Page 37 of Savage in the Streets

“Well, that suck.”

“Ash—get your shit together,” Mabel snaps.

“Have you looked around?” I gesture to a room full of mahogany. “It’s together.”

“Money will only buy you comfort. Not happiness.”

I snicker. “Do you really think that somehow Bailey Savage is going to make me happy or something?”

“Yes! I absolutely do. And if things don’t work out, maybe you’ll finally move on.”

“Wow—you got allll that from my rudeness toward the Savage girl?”

“Carolyn is gone.”

The room suddenly grows ten degrees hotter as molten anger courses through my veins.

“How dare you say her name.”

“How dare you stop saying it.”

Calm down. This is Mabel you’re talking to. If she has something to say, you deserve to hear it.

Once upon a time, Carolyn, Mabel, and my sister Liz were best friends.

And I was Carolyn’s boyfriend.

Until one fateful day ten years ago, when it all fell apart.

Leaving each of us broken in our own way.

“She’ll always be a ghost because you’ll never let her leave,” Mabel pleads.

I point toward the door. “Get out!”

“Are ya gonna fucking make me?”

“What the hell has gotten into you!” I shout, spittle spraying from my mouth.

“In the ten years she’s been gone, my poor ass is the only one who’s managed to move on. You sit here, lonely, afraid to let anyone in. Liz…well, she’s overdosed three fucking times. Due for a fourth. Maybe it will land her in rehab again. Or possibly, the morgue. My own fucking husband died, and you don’t see me acting like this.”

“You are never allowed inside my house again!”

“Good! Because I’m damn tired of living in the past.”

She leaves. I’d do anything to have her back, but my pride works against me.

Everything she’s said is right, but I don’t know how to let go of the ghosts I’ve held so tightly to.

I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that the charges against Bailey Savage are dropped, but that’s it. That’s where our relationship ends.

Bailey is a bright and beautiful woman that will one day meet someone that makes her happy in every way I can’t.

While I’ll always continue to linger in the shadows of the past.

Chapter 10

Ashton