A Triad With Ash Minor (MxMxM)

'Take my hand,
Wherever we land
You'll have my love.
Ohh...
Hold my heart,
Whenever we part
You'll have my love.
Ohh...
I'll give you all.
Ohh...
I'll give my all.
Ohh...
Why can't you just...
Take my hand?
Ohh... oohh...'

Ash poured his soul through the speakers and tears trailed down sideways, travelled along my ears to wet the pillow under my head.

The songs he wrote when he started his career were gold. While he still sang with his soul, the lyrics weren't soul touching. I loved his old songs.

Once I had asked him.

"You write three lines and repeat it for three minutes and call it a song?"

He had laughed and said, "yes, that's the current trend."

"I'd rather hear your old ones."

He had kissed my cheek. "Because you're old."

I missed him. I expected it. I also expected it to be brutal. I couldn't spend seven years as someone's shadow and not terribly miss them. When that someone was Ash, it would hit from all levels. Ash knew how.

It had taken us three months to sort everything and hand over my duties to Rob. When my settlement papers came, I couldn't believe what I saw.

Ash had bought me a beautiful, tucked in house in a corner of Slovenia. With the amount of badgering he had done, he would have found me a man too, if he had enough time.

When I packed- to no one's surprise, I had nothing much- Ash stood at the door and watched.

When it was time for goodbyes, he locked himself in his room and refused to open the door. It took all I had to not drop my plan then and there. When I kept knocking he shouted.

"Go away. I'll talk to you later."

But I couldn't go away. I didn't want to leave without a proper goodbye. I wanted one last memory of Ash's bodyguard. So I opened his door with the master key.

He had stood in one corner of the room- fingers fisted, eyes red, face contorted -ready to battle or cry. For the first time since the time we had met, I initiated our hug. He came easily and sobbed like a little kid. I cried too. I needed it. It was my thanks for all the things he gave me. Wherever I went, I'd still belong to him. He was my family.

I had awkward handshakes and hugs with my boys. And with Rob, I didn't want to hug. It was too much. But I did it.

I had fucking done all the fucking right fucking things that fucking night.

I had felt light when I boarded the public plane. After seven years of luxury everything felt different, new.

The villa was my dream come true. I could see the lake and hill tops from almost all of the rooms. It was too big for me- four bedrooms and three and half baths. It had a huge, lovely garden and a terrace pool. I hired a maid for cooking and cleaning and a gardener right away.

I realized lots of things about me in the first few weeks of my new life.

Sleep. I had trouble sleeping. Never did I know that. I always assumed it was the work that kept me up. It was Ash's busy schedule that robbed me of good sleep. I thought I would sleep for whole days now that I was free to do so. But fuck. I barely slept an hour a day for the first week.

It took me a week of tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling to figure out the reason. I couldn't sleep without hearing Ash's voice. That little devil had conditioned me for years and years by following a routine. His voice was the last voice I heard before going to sleep. His goodnight kisses were how my brain knew it was time to sleep. I tested this discovery one night by putting on my earbuds with a playlist of Ash queued up on my phone. I slept like the dead.