“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Xav asked.
“I don’t know… she’s been through a lot yet again. It almost feels never ending,” Eric replied.
“This is going to end because we’ll make sure of it,” I told them. “I won’t let her live like this forever and we can’t keep doing it either. Aren’t you tired?”
“Of course I’m fucking tired,” Xav said, waving his hand. “This shit has gone on long enough. Fighting our way through life is no way to live. I’m ready to fucking settle down and not have to deal with any more bullshit.”
Eric nodded and slid his hand into Xav’s. He was right. It was time we all settled down especially now we’d found the right girl. This wasn’t the way we’d planned our lives. I didn’t care. Ash was our future. She was our hope. The thing which made us realise we had to end everything for good.
“Settle down with our girl for life?”
“Fuck yeah. Give her the life she deserves. I mean shit, even if we can’t marry her, she can still be our little wifey, right?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes.
“Only if she wants to,” Eric said.
“That girl isn’t going to leave us. Hell, Ash fucking loves us all, even Rory.”
“I’m not sure Ash would agree to be our ‘wifey’ as you so eloquently put it, but she can be our queen,” I said before I stepped towards the door intending to go up to bed myself.
“She already is.”
I smiled.
“I know.”
And with that, I strolled away. If we survived this shit, then we’d be set for life with our girl. Now I just had to work out how the fuck to get rid of that worthless piece of shit she used to call a father.
Frank Russo needed to die. And he needed to fucking die soon.
I’d make sure of it.
For her.
Always for her.
Forever.
Chapter 27
Ash was in her room getting ready for bed as she wanted to take her makeup off and unpin her hair. I’d already got ready and was sitting up in bed waiting for her. I wasn’t sure why she’d chosen me this evening. I’d expected her to pick one of the others to spend the night with. Especially when I’d already had her earlier.
My fingers itched, wanting to be full of her curves all over again. I had it fucking bad for Ash. With all the women I’d fucked before, I lost interest after one session, hence why Quinn had to keep finding more for me. A task I knew he didn’t relish. With Ash, my desire never wavered. If anything, it grew until I was desperate. And right now, I really was fucking desperate. Every part of me ached with the need to have her right next to me. Crazy to think I felt that way about another person when I’d spent so long hating human contact.
Maybe it’s what happened when you loved someone. I hadn’t had a chance to ask the boys since I’d only just come to terms with feeling this way. That love was something I was capable of. It seemed such a foreign and alien concept until I met her. Ash made everything fall into place. She made sense to me.
When she padded into the room, shutting the door behind her, there was an air of sadness surrounding her. Her hair fell in blonde waves around her shoulders and she was dressed in a tiny pair of shorts along with a baggy t-shirt. She crawled into bed next to me after I pulled back the covers. I reached for her, pulling her back against my front as I sat up against the headboard. I noticed she had a hairband around her wrist.
“Should I braid your hair for you?”
She looked back at me.
“You know how?”
I made her sit up and gathered it together, running my fingers through the strands. It was something I’d done with the women I’d before, mostly so I could hold on to the braid whilst I fucked them. It was like an anchor in a way.
“You asked me about my scars.”
“I did…”
I divided her hair into three parts at the top of her head and set to work giving her a French braid.
“The one on my abdomen happened when one of the other kids who was fostered with me cut me with a knife. I was only twelve at the time. When Quinn found me, he mopped up the blood and took me to A&E to get stitches. Literally putting me on his bicycle handlebars and riding it all the way to the hospital.”
“Why did the kid cut you?”
“He thought it would make Marian and Trevor happy with him… He’d seen the way they treated me. How they’d hurt me and laugh about it.”
Ash’s back stiffened, but I couldn’t hold this shit in any longer.
“The one on my eyebrow, that happened because Marian smacked me around the face and I fell over, knocking my head on the corner of the kitchen counter. It bled a lot and was really deep. I ran out of the flat straight to Quinn… he was so fucking angry, but we couldn’t do anything. We were just kids. It wasn’t the only time I ended up in hospital. I broke my arm when Trevor stood on it. I dislocated my shoulder after a pretty severe beating from both of them. You’d think with the catalogue of abuse I suffered social services would’ve done something, but I slipped through the net.”
Ash shifted as I got further down her head with the braid. I was being very careful and meticulous with it.
“Marian and Trevor were your foster parents.”
“Yeah, though I wouldn’t really call them parents. They had other kids on and off, but I
