Top of Your Ambitions

Acacia sighed helplessly as she trailed on behind the angry Alex. The singer stormed from the kitchen to the living room, pointing an accusing finger at his best friend as he approached the latter on the couch. She took the time to notice that Zack had arrived to the loft sometime during her conversation with Alex.

Before she could plead with Alex to stop, he grabbed Jack by the collar of his shirt and pulled him up from his seat on the sofa. It seems like her plan completely backfired.

“Jack Barakat, your ass is mine.” Alex growled, not particularly fondly.

The hyperactive guitarist beamed at him.

“My ass has always been yours, you sexy hunk.” He winked, not picking up the serious tone in his friend’s voice.

Rian shot Ace a look and she returned with a pained expression on her face. The drummer scowled at the commotion going on in front of him after realizing how serious this scenario is going to be.

“How can you do this to me? We are best friends, Jack!”

The playful grin vanished from his face right away, replaced by a worried look on his face. Confused, Jack studied Ace for answers. She averted her gaze from him when she noticed his yearning.

“What did I do wrong this time?” Jack asked dumbly.

Sighing loudly, Alex released his grip on the guitarist’s shirt and watched as he dropped back onto the couch.

“You managed to leave out the fact that you had a fuckingthreesome with my ex-girlfriend and freaking Ace over here!” Alex snapped at him.

Jack shifted in his seat uncomfortably and returned his gaze on the blonde behind Alex. His dark eyebrows perked up expectantly as he waited for Ace to look back up at him. She never did, probably more embarrassed about this situation than he is.

“Jack, you did what?” Zack shot up from his seat.

The blonde finally looked up from her bare foot when she heard her ex-boyfriend express his concern over this matter. She discretely snuck him a look and saw that he is staring at Jack with his lips pursed. When she looked away from him, she is met with Rian’s confused gaze. His dark brown eyes blinked at her several times, expression nearly unreadable.

Alex is still fuming in his position in front of Jack, foot tapping impatiently for some type of response.

“Okay, in my defense, this shit happened before anyone of you two had dibs on Beckett and Ace! So technically, you guys stole them from me.” Jack reasoned hopefully.

He wanted to talk his way out of this, which is obvious.

“Are you freaking kidding me? It would’ve been nice if you told me that you SLEPT WITH MY GIRLFRIEND BEFORE I DATED HER!” The singer hollered at his friend.

Ace is glad that Breck is not in the house at this moment, only because she wants her sister away from this drama. Her sister can never know this event, because it would set a very bad example for her. She is already concerned for Breck’s love life, considering the fact that she has been returning home late every night ever since that New Years Eve party. Ace shouldn’t give Breck a reason to believe that her behavior is acceptable.

“Look, Ace told me that they made a pact to never speak of this again. According to our agreement, this never happened.” Jack held his hands up defensively.

“I am so mad right now!” Alex groaned.

“Honestly, I am too!” Zack spoke up again.

Ace and Jack both turned to the bass player with a perked eyebrow. Expressions of mild surprise are apparent on their faces.

“Okay, I love you guys and all, but one, neither of you are actually in a relationship with the participants of this threesome and two, don’t be mad at me because I got more game than you guys will ever have!”

Rian stifled a laugh when Jack added the last part quite arrogantly. He can tell that he is trying to lighten this heavy situation; he is finding a way to turn Alex’s moods around and come out of this conversation clean and with his best friends intact.

“Well, you have to give him that.” Rian chuckled instead.

“Okay, I admit, Jack has a lot more game than we all initially thought. He’s the only one in here who had the privilege of banging two extremely hot chicks. At the same time.” Alex sighed in defeat, nodding at Jack in acknowledgement.

Jack returned the nod, in lighter spirits now that his best friend is no longer angry with him. Ace, however, is offended.

“Did you just call me hot?” She asked, irritated.

“You bet your ass he did!” Jack exclaimed.

Rolling her eyes, Ace turned from the guys on the couch and headed for the spiral staircase ahead of her.

“I am going to get a long and well needed rest!”

And she ascended up the stairs without eating dinner.



Zack jumped up from his spot on the kitchen counter stool when he heard the creaking of the front door. He turned his head quickly to the direction, quietly slipping off the stool. Slowly and cautiously, he tip-toed his way to the living room and sighed in relief when he saw that it is only Breck.

She looked up at him, eyes widening like a deer caught in the headlights. He can tell that she is out longer than Ace wanted her to. Breck is trying to sneak her way into this loft and would have if he hadn’t been up for a midnight snack.

“Hey.” Zack shot her a small smile.

Breck chuckled nervously.

“When did Ace go to bed?” She asked.

“About 7:30.”

“What? That’s so damn early…”

Zack already knows where the teenager is going with this.

“So what time did you get back here if she asks tomorrow?” He asked with a tint of amusement in his voice.

Sneaking around like this is something familiar. This action is nothing different than what Breck’s older sister used to do when she was in high school with him.

But he is not about to tell the young Kovacs that.

“Like 9:30? That sounds more believable.”

“Sure, just be very quiet when you get up those stairs. Your sister’s a light sleeper.”

Nodding, Breck shot him a thankful look and turned toward the direction of the stairs. Zack made his way to the kitchen but not before a squeak came from the living room. He, confused and curious, stuck his head out from the kitchen area and internally groaned for Breck when he spotted a disheveled and angry Ace standing in front of her younger sister with both arms across her chest.

“It’s 1:30, Zack cannot get you out of this one. Where the hell have you been?” Acacia asked as she stifled a yawn.

Breck shifted uncomfortably in her stance, dropping her purse in exhaustion.

“I was out.”

“Breck? You have been out all day and all night ever since New Years! I know you weren’t at school because it has been closed during the snowstorm.”

Zack appeared from the kitchen.

“Ace, let it go.” He said quietly.

The blonde pursed her lips at him, staring him down with narrowed eyes until he looked away from her.

“I know what this is! You’ve been with that Lockheart girl, what’s her name, Talia?” Ace removed her hand from her chest to run it through her messy blonde locks.

Breck shifted slightly in her position, brown eyes searching Zack for backup. He shot her an apologetic look to tell her that he is in no position to get her out of this one. Ace is doing an adequate job at this whole parenting process and he is not going to do anything to disrupt that.

“Her name is Tallulah.” Breck’s voice cracked when she turned back to her sister.

Sighing loudly, Ace shook her head and gestured for the teenage girl to walk up the stairs behind her. Nodding wordlessly, Breck picked up her purse from the floor and quickly made a beeline for the staircase. She nearly ran up the stairs, taking it two steps at a time until she made it to the top.

The blonde groaned in frustration as she brushed past Zack to get into the kitchen. She sat down on the stool and placed her head against the kitchen counter.

In her exhaustion, she can hear footsteps approaching the kitchen area, which signifies that Zack had followed her into the kitchen. Without looking she can feel and hear Zack take a seat on the stool beside her. She is tempted to look up at him but she decided not to.

She is too tired to face everything. At the precinct, the captain is going to make her do paperwork at the lack of homicides in the recent events. While doing her job, she has two other off-the-books cases to solve. The situation with Alex and Jack has been one of the most awkward in her life. And to add to the whole equation, Breck has been seeing the daughter of a dead CEO.

“How come you’ve never told me about Jack?” Zack’s small voice disrupted her thoughts.

Acacia looked up at the man beside her with exhausted eyes. The last thing she needs is her ex-boyfriend pestering her about this embarrassing aspect of her life.

“Where is Ms. Wallace tonight?” She tried at diverting the topic.

“I asked you a question, Acacia.”

Ace rested her elbow on the counter and placed her face directly in front of her open palm.

“Why do you care so much?”

“Ace, we had history and we were great friends in high school. It should have been worth a mention.”

“You don’t even care about me anymore, Zack, why does this even matter now?” Ace groaned into her hands.

She is tired of everyone grilling her about this.

“I should have been told!”

“You act like my track record was clean in high school. You think Jack is the only guy I’ve slept with in high school? Zack, you know I’ve had several relationships in high school! You were unfazed by them and this is just another instance.”

“No it is not, Jack is my band mate, my best friend! It should be important for me to know that you slept with him, I need to know these things.”

Ace removed her hands from her face and turned to him with a hardened expression on her face.

“I am so damn tired of everything; you can either be the person to make my life easier and drop this subject. Or you can be the one to make my life even harder than it already is and drill me about something that happened during the dark ages.” Ace said with attitude.

Zack blinked at her, giving her a slight headshake. There is some type of emotion in his eyes that she can identify. He has a lot of things to tell her, but he is torn on whether to tell her or not. This emotion is a conservative version of how he used to look at her. It breaks her heart so much to see that he is trying his best to suppress his affections for her.

What they have, it is very real and powerful. He is pushing it aside and fighting it as if giving into it would be like catching a plague. She tried to cover the hurt by turning from him abruptly.

“I care about you, Ace. Of course I care about you!” Zack said, a bit louder than his normal volume.

Ace did not turn to look at him.

“I’m angry and jealous that freaking Jack was the first person you ever loved!” He exclaimed, exasperated.

Slamming her hand against the table, she shot up from her seat on the stool and turned to glare at him.

“I never loved Jack, ever! The first person I ever loved was you! Age fifteen, the day we first met. But you didn’t feel the same way, so you do NOT have the right to be jealous!”

Zack slipped out off his stool as well, edging closer to the blonde in his frustration.

“I did feel the same way! How the hell would I know that you would ever be into me? You hide your emotions all the time and that is the problem!”

“So this is all of a sudden my problem?” Ace dropped both hands to her side dramatically.

“Yeah, you dated that tool, Jason, or whatever his name was during the spring of sophomore year!”

“Only because you weren’t interested in me!”

“How did you know I wasn’t?”

“You treated me like one of the guys, and I WASN’T EVEN THAT KIND OF GIRL!”

Zack instinctively placed a finger in front of her mouth to shut her up. She is about to wake the whole house up if she continued her shouting.

“Stop and shut up, okay?” Zack’s volume lowered all of a sudden.

The blonde looked up at him and watched as he removed his finger from her lips. His finger lingered on her skin for a brief moment, forcing her to stifle a shiver. It has been a while since she felt this nervous. Being in his presence is something that unnerved her; his unpredictability in their recent meetings excited and frightened her at the same time. She can identify all kinds of emotions from the look in his eyes but she can never predict what he plans to do with them.

“Zack?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we just never bring up this Jack thing again?”

He nodded in agreement and turned from her.

“And by the way, Wallace is at Dale’s place. She didn’t want to come back to the loft tonight.”

Ace is not surprised to hear that. After her confrontation with the model today, she is bound to stay as far away from the detective as possible.

She did not say anything else as Zack made his way out the kitchen and into the living room. Her brown eyes blinked slowly and watched his figure disappear through his bedroom door.

Notes

See now you understand why Liezel was a bitch to Dale in the last story! (I mean if you read it!). I've literally had this planned since before I wrote the first story!

And that portion between Ace and Zack has been one of my favorite scenes to write!

And emilypfletcher, you rock!