She slid her hand from his arm, wondering how to regroup, but he grabbed her wrist midair. Willow gasped, and Ash pulled her arm to his chest, his hand now wrapped around hers.
“Don’t you sneak out on me, Wills,” he teased softly. “I just need five more minutes with my girl.”
She couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t Ash Murphy talking to Willow Morgantoday. It was Ash Murphy four years ago in his tour bus bed. Instead of a tank, shorts, and now his plaid shirt, Willow had been in that bed too, and she’d been wearing nothing. Neither of them had. And it wasn’t just any morning either. Those were some of the last words Ash had spoken to her before she became a tabloid headline and some other woman became Ash Murphy’s wife.
He dipped his head, eyes still closed, and brushed his lips across her knuckles.
“Please,” he whispered against her skin. “I’m not ready to let you go.” Even in his sleep-addled speech, she swore she heard a crack in his voice.
“Ash!” she finally barked, full volume now, and his eyes flew open.
He blinked several times as his vision seemed to focus on her. Then they dipped down to the hand gripped in his.
“Shit!” he hissed, letting go of her like she’d suddenly caught fire and he didn’t want to get burned. “I’m sorry! I don’t know what…” He scrambled outof the bed. “It was an accident, Willow. I swear. I know what this looks like, but you weren’t feeling well, and I—”
“It’s okay!” Willow blurted out. “It’s okay,” she said again, gentler this time. “I remember asking you to stay until I fell asleep. I was too tipsy to consider that you might have been tired too.”
She was sitting up now, holding a pillow against her chest as what…protection? He couldn’t be farther from her unless he made an Ash-shaped hole in the wall and ran straight for the barn.
He let out a shaky breath. “Dammit,” he whispered. “We were doing better, right? Did I just set us back to square one?”
“No,” Willow assured him. “We’re fine. We’re…exactly where we were prior to me and the endless flow of wine.”
He let his head fall against the wall behind him with a thud. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.” He ran a hand through his hair and then strode toward the door. “I’ll head back to the couch where I belong.” His voice was rough, and he was moving so fast, Willow thought he wasn’t even going to give her a backward glance. But he paused two steps out the door, one hand on the frame, and pivoted back to face her. “Where exactly are we, Willow?” he asked. “Because Colt said…” But his voice trailed off and he shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m clearly still exhausted.Or something.” He tapped the doorframe twice. “Good night, Willow. Or…good morning, I guess.” Then he pulled her door closed.
She hugged the pillow tight and exhaled a shaky breath.
What had Colt told him? It didn’t matter because Willow had no idea where she and Ash were. All she knew was that he had just said all of that while staring at her once again wearing his shirt and that part of her wished she hadn’t succeeded in waking him. Because then she could have used his sleep-addled death grip on her hand as an excuse to snuggle close to him, to breathe him in and revisit what it had been like—once upon a time—when she was, in fact, his girl.
“Five more minutes,” she heard herself whisper. “Why couldn’t you have stayed asleep for five more minutes?”
Willow swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, hastily pulling her arms from the sleeves of the shirt she should not have put back on. She was clearly under the influence of…of…of the Ash Murphy scent. Or something. She needed it off her body and out of her room so she could get her head on straight.
She balled the shirt up in one hand and carefully turned the door handle so as to hopefully pull it open without making a sound. But something about the door felt heavier than usual.
She waited a beat but heard nothing.
“Ash?”
“Yeah,” he replied from the other side of the door, his voice pained.
Willow opened the door, and there he was, still in his T-shirt and jeans as if he hadn’t moved any farther from her room since exiting it.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, a tremble in her words.
“I don’t know,” Ash replied through gritted teeth. “No,” he amended. “That was a lie, and I don’t want to lie to you, Willow.”
She nodded slowly, then asked again. “What are you doing out here, Ash?”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “I’m wondering how we got to a place where I only get to lie beside you when you’re afraid you’re going to vomit and you might need me to hold your hair back.”
Willow shrugged and sniffed back the threat of tears. “You married someone else.” Why now, though, did it feel like she was missing part of the story?
He nodded, and in the pale moonlight that would soon turn to sun, she saw a muscle pulse in his jaw, like he was barely holding on anymore.
“Colt said you forgave me,” he told her. “I’m not asking you for anything else, Willow. I swear to god. But I just need to know if what he said was true, and then I will march back over to that couch and won’tbother you again.” He blew out a breath. “Do you, Wills? Do you forgive me?”
She should have been furious at him using her nickname after he’d promised not to. She should have been pissed at her brother for telling Ash something that was never meant for his ears. But the should-haves were just as exhausting as the hate, and Willow needed to let go of all of it if she was going to forge a path out of the woods she’d been lost in for too long.
