Ash doesn’t startle, as though he knew I was there all along. He continues writing, the pencil moving in spiky strokes across the page. “Lena’s syllabus for next year.”
I tilt my head, reading the problem upside down. “AP Calculus?”
“Yeah.” Ash frowns at the tablet and scratches out a line on his legal pad. “Her senior year is going to be brutal. This is only one of the classes she wants to take.”
I circle behind him to read over his shoulder, mychest brushing his back, and he leans into the contact. The numbers and symbols flow across the screen in patterns I recognize from my own schooling, even after all these years.
“I could hire a tutor,” I say, my breath stirring the hair above where my custom nape guard hugs his slender neck. “The best in the city.”
The scratch of the pencil stops, and Ash tilts his head back, his dark eyes reflecting the soft light from the desk lamp. No defensiveness clouds his face, only certainty.
“I know.”
He holds my stare for another heartbeat before he turns back to the problem.
The pencil taps the paper once, twice. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to understand it, too.”
Ah. This isn’t about homework or college prep. This is Ash refusing to be left behind as Lena moves forward, refusing to be a spectator in her future, and I ache for the boy who never got to explore that world himself.
I pull a second chair closer and settle beside him. “Show me what you’re stuck on.”
Ash blinks at me, surprise flashing before his expression smooths. “This integration by parts. I keep ending up with the wrong constant.”
My fingertip traces the equation on his paper, following his work step by step. As I do, his scent fills my lungs, clean sweat, coffee, and beneath it all, the sweet musk that marks him as mine.
“You’re distributing the negative wrong.” I point to the error. “It affects everything after.”
Ash frowns at the page. “You know calculus?”
“Business degree,” I reply, the corner of my mouth lifting. “Victor made me finish school while I worked for him.”
Victor Sullivan, the previous owner of the Blue Note, saw potential in an angry kid fresh out of juvenile detention and made sure I had the skills needed to thrive in this career.
“Must have been a good school,” Ash mutters, erasing his work to start again.
“It was.” My gaze lingers on his hands as they move across the paper. “Though I had private tutors to fill the gaps from my interrupted education.”
Ash’s pencil pauses as he realizes the same resources I had are now available to him. To Lena.
I rest my hand at the back of his neck, my thumb stroking the warm skin above his collar. “We’ll do both.”
Ash stills beneath my touch, the pencil hoveringabove the paper, and his pulse jumps beneath my fingers. “Both?”
“I’ll find the best tutor in the city for Lena. And you.” My thumb continues its slow rhythm. “Consider it an investment.”
The word choice matters. Charity he rejects on principle. Investment acknowledges value.
Ash turns to me, his face inches from mine as he searches for any hint of pity or condescension, and finding none, the tension eases from his shoulders.
“All right,” he says, then adds with a hint of challenge, “But I interview them first.”
“Of course.”
His mouth curves in the ghost of a smile before he turns back to the problem. But he doesn’t pull away from my touch, and when my fingers trace the edge of his collar, his head tilts to the side in silent invitation for more contact as he recalculates the equation.
I should be checking inventory, approving payroll, and handling a dozen matters that need my attention. Instead, I count the tiny freckles across Ash’s nose while I trace the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, where he shivers every time I take a nibble.
The pencil continues to scratch across the paper, steady despite his quickening pulse, and I’m transfixed by the elegant turn of his wrist, remembering how those same hands clutched at my sheets last night.
