Page 112 of All Right No

Ash covered his eyes with his palms, then slowly brushed his hands upwards into his hair, lifting the strands so the shorter sides were exposed. “I loved her, Xane. I wanted her to know the real me. All of me, not the me everyone claims they know. So no, it wasn’t the abridged version. It was everything. I trusted her.”

Xane pressed his thumb to his sealed lips. “I’m sorry. I should never have done that to you.”

They were doing this now, after all this time?

“I took advantage. You wanted something real, and I played on that knowledge. I used you. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I was that dick, and I’m extra sorry for all the shit you’ve been dealt over the last twelve months due to my inability to deal with my issues. All of this comes back to me failing to tell Steve what I wanted from him. If I’d done that, none of what followed would have occurred. Iain Willows would never have got near the band.”

“And I’d never have met Ginny,” Ash concluded for him. For all the pain he was in right now, he didn’t want her wiped clean from his life or memory.

Xane knew that too, it was clear in the way his gaze brushed over Ash’s face. “Straight up, you’re a fool if you let her go. Anyone who sees the pair of you together knows that you were meant to be.”

A few weeks back he’d wholeheartedly believed that too.

“Some people are just destined for one another. She’ll fill up that big empty hollow in your heart in a way that the band never will, no matter how hard we try. The way I see it, you’ve two options: continue as you are, being miserable as sin, or accept that you’re still madly in love with her and you want her despite her mistakes.”

“You think I should forgive her.”

“What I think is irrelevant. I’m saying there’s fuck all point in wallowing. You’re not a hippo. Act. Do something. Either make a clean break of it, or go out and get her the fuck back.”

It stung to hear it, but in his heart, he knew Xane was right.

“For all the good it’ll do even if I manage it,” Ash mumbled, one hand clutched to his chest. “She’s still married to someone else.”

Xane leaned back, so that he was lying flat along the length of the four-inch-wide beam. “That won’t always be the case…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Work it out, dumbo. You’ve a double first, so there are at least a few functioning brain cells in your head.”

Xane retrieved his shades from where he had them tucked into the neckline of his shirt, and perched them back on his nose. He glanced over the top of the frames at Ash for a moment before sliding them fully into place. “A little bird told me that in sex…I mean six…weeks, she’ll be a Ms. not a Mrs.”

Ash’s traitorous heart actually leapt at that prospect.

Xane swung down off his ledge. “Call her.”

“No. And say what?”

“Well, I’m told most phone conversations start with ‘Hello.’ But I imagine whatever the hell the first thing that comes into your head is will serve equally well. ‘Get on a plane to Minsk and come and fuck me, right now,’ would probably work. Anything that lets her know you want her.”

Ash clapped his hand against his forehead. That was a bad idea, and he ought not to allow the demon sitting with him to tempt him. What was to say if he allowed Ginny back into his life, she wouldn’t find another way to hurt him? And, what was to say she’d even come if he asked?

His head and his heart warred over the various pros and cons of Xane’s suggestion.

“If you were quick, she could be here in time for tonight’s gig.”

He pushed Xane, so that he tumbled off the beam, and landed on his arse.

“What was that for?” Xane grumbled.

Everything and nothing. “You give the worst relationship advice.”

Xane smiled. “Yeah, but the very best head.”

On any other occasion Ash would have let that come back fly without rebuke, but not this time. “Actually, Ginny’s better.”

Xane reared back onto his knees. His smile of a moment ago transformed into a pucker. “Yowch!” He proclaimed. But then he looked up at Ash, smiled and laughed.

Ash offered him a hand back onto his feet, and found himself in Xane’s embrace.