Page 63 of Ashley & the A-Listers

“Yeah. Yeah,” he said, sipping the drink to wet his throat. He cleared it once more. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Me either,” Ashley said, and reached forward for one of the photos. “I think I’ve been through this box a hundred times.”

Dylan’s heart lurched. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Ashley… shrugged. “Kenzie and Jordan were there to pick up the pieces with me.”

“I wish I’d gotten your message,” he said. “I would’ve come back.”

“You say that like it would’ve been easy. To come back.”

Her fingers were tapping at the glass in one of her nervous ticks. He could hear his heartbeat. A clock ticked somewhere.

“It would’ve been,” he told her.

It would always be easy to come back to her. The question was whether he deserved to come back.

Ashley turned to look at him, confusion evident in her expression, the knot of her brow. “If it would’ve been so easy to come back, why leave in the first place? Why totally drop off the face of the earth?”

Dylan sat his glass down and rubbed his hands on his shorts. When he’d been eighteen, he’d been so sure running was the right move. It was almost… embarrassing, how sure he’d been. How wrong he’d been. He just needed to tell Ashley—to let her in, to be open, like his therapist suggested.

Let her in.“I… freaked out. I was becoming an alpha and I had all these fuckingfeelingsand I didn’t know how to handle it. All I knew was that I didn’t want to turn out like my dad.”

Ashley grimaced. She knew all about his family, how his alpha dad had dipped once he’d found an omega and left his beta mother behind to struggle on her own. How she’d been so preoccupied with an omega daughter that she hadn’t had time for a son.

Ashley waved a hand in front of herself, the motion gentle, slow. “So youleft… because you didn’t want to turn out like your dad… who left.”

Dylan froze and stared at a spot very far away, past Ashley, past the living room, past the present moment.

“I…” Dylan floundered. He hadn’t seen it like that; he’d seen it as… “I thought I was protecting you, I guess?” he mused.

He’d been over this with his therapist several times, but in this moment, facing the person he’d hurt most, he couldn’t remember a single fucking bit of it.

“I’m not saying I didn’t hurt you,” he corrected. “I’m saying I didn’t leave thinking, ‘this is how I’ll hurt Ashley.’ I left thinking, ‘I have to go before I hurt you.’” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all fucked up. I’m sorry. I’ve been in therapy about it.”

Ashley cocked her head to the side.

“Regardless of your intentions, the damage was done. If it wasn’t for this job, with Cameron, would you have come back?”

Dylan nodded. “I wanted to figure my shit out first.”

“Ten years wasn’t enough?” Ashley asked.

“I was just… freaking out,” he said. “I was presenting as an alpha, and I was so young. I panicked.”

Ashley nodded, the ginger in her scent practically burning. “So you were a kid. Just like I was a kid.”

Dylan slumped back into the cushion. “Yeah.”

Ashley stood up. “Well, even as akid,” she practically growled, “I wouldn’t have justleftwith no warning. No messages, no answers. Because even so young, I had the sense that it would’ve hurt you. Or at least, I thought it would. Maybe I was wrong.”

Dylan leaned forward again. This was all going so badly.

“I deserve that,” he said. “I fucked up. I went about it all wrong. I should’ve just…talkedto you.”

“Exactly!” Ashley whirled on him. “What was so scary that you couldn’t talk tome?” she said, and motioned to the box full of photos of them growing up together.

She was right. And yet, even now, Dylan didn’t have the guts to look her in the eyes and tell her he’d bolted because he realized he… he’d thought alpha equals bad dad. Bad partner. Bad person. He didn’t want to subject Ashley, the girl of his dreams, to that.

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