“No, I want to know. I want to know everything about you. All of it.” Ashton’s eyes are bright and earnest as he says it.
“It’s about Chase,” I start, giving him room to stop me in case he doesn’t want to hear about my ex. Ashton’s eyes harden, but he doesn’t tell me to stop. “He’s allergic to nuts. He played fast and loose with it, too,”I tell him. “One night we were at this gorgeous art opening, and they were passing around trays of appetizers. It was Indonesian food, and he didn’t recognize the names of anything. I told him to be careful, but he ate some anyway and got sick almost immediately.”
“What an idiot,” Ash mutters.
“It gets worse. He also refused to carry his EPI-Pen. Like having an allergy made him look weak? It was ridiculous. I told him we should go to the emergency room, but he refused. Finally, I convinced him to let me run out and grab an antihistamine. When I came back from the drugstore, hescreamedat me about how long it took, said he could have died because I didn’t care enough to hurry.” I pull my knees closer to my chest, feeling strangely vulnerable remembering it. “He still ended up at the hospital, by the way. And he blamed me for how much it cost him.”
“Wow,” Ashton says, letting out a long breath.
“Yeah, not exactly a story of brotherly love. Just a dumb relationship squabble.” I laugh, trying to shake it off.
“No, I meant ‘wow, I wish I had hit him harder.’”
It’s the first time either of us have broached the subject of him beating up Chase sinceThe Night of a Thousand Wines(asI fondly named the incident). He watches me as he says it, like he’s not sure how I’ll react.
I give him a lopsided grin. “Honestly, I kind of wish you had too,” I admit.
His answering smile is wide. “Hey, there’s always next time!” He pulls out a mini bottle of Prosecco from his basket and hands me a plastic champagne flute, uncorking the bottle to pour me a drink.
“So, you and Seb are brothers? Actual brothers, I mean?” I ask, shifting the conversation back to him.
“Half-brothers,” Ash corrects. “Same mom, different dads. We didn’t meet Alec and Viper until after she passed.”
Ashton’s expression dims at that, and he picks at a container, plucking a piece of chocolate-covered pineapple out and rolling it between his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
He shrugs. “Car accident,” he murmurs. “Coming home from work. They couldn’t find any immediate family who were willing to take us, so after it happened, we ended up at the orphanage.”
“I'm so sorry.”
“It’s fine. Well, it wasn’t, but you know how it goes. They separated us for a while, adopted us out to different families. But I kept getting into fights and getting sent back, and Seb?” He just laughs. “Seb always found out and found a way back to me. Once, he started a fire, almost burned down a school, just to get his foster family to send him back. Eventually, families stopped trying with him. Especially after the fish incident.”
“What’s the fish incident?” I ask.
Ashton flinches. “Well… One family that took him in lived on the water, and he found some fish that had washed up on the shore. They were already dead, but…he wanted to know howthey worked, you know? So he brought them inside and tried dissecting them on the kitchen table…”
Nausea creeps into my belly, imagining it. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He drains his glass and sets it aside. “They brought him back to the orphanage real fast after that. It was a whole thing. He got a new caseworker and everything. They threw around a bunch of diagnoses like conduct disorder, oppositional disorder, stuff like that. But he was just being Seb, right? It’s like… like he knew even back then he’d be a doctor, taking things apart to see what makes them tick.”
I take a sip from my glass. “When did you meet the others?”
“Alec was already there when we arrived,” he explains. “No family wanted him. He was too smart, stubborn as fuck. Wouldn’t listen to anyone because he always wanted to call the shots.”
That sounds like Alec. “And Viper?” I ask.
Ashton shifts on the blanket. “Viper…” He frowns. “Viper came a little later. He, uh… the cops found him wandering the streets. When they figured out where he came from...”
He trails off and won’t look at me.
“What?” I ask.
“They were already dead,” he explains. “Everyone in the house, the whole family. Viper was the only survivor.”
“Jesus!” I gasp.
Ashton nods with a grimace. “The whole story is pretty bad. They did some fucked up things to him. Things that break a person. I didn’t know Viper before, but what he is now…” He trails off again.
