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Anya's POV

The silence swallowed me. I was starting to get used to it.. Starting to get lost in my thoughts. I drifted away, before his voice snapped me back to reality. "You never told me how you knew David.." It took me a few seconds for my brain to register his words, but once it did, I felt my heart skip a beat. The sudden bad butterflies in my stomach made me look at him.

"I did tell you. That's something private." I tried being as convincing at possible, but that didn't shut him up.

I heard a slight chuckle coming from his direction. "Anya, I think we crossed that 'private-line' a long time ago." I looked at him as my brain slowly registered his words. I hated it but the guy was right. What he said was true...

  I puffed. "True," I mumbled mostly to myself, leaning back on the seat. "David was my fiancé."

  The second those words left my lips, I noticed him instantly looking at me. "Your fiancé? You mean you were engaged to him?" I heard slight frustration in his voice, and there were stuff that he was yet to find out about me, so the shock didn't exactly surprise me.

  "Yea, keep your eyes on the road, Bonner please," I said without bothering to look at him. "It's not that either of us wanted it,- Well I didn't for sure.." I corrected myself, looking outside the window. "It's just how it was supposed to be, and I had no word in it."

  I glanced at him and noticed that he was slightly frowning before he looked at me. "What do you mean you had no word in it?"

  I exhaled sharply. "You're the one that asked, Bonner. So there, I told you. It was an arranged marriage. My uncle planned it, and since it was a tradition, we had to go along.." As I spoke, my voice slowly trailed off.. I didn't like talking about it, but he made me..

  Silence fell over for a few seconds.. "You didn't actually get married, right?" I heard his voice from the side and rolled my eyes. Why did this matter to him so much?

  "I don't know. What do you think?" I looked at him, but he was simply focused on the road and didn't even notice.

  "I don't know, Anya. You're like a closed damn book. It's impossible to fucking read you." The way he rose his voice seemed like it wasn't really up to him. But how was he the one saying that? The man was a stone. Nothing was showed on his face.

  I didn't exactly know what to say to that, and I was tired of tensing up the situation and fighting with him, so I leaned back. I don't know what he was doing to me, but when he once asked it made me feel like K needed to answer. Not because I was scared, but something kept pulling me back to that subject, and I wanted to spill it out. Our families were the only ones knowing that, but now there was Bonner, and I was in a car with him, and I had this unbelievable urge to actually tell him.

  I couldn't eve understand why. i just continued. "David is a jerk. He always was.." I said that through a deep breath, and kept staring outside the window. The memories slightly starting to flood me. I didn't see but as soon as those words left me, I knew that he looked at me. Everyone was curious on how the oldest Nelson daughter turned out.. It was unbelievably annoying, but at the same time, it felt like a relief getting it out of me. It was rotting my soul, like some kind of poison. I needed someone to talk to, and Ash accidentally opened that gate.

  "Well, those are the traditions of Richwood. I just don't understand how you avoided that.." He mumbled making me look at him.

  "It got to the point where I was supposed to go and try the wedding dress.." I heard myself say quietly, like I was talking to myself.. Reminding myself of what happened years ago.. "Then I ran away." I exhaled and my voice cane out louder than I expected. "It wasn't hard, we weren't even in the same room."

  "What do you mean?"

  I puffed slightly. "Well, I had a key and in the middle of the night I took Jenny with me an-"

  "No, I mean, how were you two in separate rooms?" I stopped the second I heard his words. From everything I said, he focused on that? I understood why though, according to the tradition, the bride and the groom were supposed to share a room before marriage, and we were supposed to have sex, 'cause you know, I was meant to be his for the rest of our lives.. Not. Women in the family, almost in all Richwood too, didn't exactly have a word. It was town of traditions and my uncle chose to continue it. That was the way people got rich in the past, with giving their daughters away, and the tradition continued on.. Till I ran away.

  I looked at him for a few seconds. It was hard to understand David, and even harder to explain him. I cleared my throat. "We didn't sleep in the same room because he didn't want temptation."

  "What kind of temptation?"

  I was starting to get annoyed. "What do you think? "

  I noticed him frown in confusion. "But, you were engaged," He said it like we had normal surroundings and normal families. I didn't. "I thought David had a different girl every night,"

  Before he could continue, I interrupted. "He did. David loved the sex. With different women. His bride to be was supposed to stay untouched."

  He looked at me. "Till marriage.." It sounded more like a question than it did like a statement. 

  "Till forever."

  "That's insane."

  "Yea, well David is insane." I heard myself laugh, and I'm pretty sure it was because I started losing my nerves. "It's funny how everyone respected him more because of that,"

It annoyed me having to tell this story.. Bonner was the first one that actually knew this away from the families, but it was still confusing for me, not to start on how confusing it must sound for him. It was Richwood still. Traditions were the foundation of the town. Everyone knew that. It's just funny how my family managed to bring that with them in England. My uncle didn't give up.. He seemed more like my father's brother than he did like my mom's. They were like complete opposites. If my mom was alive, none of that bullshit with David would've happened..

I glanced at Bonner, knowing that he was looking at me. There was still slight confusion in his eyes, and it seemed like he was deep in his thoughts from the way his eyes stared back at mine.

I knew that I was on the edge of being rude and asking him why he had to bring that up in the middle of the night, but I shut myself up. He was giving me a ride and didn't even call the police when I broke into his house..

Glancing back towards the road, I felt my stomach turn slightly. The same second he looked before him as well.. It seemed like both of our bodies jumped at the same time from the picture in front of us. "Stop!" I heard myself say quickly, but he was way ahead of me and already stopped the car. We had out belts on but the sudden change of speed and stopping made both of us uncontrollably lean forward.

A few stands of my hair fell over my face as I stared in front of me. On the road, just about five meters away from the car was a high road blockade. The lights illuminated layers of ash, hard enough; high enough to turn a car over. I was breathing heavily when I realized what was going on. "Are you okay?" I heard Bonner's voice, but at that point, I couldn't believe my own eyes. It was like a damn deja vu. Something that had already happened before.

My heart was thumping loudly against my chest when I got out of the car without answering anything, and quickly checked the side of the road. A big sign with the words 'Tramba'. The name of my father's company... The same place it was before. The same damn place when this happened 12 years ago. They knew..

The sounds around me seemed muted from the rapid heartbeat trying to escape my chest, and my pulse all the way up in my neck. My ears started buzzing and I simply stared at what was before me. "Anya," I heard Bonner's voice but I couldn't concentrate on anything at that point.

How did the exact thing happen? The night when my family was leaving town, my father running from the law, the same damn thing happened. Wood burned in the middle of the road, right next to that sign on the side of the road. That meant that they knew. Someone knew who I was and they wanted me out. Dead possibly.

I heard a dry laugh escape my throat and Bonner came closer. I was losing my nerves. "This town has welcomed me with nothing but bad luck.. And hate. A lot of hate." I stared at the blockade.. It was still fresh. They just did this. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "I would prefer to be welcomed with a chocolate cake first, but whatever.."

When I glanced at Ash, he was scanning the burned wood as well. "This is no joke." I heard him say, but there was really no need for that. I knew it was no joke. The last time this happened, we were even closer to losing out heads because of it.

"Jokes are all I have left, Bonner. I feel nauseous just by thinking about it." My voice slightly cracked as I spoke, somewhat still releasing hard breaths when I leaned back on the car.

I realized that after looking at me for a beat or two, he left behind the car and came back with a shovel, starting to throw the wooden ash on the side of the road. It would've been a lot easier if I just went home alone.

From the corner of my eye I noticed him stop and then look at me intently. Like he was trying to have me figured out. "How do you do it, Anya?" He finally asked. "How do you keep moving on?" There was something in his voice that gave out emotions. I never thought I would hear it something like that from Bonner.

I really had no answer for that. I was trying to survive alone, and took care of Jenny alone since I can remember.. People just learn. "There's nothing I can do really.." I looked at him, and there wasn't much curiosity in his eyes as much as there was confusion on whatever it was. "Things just happen. So I stopped thinking and started relying on no one else but myself."

I heard him mumble slightly. "Maybe you just should have more faith," I didn't exactly understand his words, it seemed like he said that more to himself than he did to me. But there was nothing right about what he said.

I felt something rise inside me. Anger taking the best of me.. "Faith? In what, Bonner? Destiny? When bad luck follows you everywhere, trust me, you lose faith." I told him, my tone getting louder as I spoke, but he simply stared in front of him for a few more seconds.

Then he asked without even bothering to look at me. "You really believe that?"

I felt something explode inside me. Like someone threw a bomb of memories and they suddenly flooded all my senses. I didn't deserve what was happening. Any of it. I felt my voice crack, not because I wanted to cry, but because the anger towards my father made me lose it. "My father is the one that did something wrong. Not me. I don't even remember this town clearly, Bonner, and I'm the one getting punished for something that happened twelve damn years ago."

I took a second to catch my breath and realized that he was actually listening to what I was saying, but I was too focused on something else at that point. His words woke something inside me. "Every little thing I tried accomplishing with hope backfired with something like this!" I started saying things that I was't even completely aware of and that weren't connected to what he asked. I couldn't focus on anything but memories at that point and the anger just boiled up even more. Anger towards my father. "So, yes, I lost faith! I stopped fucking caring because for every good thing I did in my life, I got nothing. Nothing!"

He was simply leaning on his shovel and looked at me like he didn't understand a word I was saying. "Well, Santa Klaus only visits us on Christmas."

At that moment, I realized that he was trying to somewhat provoke me about something he didn't even know enough about. Was he playing with me? Did he think it was easy for me to talk about all of that. I realized I pushed myself off the car as I walked towards him, barking back almost immediately after he said that. "No, don't lecture me. Don't you dare try to teach me about life!"

I felt my nails nearly cut my skin front how hard I was trying to clench my fists. The anger I held towards my father in that moment completely turned towards him. Who did he think he is? He didn't need to work for anything in his life, and he was trying to lecture me?

His face was above from mine, and in that moment I hated that he was taller than me. I felt like he was winning. His eyes looked down at me, dark gray illuminated by a little light and staring deeply in mine. He had his eyebrows furrowed, and there was something he was thinking about. I knew it. I just hoped he was damn smart not to test me more at that point.

I don't even remember seeing him move towards me, I just knew that I felt his hands against my waist and his lips against mine. He kissed me.

Ash's POV

She was standing in front of the car, right there in front of me, illuminated by those headlights with tight fists on each side of her body. Her voice was still echoing in my head, her anger in my ears, and in that moment I thought that I had never seen someone look so fearless before. For a spitfire she seemed awfully gentle in that moment, with slight curves on her hips that filled her floral dress perfectly, and wide blue eyes that held fierce, fire, and seemed to be reading my soul.

Her lips were as red as wild strawberries, and I was only waiting for her to continue spilling words that awfully woke something unfamiliar inside me. Her hair was goldish brown, but the lights made the wavy locks look lighter.

I was supposed to laugh at how angry she got at my words. I never meant to make her so mad at me. But she seemed to be holding her posture with such dignity that something so simple but powerful started to somewhat attract me. Maybe it was the ache that lived in my bones for so long now, the memories this town brought.. But I could no longer fight against what I was feeling in that moment. I wanted her like nothing I had ever wanted before. I didn't even understand it myself..

Her words, the emotions her voice hid while she spoke before woke something inside me. Something that flooded my senses so suddenly, I wasn't even aware. I felt her anger, and I felt it taking over me. So many things she said I understood, even though she couldn't possibly know that.

I don't even remember moving, but in the next second when I snapped out of whatever was controlling over my senses, I had her against myself, feeling her body underneath my hands. She acted so broken before, but I knew she could never be as broken as I was. I thought about the girl I met in the club. It wasn't the same she was tonight. But that lust inside me was as strong as it was that night. The simple feel of her lips against mine, the heat of her body against mine, it made it impossible for me to control it.

I wanted to protect her and have her and comfort her and tell her how fucking stupid she was that she gave herself in in that moment, all at the same time. She let me have it all. But the chaos of my emotions was gathering around my pain while hearing her words before, deepening it. It made me want something that I could never have. Her.

***

Hope y'all ship them 'cause it's happening xD So excited for sharing this chap with u guys! I hope some of the questions about Anya's past were answered in this one.

Don't forget to VOTE and COMMENT your thoughts about what you guys just witnessed xD

Kisses, :*