Page 3 of The Stay


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Ash felt himself bleed back together. His resolve. His fight. His heart and soul and head. His spirit.

"We're going to get you a fucking good lawyer..." Ash focused on Colt’s warm, steady voice. Colt was going to help. Colt was taking this all on, like Ash had asked him to just hold Ash’s coffee for a second while he tied his shoelaces. Colt took charge. He took the weight. Ash was going to be okay because Colt was going to help.

"You may do time, Ash, prepare yourself for that, but we'll get you out as soon as we can-"

Oh hang on, Ash's new found resolve stuttered. His brain caught up. Colt was paying for a lawyer to fight for him. “We? You and April? I can't ask you to do-" Ash's heart spasmed and flopped.

Colt’s voice cut through the haze. "No, we, as in the MC. My MC."

Ash took a moment to process those words in his head. "MC… motorcycle club?"

"Yeah.”

"You're a member of a motorcycle club?” Ash blinked. He remembered Colt eyeing up his bike... helping him, knowing his way around the bike like Ash knew his way around his own body. The leather jacket. The mysterious disappearance in the early hours of the morning. The tattoos, the devil-may-care smirk… it all fell into place.

"I'm the Prez," Colt said, and Ash heard the triumphant pride in Colt’s voice. Like a blast of a sunbeam bursting through thunderclouds, Ash was drawn to it. Colt’s confident self assurance. Those two letters. MC. The warmth and safety and freedom that those two letters offered Ash. The knowledge that he wouldn't be alone.

Ash gasped, "What's the MC called?"

Colt’s clear voice came back down the line. "Black Coyotes..."

The words were a promise of a whole new life for Ash. He felt it, this was the beginning. This was where it all really got started. Fuck high school, fuck college, fuck all of the fuckers who'd tried to fuck him over so far. This was his story now, this was his time to shine.

"You’re shitting me…" Ash muttered at the realization of what was to come. The adventure of a lifetime.

"You want in?"

Ash couldn't respond fast enough. "Hell fucking yes."

"Ashton Rivers,get your ass up here," the prison guard yanked his cell door open. The clunk and squeak of the door felt like it was rubbing against his spine. Against his soul. "Someone you need to meet."

Ash swung his legs out of his bunk and pulled himself up to his feet. He knew this was coming. He leaned back on the metal bunk and casually folded his arms. As if he was comfortable, and was perhaps hanging around a skate park or on the bleachers at his school’s sports ground. He wasn’t comfortable at all and did not feel in the slightest bit the casual attitude that he tried to portray. But he’d be damned if he showed any weakness. He’d learned the hard way, any chink in your armor in here and you were in trouble. So Ash smirked up at the guard like he was a teacher trying to tell him off for chewing gum on school property or something equally banal.

The guard loomed in the doorway. "Your new cellmate, meet David Nixon."

And into Ash's little six by six concrete box, strode the man who would change his life. Nix.

Ash tried not to gasp out loud. But everything about this man set Ash’s body on fire. Ash could tell, he just knew, there was this immediate pull, an immediate yank, deep within him. No, not within him, within the world, within every atom inside and outside of his body in that little space right then and there.

Ash didn't hear the guard slam the door behind him. He was watching the man in front of him.

Taller, heavier than him.

Hair swept up in that trendy short at the back and side, graduating in a fraction of an inch perfect fade up to thick, full styled hair on top that flopped over.

Beautiful.

And tattoos. His whole neck was a beautiful botanical scene. Transitioning into geometric hexagons that went up onto his head, into his hairline around the back and the sides. Nearer the front there were tattoos, too, around his ear, just teasing from the hairline of his forehead.

Both arms were almost black with tattoo sleeves. One arm was a giant circular tower, people on the tower, crying, screaming, covering their ears. The other arm was a city in the background. A city being destroyed. Burning, a thunderous looking sky on his bicep raining down fireballs, and people escaping. One woman looking behind. Still as a statue, a proper Mona Lisa look on her face. A face that almost was a skull. Regret and longing, sadness and want. Ash wanted to continue to stare for hours. He wanted to ask a million questions. He wanted to hear Nix talk through each and every tattoo.

Ash liked tattoos. They told a story, and Ash liked stories. He’d previously been with a tattoo artist. And for small town Oregon that had been scandalous enough. But that the tattoo artist was an out-of-town Native American guy was even more of a scandal. Dane, quiet, mysterious. If he’d have morphed into a wolf on a full moon night, Ash wouldn’t have been surprised. It hadn’t worked out, of course, as lovers, Dane was too still, too calm. Ash needed more chaos in the bedroom but also in his heart. In the way he loved and was loved.

Chaos just like the male form that stood in front of Ash now.

Nix had this aura about him, an anger, fierceness. Like a caged animal; treacherous, dangerous. As if something unexpected could happen at any moment. Like he wasn’t in control of his body or his soul. This guy was very much flying loose in the wind, he didn’t seem to have his shit together. Untethered. A hot mess. He held chaos in the palm of his hand, dropped it and threw it around often, and didn’t bother to pick it up again in his wake. A loose cannon. A loaded pistol of Russian Roulette risk and thrill and deadliness. Hypnotizing to Ash. Intoxicating.

Perfect.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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