derek bought from the same outpost store he rented a small motorized boat and two fishing poles from.

  “You’re kidding right? She has no problem with stabbing somebody repeatedly without an ounce of uneasiness but show the girl a bucket or worms and she turns all squeamish,” he teases me.

  Then he reaches into the damn thing with a wickedly curved smile and dangles one of those fuckers an inch from my face. I shoot backwards about three feet. “What the fuck?!” I yell at him. “That is not funny!”

  He roars with laughter. “Oh yes it is.”

  “Do that again and I swear it will be you that I jam a knife into next.” I glare murderously at him.

  “Fine. Fine. I’ll put it away,” he continues to laugh. He drops the worm back into the bucket but I keep the three feet of distance between me and it.

  He puts on a life vest and tosses another one to me.

  “What’s your deal with worms?” The bastard isn’t laughing anymore but his eyes are still twinkling with mirth.

  “I hate them. That’s my deal. When I was six my cousin Sean, who is about as bad as you, snuck one of them into my plate of spaghetti. I didn’t eat one but I ate a forkful of noodles before I saw it. I puked my guts out right there at the kitchen table for a good twenty minutes afterwards. I hope you have artificial bait too or else you’re hooking my line and yours.”

  “I do.” I catch his mouth twitching. He’s fighting a laugh.

  “Laugh if you want to,” I warn him.

  He holds up his hands with their palms facing me. “Why would I laugh? It sounds like it was very traumatic for you.” His dark eyes dance like twin stars.

  I scowl at him imagining smacking him upside the head as I do. “I’m glad my horror amuses you. Just wait until I find out what you irrationally fear. I know Cass will tell me. It’s on Derek Jensen.”

  He sobers immediately. Ha! Too late for that.

  He loads up the boat with the fishing gear and I give him a hand pushing it into the water. He kills the motor once we get out to the middle of the lake.

  An hour later he’s caught like five fish and thrown them back and my line hasn’t even been tugged on by one. All the while he teases me that he has skills and I don’t.

  The sun has already started to set when he says we should get back before it gets completely dark.

  I shake my head no. “I am catching a fish before this day is over with.” If he can catch five I can catch one damn it.

  At the same moment something tugs on my line hard. I tug on the fishing pole and it tugs back more forcefully. I have to stand up to keep hold of the rod.

  “Release the line,” Derek tells me. “If you can’t reel it in it means its too big.”

  I ignore him and try to anyway. I dig my heels in against the force with which the fish is pulling. The line snaps by itself and I fly backwards into Derek. Our combined weight on one side of the little boat makes it sway then capsize completely.

  As soon as Derek’s head pops out of the water he is laughing hysterically. I scowl at him but then burst into laughter myself.

  While we’re laughing we gravitate closer and closer to each other and eventually are so close that all one of us has to do is lean forward a fraction and our noses will touch.

  The realization immediately sobers me. It does the same to Derek too. We stare at each other only breathing for a minute or two. Then lightning quick Derek circles his arms around my waist and pulls me closer, sealing the distance that remains between us. He captures my mouth in a searing, all-consuming kiss. It leaves me dazed and breathless and every part of my body feeling warm and tingling.

  When our lips break a part, my lungs are screaming for air that every other part of me doesn’t care to receive. All the rest of me wants is for Derek to kiss me like that again.

  “Are you going to tell me that that was just okay?” Derek asks me with a roguish smile.

  “No,” I smile back at him. “It was alright.”

  “Liars go to hell Ash,” he whispers against my lips then claims them in a kiss that is hotter than the previous one. He nips at my bottom lip then sucks on it in a way that makes the warmth I am feeling ignite into an inferno.

  I find myself wishing the life vests are not in the way because I really, really want to run my hands along his bare chest underneath it.

  “What about that one?” He says after the second kiss.

  I try to look nonchalant and not like it completely shattered my world. “It was better than alright,” I tell him.

  “You’re lucky it’s getting darker and we have to go.” He nips at my bottom lip a final time and I curse the fact that the sun was ever made to set.

  ******

  As we walk to where we parked I get up the nerve to ask him a question that has been on my mind since I woke up in the morning. “So…what are we? You know… after last night and today.”

  He stops walking and looks at me smoothing his face into a blank mask. “What do you want us to be?”

  “What do you want us to be?” I counter.

  “Whatever you want,” he throws it back in my court.

  And this is going nowhere. I decide to test the waters. “So if I said I wanted us to be friends you would…”

  “Say that was cool.”

  “And if I said I wanted us to…” Spit it out Ash. You don’t have any problems being direct about anything else. “If I said I maybe want to see if we could maybe be more, you know if we don’t strangle each other in the process, you would say…”

  He doesn’t respond. He just looks at me. I immediately want to kick myself and disappear on the spot. I did not just go there. I know better. What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve clearly lost my mind. We don’t li-

  Derek grabs my face and kisses me thoroughly, abruptly cutting off my silent berating of myself. “I would say that I’d like to see too.”

  Oh. “Umm..okay,” I say awkwardly while an inner super girly part of me I never knew was there turns giddy with butterflies.

  A growl comes from the trees to the left of us. We share a look and silently start back towards where the car is parked. We get five maybe ten feet before an enormous wolf appears from the line of trees. He looks straight at us growling low and threateningly.

  Derek presses his car keys into my hand. “Run for the car. I’ll make sure it doesn’t follow.”

  I don’t object. If Derek can fight off four rogue phoenix at once he should have no problem fending off a wolf. Even one as big as the shaggy peppered gray one in front of us.

  I run and the wolf gives chase. I don’t look back. I keep running. I know Derek has blocked its path because it growls yelps then growls even fiercer. When I make it to the car I see Derek is still trying to subdue the wolf. It’s bleeding but so is he. Whenever he moves the wolf moves in an exact way that will counter him. It’s an absurd thought to have but it almost seems like the wolf has the ability to reason. Derek wrestles it to the ground, grabbing hold of its neck. Before he can attempt to break, the wolf snaps his massive jaws
at him. He nearly rips into Derek’s throat but he throws up his right arm to block it and it gets torn into instead. They are nearly an even match. This might end badly. Really badly.

  I grab my messenger bag and snatch one of the silver knives out. Without giving it a second thought I run back to where Derek is fighting the wolf. The wolf’s head snaps in my direction and he lunges towards me. If he makes it to me it will be over. There is no way I can wrestle him or try to outmuscle him like Derek was doing. I have the single knife in my hand so I know I only have one shot.

  Derek snarls my name and sprints after the wolf. In the split second it took him to realize what was going on the wolf got enough of a head start that Derek won’t get to him before her gets to me. I steady the knife in my hand. My aim has never faltered and I pray it doesn’t now. I train my eyes on the knife’s target and let it fly. It embeds itself in the wolf’s eye.

  The wolf pulls up short with a deafening yelp. Derek collides into it a moment later. He yanks the knife out of his eye and jams it into his side. The wolf lets out a bloodcurdling howl and breaks into a run for the cover of the line of trees before any more damage can be done with the knife.

  “Have you lost your damn mind?!” Derek growls at me. He wipes the blade clean on his shirt and holds it out to me.

  “I believe the words you were really looking for are thank you Ash,” I say taking it from him.

  “No, the words I really want to say might make you lodge the knife in my eye too. I really want to ask you if you are a fucking idiot but I chose the less offensive of my choices.”

  I make a strangled incredulous sound because words are beyond me at his complete lack of ingratitude. He snatches the driver’s side door open.

  “Get in the damn car like you were supposed to do and keep your ass put the first time I told you,” he snarls.

  “Screw you Derek,” I say calmly because the only other option is to yell as I plop into the passenger seat. “How many different places are you fucking bleeding from right now?! Every time you got the upper hand you didn’t keep it for very long and your movements started slowing and the wolf’s didn’t. If not for me you might not be alive right now to be a dickhead to me. So I will say it for you since you are too much of an ass to. Thank you Ash.”