Free Ask Me to Stay by Elise K Ackers Page A

Blessedly, her car had not been blocked in by the dozens of others that littered the lengthy driveway.
    She slipped behind the wheel, gunned the engine and accelerated towards the main road. About a kilometre from the house she eased onto the gravel and killed the headlights. She waited in the darkness, knowing he would come this way.
    Fifteen minutes later she was stalking him by car. Her lights off, her nerves taut. He never saw her. Or if he did he didn’t care.
    She rolled into town, over a hundred metres behind him. Guessing the journey was almost over, she parked and continued on foot. She carried a torch, and, perhaps absurdly, a first-aid kit. She didn’t know what she would find when she confronted him, or what condition he would be in.
    She paused on Tynes Street. His unmistakable physique was nowhere to be seen. She thought carefully. Would her theory be right?
    Keeping to the shadows, she crept towards Foster’s Garage.
    Disconsolate and beaten, Ethan Foster painted a tragic picture sitting in the gutter of his family’s business. His unhappiness struck her. It shot right through her, anchoring her where she stood. It had to be close to three in the morning. Nothing moved. No lights beyond the street lamps lit the way. Yet this building did something to this man. After all these years, its ghosts still brutalised his soul.
    Sam pressed her hand to her mouth. A tear slipped from her eye and dropped onto her collarbone.
    Her pain was nothing to this man’s, her heart unscathed in comparison.
    She crossed to him. The sound of her footsteps was unearthly.
    He looked up, overbalanced and ended up falling awkwardly on his elbows. A small part of her broke, seeing him this way. She’d never seen eyes so haunted. So full of hatred. But the fury he’d clearly nurtured on his walk over here fizzled out when he recognised her.
    He reached for her and she took his hand. She pulled him up until he was sitting again and sat beside him. To support him, or to support herself, she wrapped her arm around his waist.
    Silence. Absolute.
    She wouldn’t speak, she thought, or lead the moment. If he spoke, she would answer. If he didn’t, she was content to just be with him.
    Twenty long minutes passed.
    ‘Someone thought it would be a good idea to toast to the lost.’
    Sam jumped, startled by the sudden sound.
    ‘What a bastard,’ he snarled. ‘There’s poor Dean raising his glass to Bree. Again. Wishing everyone would stop looking at him. Then they toast some other locals who have kicked it. Bob someone-or-other. Judy. And I know it’s coming, you know?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘I couldn’t raise a glass to’em. I couldn’t be there for that. God, the way Dean looked at me as I left. All that progress,’ he threw a hand out, surprising her, ‘gone.’
    ‘I’m sure it’s not.’
    He dropped an arm around her shoulders. She could smell the liquor on his breath and feel the heat of his body pressed against her skin.
    ‘He still loves our old man. He wants to be just like him. But Dean’s nothing like Dad was. He’ll never be like him.’
    A minute passed.
    ‘Thank God for that,’ Ethan finished wearily.
    She cried out when he lurched to his feet. He seized her torch and hurtled it through the window of the garage. The explosion of glass was like a scream.
    Again he overbalanced. This time he didn’t catch himself. He fell to the concrete, landing heavily on his shoulder. He didn’t get up.
    Sam stared at the shards of broken glass. She knew a guy. He’d fix it. Dean would never have to know.
    Trembling, she pushed to her feet and hurried to Ethan’s side.
    ‘I know,’ he said to the stars.
    And then Sam knew. It was like he’d pushed back a curtain in her mind, and suddenly everything made sense. Why he hated his father. Why he wouldn’t talk about his parents. Ethan didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. She could guess the rest.
    Sam began to cry.

Six
    It gave Dean a perverse sense of