Fire And Ash (15 page)

“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.”

I slam the door shut and he starts the car and furiously drives away.
 

And this is why we can’t be friends. Scratch that, this is why it will never work if we try to be more than friends because we can’t even be friends.
The thought is more stinging than it should be. It’s nothing new.

We drive in angry silence all the way back to Cal’s where I left my car parked.
 

I slam his car door again when I get out because I know how much he hates it.

When I get home it’s only Dad and Grandma there.
 

Both of them ask me what’s wrong and if I’m okay and I snap at them that I’m fine. I stomp up the stairs and take a shower that is near boiling because standing under the spray of hot water most of the time relaxes my nerves. It doesn’t this time. When I get back to my room my cell phone dings indicating a message came through while I was in the bathroom. I look at the screen. It’s from a number I don’t know. The words
Thank you Ash
are beneath it. I roll my eyes and put the phone back on the table beside my bed. I climb into bed, try to fall asleep, and then pick my phone back up when the attempt is unsuccessful.
 

You’re not welcome.
I send the message then fall asleep.

Of course Derek opens the door when I go over to hangout with Cassie the next day.
 

Neither of us speak at first. I look and him and he looks back at me.
 

“Hey,” he finally says after a beat.

“Hey,” I tell him back with more than a little attitude.
 

“Ash! Oh my God you will not believe who just texted me!” Cassie comes running down the stairs. She pushes Derek aside and pulls me into the house.
 

“Look!” She shoves her cell phone in my face. I assume she wants me to read what’s on the screen but she doesn’t give me a chance to. “It’s from Matt!” She says excitedly. “He wants to know if I’m free to hangout out in Highland Village today. There’s a Labor Day event going on in one of the parks with a couple of local bands from Denver and a fireworks display at the end of the night. He says Brent is meeting up with a girl there who lives in Highland Village and wants to know if I want to go with them.”

“Sounds like fun. What time are y’all going?”

Cassie’s excitement deflates a notch. “I haven’t texted him back to tell him I am going yet.”

“Why not?” If she is so excited about him wanting to hang out with her it seems like her response would be a no brainer.
 

“Because it might be weird. I don’t know really know Matt or Brent and I won’t know the girl Brent’s meeting at all. I don’t want it to be weird.” She worries her bottom lip for a moment. Then her eyes light up. “Hey what are you doing tonight?”

“Umm…nothing,” I answer not sure I’m going to like where things are headed.

“Perfect! You can come too. That way I’ll have somebody I know with me.”

“No, I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m not playing fifth wheel to y’all double date.
That
would be weird.”

“Come on Ash, please!”

“You’re my girl Cass, but No. I’m not going.”

“What if Derek comes too? Then it will be more like a group thing than a double date.”
 

“Derek isn’t going to go,” I snort. Derek didn’t even want to come downstairs when she had the party. Cass is the social butterfly. Derek is not.

“I’ll go,” Derek says surprising the hell out of me. “That is if you’re not still mad at me and if you want me to.”

I cut my eyes at him. “Yes, I’m still mad at you but if you want to go and I’m going to go then that’s cool.”

 
“Alright then I guess I’m going,” Derek says cooly.

Cass volleys her head from me to him looking at us like we’ve both grown a tail or something. “Wait, did I miss something?”

I shrug and he does too. I’m not answering her first. I want to see what Derek says. He remains quiet to and I get the feeling that he’s waiting to see what I’ll say.

Cassie’s eyes go wide. “There is something going on between you too! And it just happened like yesterday
after
breakfast because neither of you were acting like this during breakfast.”

I look at Derek and he looks back at me.
 

“Derek!” Mrs. Jensen calls from the backyard. “Come here for a second. I need your help with the this water pump.”

“You can tell her… or not. Either way is cool,” he tells me then leaves the room to go help his mom.