“Oh,” she squeaked breathily. “But you don’t have to. I mean, we only just met and—”
“You really don’t know how to make friends, do you?”
Friends. The word stung more than she expected. Was that all she was? His friend?
“I… Me? No, I…” He’d flustered her with that one word. Ashley hadn’t wanted Tripp to feel pressured. She’d been trying to offer him a way out, but now that he’d taken the offer, was she just a friend with benefits?
She gulped so hard that her swallow got stuck in her throat. Was he right? Did she know how to make friends? Short answer, not really. She’d closed down years ago, long before that creep had ever broken into her college apartment. With her mom’s transient lifestyle, she’d never lived in one place long enough to find or make real friends.
One did not garner personal power or self-confidence from a childhood caught between a self-serving, narcissist father and a self-effacing mother. If one wasn’t badgering, bullying, and belittling his only child, the other was stuck in denial, always defending the man who’d never worked a day in his life. Ashley knew now that her parents were forever half of a nauseating, codependent whole. The false narrative she’d grown up with had left her confused and forever uncertain.
Until she’d left home, Ashley had been batted back and forth like a badminton birdie, in a game she hadn’t been able to win. Simply because children didn’t understand their parents’ twisted, messed-up adult relationship rules. Ashley’s determination to leave home, to be independent, and to get away from her mother’s idea that self-martyrdom was any kind of happily-ever-after, had come crashing down the afternoon of Driscoll’s first assault.
He hadn’t taken her virginity, but he’d surely taken her momentum, her freedom, and her dreams. He’d taken her tiny shred of self-esteem, which hadn’t been much. He’d stolen her confidence and, indirectly, her life.
Was that her problem? Had she been so worried about her personal safety, that she’d never let anyone close enough to love her? Well, duh. Why go looking for more pain? Why not shut the hard world out and buy a bird who adored her? If she couldn’t make friends, how could she expect to keep a lover?
Suddenly, Ashley was back at square one, on her way to a lifetime of cloistered anonymity, the invisibility enjoyed by victims the world over. Only… she knew better now. Driscoll hadn’t taken anything. Uh-uh. Just because her one and only role model, her mom, had turned victimhood into a fine art, that didn’t mean Ashley had to. Driscoll hadn’t stolen anything. Ashley had freely tossed her independence and confidence out the door with him when he’d run off that day. She’d made the choice, not him, and it had been the wrong choice. Safe? Yes, sort of. But not really. And it had been stifling the heck out of her ever since.
All along, keeping safe had been an illusion. Safe wasn’t behind deadbolts or bigger locks. Driscoll had proven that. Safe was that cocky, brash something Tripp carried with him wherever he went. He cared about people enough to put himself in danger protecting fools like her. Safety was in being prepared, trained, and strong. In knowing who you were before you stepped off your doorstep each morning. In relying on yourself, instead of a stupid deadbolt.
How pitiful she’d been, quivering behind black-out curtains like a scared rabbit in its hole. No. More. She, Ashley Cox, had challenged a serial killer with nothing more than her bird’s perch today, and by heck, she could do it again.
Leaning his torso up into hers, Tripp pressed his warm lips to her forehead. “I’d like a year to date you, Ashley. A year to fall in love. If that’s what this feeling between us is, I want time to get it right.” He bumped his hips between her thighs.
“Want to know what gave you away?” Ashley asked slyly, needing him to back off the love train and focus on something else.
“Gave me away?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” She dropped a big wet kiss on his mouth, ending it by nipping his bottom lip. “You’re my angel. You can’t fool me.”
“Trust me, I’m no angel.”
“Yes, you are.” Ashley shook her head, denying his denial, as she tossed her hair over his face. “You bite your bottom lip just like he did. You’d smeared grease paint on your face and neck, and you wore a black beanie to conceal your hair. But it was you. I’d know your voice anywhere.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him short. “Never mind. I want you to teach me how to shoot and defend myself. I’d like to know my way around guns, and I want a conceal carry permit. Could you teach me parkour? That’s what those bars on the walls and ceiling in your extra bedroom are for, right?”
“I intended teaching you to shoot,” he muttered quietly. “But those bars are for pull-ups, not parkour. There’s a good parkour course at work. Jameson would be a better teacher for that.”
“I think I’d like to learn how to box, too. Zack said he’d teach me.”
Tripp trailed the back of his fingers down the side of her face, then traced the pad of his thumb over her lips. His eyes had gone dark emerald. The barest tip of his tongue peeked over his bottom lip. “You don’t have to do everything at once, you know.”
“No, but I have to do
