ASH: a bay falls high novel Read online

  ASH

  a bay falls high novel

  Jaxson Kidman

  Contents

  Welcome to

  ASH

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  What’s after #bfh?

  More from Jaxson

  Welcome to

  xxx

  * * *

  Written by Jaxson Kidman

  ASH

  You read NOT So Innocent. You read NOT So Beautiful. You read NOT SO Special.

  That was Belle.

  Now it’s my turn.

  If the wild fights and wilder parties weren’t enough, just when things begin to settle with Belle - and life gives that glimmer of normalcy - I learn about a long standing family secret.

  Everything I’ve come to know is a lie.

  And just how far does that lie spread?

  For the first time ever, when I look at Belle, I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

  The past is ready to swallow up the present and the future.

  I have no choice but to try and stop it.

  My decision will fix the past.

  But it’s going to hurt Belle worse than anything has ever hurt her in her life.

  Prologue

  Life was never actually ever perfect.

  That much I knew.

  No matter the money. No matter the fucking stuff that the money could buy.

  There was never anything perfect.

  At least not until I met Belle.

  Go ahead and throw your cliché oohhh’s and aawww’s because I’m so fucking romantic, right?

  No.

  Just honest.

  From the second I saw Belle, I knew everything was going to change.

  Change didn’t bother me.

  Change didn’t scare me.

  I turned my head and looked at the door.

  It was a pearl white door. But in the dark, you’d never know how pearly it actually was. The porch light shone bright, but it didn’t do anything to bring out the true color of the door. There was an old wreath on the door too. In fact, everything about the beach house was old.

  I tried really hard to understand what it meant.

  Why they wanted to keep everything old.

  To me it was just rich people pretending to be poor.

  There was a sense of comfort in the place though.

  That much I could admit.

  On the beach house porch were two rocking chairs.

  They were once used.

  I had even sat in one at one point in my life.

  She liked that the chairs didn’t face the ocean. She liked that the ocean was a sense of background noise. She liked the reminder that as fast as things could come into your life, they could go. And that included money. Even though there was zero fucking chance of that happening to our family.

  Now, this wasn’t some self-inflicted, wannabe charity-looking routine.

  The back of the beach house had a deck that was the width of it.

  She loved to sit there and watch the ocean.

  Her morning coffee was on the front porch.

  Her afternoon cigarettes were on the back deck.

  And then, when she wanted to relax, there was a hammock hung under the deck where she’d gently sway with a book and something to drink.

  Something to drink.

  I shook my head to shake that away.

  But this was the place. This was her place.

  This meant almost everything to her.

  And I never understood why.

  I never asked. I never figured it out.

  I honestly never gave a fuck about it.

  And in a way, I still didn’t.

  The house was always in need of repair, but the repairs were either done slowly or not done at all. Because it just gave it the right kind of appearance. Again, the obsession with the whole we aren’t as rich as we really are kind of thing.

  I walked to the pearly white front door and paused.

  I looked at my phone and nodded.

  It was official just how fallen off the wagon I had become.

  The background on my phone was a picture of Belle.

  Her standing at the ocean, laughing at something stupid that Hil probably said, but it was the way I got the picture. Her hair blowing in the wind, her hand trying to tuck her hair behind her ear. Just everything in that picture screamed who Belle was to me.

  She wasn’t with me right then.

  Which was good.

  She didn’t even know where I was.

  Which was also good.

  Sometimes things in life were personal. Family. Deep. Personal.

  Sometimes you had to take care of things on your own.

  That was just the way life went.

  I fucking hated the idea of living in the past or the past coming back or anything to do with the past.

  But in this case…

  I opened the pearly white door and slammed it shut behind me.

  I walked to the left and went through the tiny dining room.

  The beach house smelled like dust.

  The furniture was twice my age.

  The kitchen had old appliances.

  A simple fridge without even so much as an icemaker.

  An oven without a clock.

  A microwave sitting on the counter with a turn dial.

  I wasn’t here to cook a fucking gourmet meal.

  But I did need to swing through the kitchen quickly.

  My fingertips touched the handles of the knives as they all rested in their respective places in the block.

  I chose the biggest one.

  I wasn’t sure how sharp the blade was, but oh fucking well.

  This wasn’t my doing.

  I didn’t cause this.

  If anything, I was now the effect.

  Like those videos… some asshole throwing a ball against a wall. And then the ball comes flying right back and hits the guy in the nose or the nuts.

  This was just…

  I stepped from the kitchen into the living room.

  My eyes focused on the darkness and I saw the silhouette of the lamp on the end table next to the couch.

  It clicked and turned on with a dusty, hot, buzzing smell and sound.

  I turned and lifted the knife into the air.

  He tried to scream when he saw me and the knife, but he had a gag in his mouth.

  He jumped up and down, wanting to get up and run away, but he was tied to the chair.

  I smiled at him.

  “Now, motherfucker, let’s settle this thing once and for all.”

  Chapter 1

  “Come on, bro, look around,” Hil said. “It’s the perfect scenery here, right? You’ve got the fucking ocean next to you. The waves clapping together making a beat. You’ve got the smell of cigarette smoke lingering around like some kind of bad shit that’s so fucking good. A couple of hot chicks splashing each other in the water…”

  “You just think Mara and Vera are going to suddenly start kissing,” Uly said.

  “Is that a bad thing?” Hil asked.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said. “Both of you.”

  I looked down at my left hand.

 
Trying to figure out how to play the fucking guitar.

  Of all things… but there was nothing else to do.

  I had to kill time while Belle was dealing with her mother’s bullshit of a life.

  That asshole we jacked up in the hospital - Chester - really fucked her over big time again. This time she was done for good. That was all Belle would tell me.

  That it was done, for good.

  And that she needed to help her mother for a little bit.

  In my heart, it had been a lifetime already.

  In reality, it had been two full days.

  And in those two full days, I watched Uly and Mara together. I watched Hil and Vera together. I watched the halls of BFH with a more pissed off look than normal. Everyone knew I was like a coiled-up cobra ready to strike.

  But so far… I just kept it calm and cool.

  And I decided to learn to play guitar.

  “You really want to finger it,” Hil said. “You know?”

  “Finger this,” I said.

  I showed my middle finger on my right hand.

  “Give him a break,” Uly said to Hil. “He’s not good at fingering.”

  “Not like me,” Hil said. “Right, Ash?”

  “I will break this guitar over your head,” I warned.

  I curled my fingers and put them right where Hil had told me.

  A G chord.

  Simple.

  At least he said it was simple.

  I strummed the guitar and two notes sounded okay and the rest were muted sounds of shit.

  “Almost,” Uly said. “You just have to curl your fingers some more. And leave the open strings open. That’s where you get a lot of sound too.”

  “Fuck the open strings,” I said.

  “Here,” Hil said. “Try an E minor. It’s even easier. Take your middle and ring fingers and put them on the second frets of the A and D strings.”

  I stared at Uly.

  I had no idea why I was even bothering with this.

  “Two fingers like this,” Hil said, holding up his hand with his middle and ring fingers showing. “Just the way chicks like it. Those are jamming fingers… for more than one reason.”

  I did what Uly said and it still sounded like shit.

  I knew how to draw and do tattoos, but playing guitar… nah.

  “Tell you what, bro,” Hil said. “We’ll tune the guitar to an open tuning. So when you strum it without touching anything, it’ll sound good. That way you don’t look stupid.”

  “Stupid?” I asked.

  “He’s fucking around, man,” Uly said. “He can’t draw a straight line.”

  “I can with my tongue,” Hil said.

  I jumped off the rock I was sitting on and squeezed the neck of the guitar tight.

  Hil just stood there and stared at me with that fucking grin on his face.

  To my left I heard Mara and Vera giggling together.

  Splashing in the water, enjoying their lives…

  “Come on,” Hil said. “Keep practicing and then you can join us on stage.”

  “Don’t rush it,” Uly said. “We have a reputation.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  I turned and swung the guitar like a baseball bat.

  I smashed it against the rock and it exploded into pieces.

  Wood splinters flew all around me.

  The body of the guitar was in pieces, dangling by the strings as I held the neck.

  When I turned back around, I dropped what was left of Hil’s guitar.

  “I broke your guitar, bro,” I said. “Shit.”

  I stepped toward him and threw my shoulder into his.

  He stepped back, pissed off, but he didn’t do anything.

  Instead, I had Uly on my ass.

  “Fuck, you miss her that much, huh?” he asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Belle is gone for a little bit and you’re losing your mind. You just trashed Hil’s guitar.”

  “Fuck that guitar,” I said.

  “I agree. It’s a piece of shit. But still…”

  I stopped and looked at Uly. “What are you getting at here?”

  “Not much going on here today,” Uly said.

  “I told her I wouldn’t…”

  “We don’t have to,” Uly said. “But what if we went on a road trip and just so happened to pass by…”

  I looked to my right and Hil was crouched down, picking at what was left of his guitar. Behind me I heard Mara and Vera laughing again.

  “If we show up, she’s going to hate me,” I said. “She’ll probably break up with me. And if that happens, I’ll end up breaking all of Hil’s guitars. Yours too, Uly.”

  Uly grabbed my shoulder and grinned. “Good thing we’re fucking rich and can buy as many guitars as we want.”

  I looked at him again curled my lip.

  “I’m driving in three minutes… with or without all of you assholes.”

  * * *

  I lied a little.

  I didn’t leave in three minutes.

  And I didn’t drive.

  I made Uly drive.

  The SUV was big enough for all of us, plus Belle if she was ready to come back to BFH.

  I was stepping in hot water by cruising through her old hometown to find her.

  Last time I was there, Them pummeled that prick that broke her heart. We had no choice at that time.. We had to take the guy down and make sure he realized who we were. Bad enough I had to show Belle what he was doing to her. Taking her to that parking lot while he was getting sucked off by Belle’s best friend.

  That was a whole other lifetime though.

  At least it felt that way.

  In the backseat, Hil sat between Mara and Vera.

  “Want me to show my ass to the car next to us?” Hil asked.

  “What?” I asked. “Who wants to see your ass?”

  “I do,” Vera said.

  “You can see his ass in private,” Mara said.

  “But it’s a nice ass,” Vera said.

  “Poor girl doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Uly said.

  “Come on, look,” Hil said. “They’re grumpy people next to us. He looks like he hasn’t come in four years. His wife is scrolling on her phone. Watch…”

  Hil wiggled his ass near Mara and she slid across the seat.

  I saw Uly’s jaw tighten.

  Mara hugged Vera as Hil opened his jeans.

  He reached back and put the window down just enough to stick his ass out.

  We were flying down the highway and there was Hil’s ass, just there for all to see.

  “Beep the horn, Uly,” Hil said.

  “Fuck,” Uly whispered.

  He beeped the horn and both people looked.

  Uly thumbed back and when the woman looked and saw Hil’s ass, she gasped and covered her mouth.

  The guy slowed down.

  Then a bunch of cars started to beep.

  Hil laughed and stutter-stepped forward to pick up his jeans.

  “You’re going to cause an accident with your ass,” I said.

  “My ass breaks hearts,” he said.

  “It breaks something else too,” Uly said.

  “Just look for a second,” Hil said.

  He turned and swung his ass around.

  Mara let out a scream.

  Now Hil’s bare ass was between Uly and I. Stuck between the front seats.

  Closer than I ever wanted to be to his naked ass ever in my life.

  “Just give one cheek a squeeze,” Hil said. “Come on, Ash. Do it.”

  I leaned forward and looked at Uly.

  He smirked and handed me his lighter.

  “You know what, Hil…,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Vera is right too. I mean… your ass is on fire…”

  I flicked the lighter and put the flame to his skin.

  And just like that, he disappeared.

  Well, his ass disappeared.

  He fell to the backseat with a yell.


  I turned and flicked the lighter again.

  “You lit my ass on fire!” Hil yelled.

  “I should have stayed home,” Mara said. “This is weird.”

  “I’m so sorry about this, doll,” Uly said.

  “It’s your lighter, man,” I said to Uly.

  “Throw it out. I don’t want to touch that thing ever again.”

  “My ass…,” Hil said. “You burned my ass.”

  “Keep your ass to yourself,” I said.

  “Or to me,” Vera said.

  I didn’t give a shit what anyone said, Vera was just as fucking weird as Hil. Maybe weirder. She always wore baggy, ripped clothes. Like she had no problem flaunting she was a rich girl, but in a poor way.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  I dropped the lighter to the middle console.

  In the backseat, I heard Hil whisper to Vera, “He lit my ass on fire.”

  “It’s okay, Hil,” Vera whispered back. “You want to light my ass on fire later?”

  They laughed.

  Uly looked ready to explode, wanting to get to the backseat with Mara.

  But I wasn’t going to drive.

  I didn’t feel like it.

  I just wanted to see Belle.

  And I didn’t like how badly I needed her.

  “I need a cigarette,” Uly said. “But I am not using the ass lighter.”

  Hil leaned forward again and smiled. “So, Uly, I guess this means you’re the butt of your own joke?”

  * * *

  Belle’s mother still lived in the same apartment where she worked.

  We drove by the street where Belle used to live. And we kept going.