Page 49 of Impulsive Saint
“Ash, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just…”
“No.” She cut him off again, voice growing louder by the second, “You don’t get to sit there and tell me what kind of state I’m in or how I’m feeling. I didn’t sleep with you because I wasvulnerablelast night, Tyler.” she spit his name at him like it was another curse. “I slept with you becauseIwanted to, becauseImade the choice to act on my attraction to you. I thought you understood that. I thought you understoodmebut you’ve made it perfectly clear that isn’t the case at all.”
“I’m not trying to invalidate your choices.” He frowned. “I’m just saying, the two of us, sleeping together, it wasn’t a good choice and it’s one that we definitely shouldn’t make again.”
“Really? Then why are you acting like I didn’t make a choice at all? Like you’re the only one that had a choice in what we did last night and I was just the delicate, fragile girl that you coerced into it because I’m so vulnerable and innocent.”
“That’s not how I meant it.” He felt his hackles rise as she continued to twist his words into things that he was fairly sure he hadn’t even thought of, let alone meant.
“Oh?” She narrowed her eyes at him and everything inside of him screamed danger. “So you can admit that we were both there last night? That we both decided to have sex? That we are both rational, reasonable adults who made a decision to be intimate and there’s nothing to feel guilty about for acting on our desire?”
“I… well…” He shook his head, “No.”
She growled and for a split second he thought she might throw the lamp at him.
She didn’t understand though. She couldn’t. She didn’t know the whole truth and he couldn’t tell her or else he’d ruin everything. She’d think everything between them had been a lie. She’d know that her supposed freedom on this trip was a façade and she would hate him and her parents for hiring him to all but babysit her while she ran away from her problems. She didn’t know that he regretted what had happened between them only because he was being paid to take care of her and he had crossed a professional boundary.
If he was just a man and she was just a woman then no, he wouldn’t feel guilty. But everything was more complicated than that. It was complicated and messy and he’d made it a thousand times worse by blurring the lines between them last night.
“I’m sorry you feel guilty for sleeping with me, Tyler. Really I am.” She looked back at him, her chin high and her eyes far, far away now. The fire of her temper had extinguished as fast as it had risen. She looked sunken now, almost hollow, and he hated it more than he had ever hated anything. “If it makes you feel any better, you’ve managed to make me feel guilty now too, so… mission accomplished.”
“Ashtyn…” He stood slowly, as if he might cross the room towards her but she held up a hand.
“All I wanted was to be with someone who saw me, really saw me, the real me, and I thought that person was you.” She gave a sad shake of her head, “I was wrong. You’ve proven that, and you won’t have to worry about it happening again because the last thing I need in my life is another man that wants me to be something I’m not, that wants to make me doubt myself and my feelings and my choices. This… whatever it was, whatever it could have been… it’s over.”
Tyler opened his mouth to say something but he had no idea what it was. He closed it without uttering a sound. Instead he could only watch as she pulled the sheet more tightly around her and headed towards the bathroom. With her back to him, without those piercing blue eyes on him, it was easier to find his voice and he cleared his throat before asking the question.
“Does that mean you’re ready to go back to Tennessee now?”
Ashtyn turned in the doorway of the bathroom, her jaw set and her eyes burning like the hottest fires of hell, so he knew the answer before she said even a word.
“No. I’m not going back. I’m going to Vegas and you can either take me or I’ll find someone else who will.” she paused, her eyes steady on him when she gave a dismissive snort, “After all, I still have a bucket list to finish, even if I can now cross one night stand off the list.”
She slammed the door behind her with that final cutting blow and Tyler didn’t know if he wanted to rush across the room and kick it open, follow her in and kiss her with every ounce of desire still coursing through his body or get on his bike and leave her there while he got as far away as humanly possible, as fast as he could. The damn woman knew just how to push his buttons and that last comment had been designed with the express purpose of cutting him down to size.
It succeeded. If he hadn’t already felt like an asshole, he would have in that moment. Because no matter what he said about regretting what they’d done, the truth was, he liked Ashtyn. He liked her a lot. And maybe if they’d met under different circumstances, in a different time or a different place, the attraction between them would have been enough to take a chance and see what could come next.
But in this life, in this moment, it wasn’t, and there was nothing he could do to make that better for either of them.
15
They rode all day in silence. When they stopped to eat, they ate in silence. When they pulled over to take a bathroom break or stretch their legs, they walked in opposite directions and didn’t say a word to each other.
By the time Tyler pulled the motorcycle into the parking lot of a motel on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Ashtyn had gone from angry, to hurt, to sad and all the way back around to angry. That was the thing about spending hours upon hours on the back of a motorcycle. There was nothing to do but listen to the voices arguing in your head and after the debacle this morning had gone down, Ashtyn’s head wasn’t a very fun place to be.
They’d driven until the sun set and then even further, until what little light was left only came from the streetlamps and the city ahead of them. She knew Tyler didn’t want to stop. She knew he had spent the entire day pushing through as fast as he could, trying to get them to Vegas so that he could be rid of her.
He’d promised to get her there and he wasn’t the kind of man to back out of a promise no matter how much he might want to. But he wanted this trip to end and the proof was in the sheer number of hours they’d spent on the motorcycle today.
There had been no stops for fun excursions. No stops to explore the towns or cities they passed through. No stops at all unless one of them needed to fulfill a bodily function. She was almost sure Tyler would have preferred to drive through the night to get them to Vegas but at their last stop she’d made a decision to take back control of this trip.
When he’d been outside the gas station filling the bike up, she’d gone inside under the pretense of using the bathroom. Instead, she’d bought a small pay-as-you-go cell phone. The clerk had been an older woman and she’d happily let Ashtyn open the phone, set it up and then pay for the purchase through an app she downloaded. Ashtyn knew that she must have seemed desperate and her constant glances out the window at the man by the motorcycle had likely given the woman the impression she was in some sort of trouble, but she hadn’t cared then and she didn’t care now.
She’d used her new phone to look at the map while she peed and after she’d gone back outside, she’d had the only conversation with Tyler of the day. He’d asked if she was ready to go and she’d told him they should stop for the night in Flagstaff. He’d been suspicious of her suggestion, but eventually nodded and then she’d simply bided her time until she saw the motel that she’d found on her phone come into view.
She’d tapped his shoulder and motioned for him to pull in and miracle of miracles, he had done what she asked. The motel was a tiny bit better than the last few they’d stayed in but not so much so that he would be instantly suspicious of why she’d chosen it. He’d gone into the office, paid for the room and Ashtyn had hidden a smile as she followed him inside, dropped her bags onto the bed and then turned to leave the room again without so much as a word to the man she’d spent every waking moment with for days.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tyler glanced up from where he was already sorting through his own bag, looking for his shower essentials.
