27 - Ash

27

Ash

I wasn’t a man who trusted people.

I used to be, though.

In a different life.

So much had changed since then.

My experiences had hardened me, like bricks in a kiln. And brick by brick, I became the man I was today. Sometimes I wished I could go back to the old me, but I was long past that. Long past changing.

At least, I thought I was.

Part of me missed being close with people. Letting them in. Showing them my true self. I’d done that a little bit with Jack and Noah. It had taken years, but now I trusted and relied on them. But they were the only ones. They were special cases. I wondered if I could ever trust anyone beyond the two of them. I doubted it.

Until Melissa appeared.

Seeing her on that trail in the mountains, tired and grimy, her ankle swelling like a balloon. She looked sad and pathetic, like a wounded deer. She needed help.

Why would I ever need to put up walls to keep someone like her out?

The feeling wasn’t fleeting. As I saw her around town, I became more curious about her. Drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain, in a way that still confused me. From a distance I watched Jack butt heads with her, and saw Noah getting close.

What did I want?

I had no idea. I really didn’t. But I was curious, and that was a start.

It was enough to remove a few of my bricks.

The sun was peeking above the trees when I banged on the door to the Indigo Cabin. Melissa began opening it, already shouting through the crack: “Listen, if you regret what you said last night—”

She gave a start when she saw me standing there on her porch. Who had she been expecting? Noah, or Jack?

“Oh… what are you doing here?” she stammered.

I didn’t want to ogle her, but I couldn’t help but notice Melissa. She was wearing a light blue tank top, the kind that women wore to sleep, which framed her full breasts in a way that made my cock ache. She wasn’t in just panties this time, but she still looked irresistible in a pair of baggy pajama pants.

“Get dressed,” I told her, shaking off the way her form stirred something within me. “You’ve got a via ferrata to finish.”

She let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t need to finish it.”

“Yes, you do.”

She tilted her head back to look up at me. “Why do you think you know what I need?”

Because you’ll regret it if you don’t. Because I know you can do it. Because you’re the kind of woman who stubbornly gets back up and finishes something rather than failing, even if it kills her.

“Because,” I said out loud, “you’ll be glad you did. And the view is worth it.”

She looked like she was going to say no. Like she would laugh and slam the door in my face. Coming here, preparing to open myself up to her, was a mistake.

Then she nodded slowly. “Give me five minutes.”

Melissa was silent as we drove to the climbing site. I could tell I had thrown her off; she expected me to be someone else. But was it Jack, or Noah?

Listen, if you regret what you said last night …

Had she had a fight with Noah? That seemed unlikely. Noah was the most genuine person I’d ever known, and didn’t say things he might regret later. So it was definitely Jack. Now I wondered what he had said to her. The two of them were so similar they might have been two sides of the same coin—that’s why they butted heads so much.

I wasn’t going to pry, though. I knew the value of respecting someone’s privacy, even if nobody else did.

We arrived at the climbing site and wordlessly put on our harnesses. When it was time, I looked a question at Melissa. She took a deep breath, then nodded.

I could tell she was scared as we began climbing. She went slower, taking extra care with every single step. I said nothing, allowing her to work through her fears and memories from the last time, when she fell.

Eventually, like I had expected, she got into a groove. Her motions, which were stiff and hesitant at the beginning, became confident and smooth. We finished the first section and rested on the same ledge as before, drinking Gatorade in silence while we gathered our strength.

I knew she was afraid. She knew I knew she was afraid. But we didn’t need to acknowledge it. We were just two people with a shared goal before us. I liked her vibe because it matched my own.

Without saying anything, I rose to my feet and clipped my safety line into the next section, the horizontal part where she had fallen. She joined me without hesitation, just like I knew she would.

I led us along the section at a careful, but steady, pace. Going too slow would give her time to think about it, when I needed her to only focus on the next step. The next grip. The next safety clip.

Her hands were trembling when we reached the part where she’d fallen. Not trembling a lot, but enough to notice. I didn’t slow down, moving across like it was any other metal rung drilled into the rock.

Come on , I thought while trying not to stare at her. One step after the other. It’s all the same. Keep moving.

She reached the end of the rung, unclipped her safety line, then clipped it into the next part. Taking a breath, she gripped the next bar and stepped across smoothly.

She seemed as relieved as I felt, sighing and moving a little more quickly, like passing that area had given her some momentum. We reached the next wide ledge soon after that, marking the end of the horizontal section. She immediately sat down and rested her back against the cliff wall.

“Nice,” was all I said, giving her a fist-bump.

“I don’t know how I fell last time,” she chuckled.

Because you reacted the same way everyone reacts when they learn I was in prison . It was the reason I didn’t tell anyone. The reason I kept that secret as close to my chest as a winning poker hand.

While we drank more Gatorade, I asked, “What did you mean when you opened the door this morning? Who did you think I was?”

She leaned her head against the rock and closed her eyes. “I thought you were Jack. We kind of got into a fight last night.”

I grunted in satisfaction. “Shocker.”

Melissa glanced sideways at me. “Why do you say that?”

“You and Jack have been butting heads since you met on the Colorado Trail,” I replied. “I wish you two would just fuck already.”

She choked on her Gatorade, sputtering orange liquid all over the rocks. I calmly waited for her to get a hold of herself.

“We don’t… I don’t…”

“You’re both extremely similar,” I explained. “That’s why you rub each other the wrong way. You both like each other, but you’re too fucking stubborn to admit it.”

“You’re way off,” she said curtly. “I’m ready to keep climbing, now.”

I only shrugged. Some people hated hearing the truth.

The final section was vertical again, with a few areas where the rungs moved diagonal up the cliff wall. It was a single-file route, and Melissa clipped herself in and began climbing first. The harness dug into her thighs, making her ass look amazing every time I glanced up at her. But I was more concerned about her pace. She was moving quickly. Too quickly for someone with her experience.

But my worries were for nothing, and she reached the top without any problems. The route ended at a flat top, like a small mesa surrounded by other mountains. Melissa jumped up and down and cheered, satisfaction plastered all over her beautiful face.

“Knew you could do it,” I said, extending my fist again.

She ignored it and threw her arms around me instead.

I was caught off guard having her suddenly pressed against my body. The way she fit against me felt right , like two puzzle pieces finally joined together. I felt myself opening up, wanting to remove the bricks of my emotional walls for this woman. It was embarrassing that a hug was all it took, but physical touch meant a lot to me.

“You were right,” she said when she pulled away. “The view is totally worth it!”

We sat on a rock and I pulled out two breakfast burritos from my pack. She let out the cutest little happy noise and began wolfing it down without hesitation. I took a bite of mine and thought about this moment, alone at the top of a via ferrata climb. Analyzing the way I felt deep in my heart, the kind of man I wanted to be. A different man than the one who got out of prison.

“I was covering for a friend,” I finally said.

Melissa cocked her head. “At the via ferrata climbing office?”

“No,” I replied. “The reason I went to prison.”

Her entire body language changed. Shoulders stiffening, eyes blinking too much, an aloof toss of her hair while she pretended like it wasn’t a big deal. That’s how everyone reacted when they learned I was in prison. It stung every goddamn time.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pried when I asked—”

“I’m trying to tell you the fucking story,” I snapped.

Damnit. That’s not how I wanted to act.

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” I said. “Just let me get this out, all right?”

She swallowed her bite and nodded, eyes wide with curiosity—or fear. This was why I didn’t let people in.

“A buddy and I were at the Denver airport, flying to Dallas,” I explained. “When we went through security, all the alarms went off and the TSA agents flipped out. The bag they pulled out of the metal detector was my buddy’s. He’d gone camping the week before, in bear country, and had forgotten about his pistol.”

“Oh no,” she whispered.

“My buddy sees his bag and starts whimpering like a baby. Muttering how he’s fucked, his life would be ruined. He had a government job with a security clearance, and two kids. I could see his entire life, everything he had worked hard to build, falling apart before our eyes in a few heartbeats. So when the TSA agent demanded to know whose bag it was, I stepped forward.”

Melissa blinked. “Really?”

“I couldn’t let that happen to him. He had so much to lose. A career, a family, a life . But me, I had a clean record. Not so much as a speeding ticket. My job didn’t require a security clearance. I could take the hit, whatever it was. The whole thing was an embarrassing misunderstanding, so I thought I would get slapped with a warning.”

My laugh was bitter, even after all these years.

“My lawyer told me it was a third-degree felony, that I would get a few hundred hours of community service. Boy, was he wrong. Turns out my buddy bought the gun from a friend of a friend. It had come across state lines, and the serial number was filed off. I couldn’t explain how I had acquired it without throwing my buddy under the bus, so they hit me with the big boy felonies. Long story short: sentenced to four years in prison, and I got out on parole in two.”

The pitying look Melissa gave me was another way everyone reacted, and another thing I absolutely hated about telling my story. “I can’t believe your friend let you take the fall. I can see why you have trust issues.”

I let out another bitter laugh. “That’s not why I don’t trust people. At least, not the main reason.”

“Oh no…”

“I was engaged at the time.” Saying it out loud didn’t sting anymore; instead, it was a dull ache in my gut. “My fiancée was angry that I had taken the fall, but claimed she still supported me. She promised to take care of my house and dog while I was in prison. But as soon as I was gone, she moved out and rented my house to some friends of hers. She took my dog with her and shacked up with a new boyfriend.”

Melissa’s mouth hung open, but she said nothing.

“She pretended everything was normal, like we were still engaged, until my parole went through. Then she stopped answering texts. When I got out, nobody was waiting for me. I caught a bus ride home and found three strangers living in my house. And the worst part was that all my plants were dead.”

Melissa blinked. “Plants? You had houseplants?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I… sorry. Stupid assumption. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

I shrugged. “I felt like such a fucking idiot. She strung me along for two years, pretending like she was waiting for me to get out. And the whole time, she had already moved on with her life. And my buddy, the one I took the fall for? He knew about everything: my house being rented out, my fiancée moving in with a new man. He didn’t have the balls to tell me.” I felt my jaw clenching, but I couldn’t stop myself. “He said he didn’t want me to lose hope. That it wouldn’t have mattered since I was in prison.

“So I sold my place and moved out to the mountains. Even that was a pain in the ass because I had to transfer to a new parole officer. Just another reminder that I’d given up a huge fucking part of my freedom for someone who wasn’t even my friend anymore. But I got away, and never looked back.” I gestured at the view before us. “And here I am, doing this.”

I didn’t meet her gaze, but I could feel Melissa staring at me with big, sad eyes. I hated that look. It made me feel like a victim all over again, every single goddamn time.

Rather than say something, Melissa clung to me in a tight hug. All the tension left my body. I’d been prepared for all the pitying comments that I always heard, but I wasn’t expecting a hug. Just like the first hug, it softened my defenses and made me feel something.

Then she kissed me on the cheek.

I turned toward her in surprise, and she gripped my face with both hands and pressed her lips against mine. They were soft and warm, and comforting in a way that words had never been.

A geyser of emotions erupted within me as I kissed her back, tongue searching and seeking. I was hungry for her. I wanted more. And as my hands moved over her back and I deepened the kiss, I felt myself giving in. Lowering my walls all the way, knocking down the bricks until I was completely vulnerable. I felt a flicker of light within my soul, the realization that maybe I could let someone in. That I could kiss a woman like Melissa and show her all of myself without fear…

Fear. Pain. Trust. As quickly as the moment had arrived, it disappeared, and I scrambled to put all the bricks back in place.

I pushed Melissa away from me. “What the fuck was that?”

“I… it just felt right,” she said. “I thought you…”

“You thought wrong,” I growled. She was looking at me with those pitying eyes, eyes that I barely knew, eyes that I wasn’t certain I could trust. I lurched to my feet and stared at the sky. “We need to leave. Looks like a storm might be blowing in.”

I walked to the edge of the route, my half-eaten burrito forgotten on the ground.