I should have.
I just didn’t.
He broke away. We stared at each other for a long, intense minute. He was still gripping my face in his hands. He was breathing hard.
I wasn’t. I could barely breathe at all.
“Ash…” I pretty much whispered. “I’ve gotta tell you something…”
And for sure, he knew.
I knew he could feel it when he looked at me with that fucking wounded look in his eyes, when his hands dropped from my face like I’d burned him.
He knew he wasn’t gonna like what I had to say.
But I had to say it anyway. I had to. I knew it with every fucking part of me.
It was beyond time.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ash
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said, like that was the most important thing. Like he had to lead with that, no matter whatever shit came after.
That he was fucking sorry about whatever he had to say to me—right on the heels of me admitting I fucking loved him.
That I was in love with him.
“Don’t tell me you’re fucking sorry,” I said. “Just tell me the truth.”
“Okay.” He swallowed. He looked fucking scared. I’d never seen Dylan look so fucking scared, and it was pissing me the fuck off. “I just… I can’t…”
“Can’t what?”
“Be with you.” He swallowed again. “Like that.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t kiss you back, Ash.” His voice was pained and too fucking quiet.
“Like fuck you can’t.” I stared him down. “It’s not hard. I know you know how to suck face, Cope.” I wanted to challenge him. I wasn’t making this shit easy for him. If all he was was scared to love me, I was not fucking letting him off the hook.
“Not with you,” he said quietly.
And it tore my fucking guts out.
“Yeah? What about what happened with Kitty?” I accused.
“What happened?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. Looking all fucking kinds of guilty.
But I wasn’t gonna mince words anymore. I wasn’t beating around the motherfucking bush anymore.
My life and my feelings for him were not some fucking joke.
“You came in my fucking face,” I said, throwing it at him the way I’d always wanted to.
“By accident,” he said.
“Fuck you it was an accident.” I was all up in his face, and I’d never wanted to hit the guy so fucking badly. I wanted to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
But he was totally calm when he said, “I got carried away.”
“Carried away?” I spat right back in his face. “Carried away? An impulse buy at the fucking checkout aisle is getting carried away. Drinking ’til you throw up is getting carried away. You came in my face.”
“You were both there,” he said, still calm. “She was sucking my cock and the two of you were making out and she had her hands on me and I lost control. So fucking sue me.”
I took a deep breath and ground my fucking teeth.
I did not wanna unleash on him all the hateful fucking angry shit I wanted to say right now.
“Let me guess,” I said instead. “Next you’re gonna drop the world’s worst fucking cliche in my face and tell me you were curious. Like some sorority girl on spring break feeling up another chick’s tits.”
He said nothing, but his jaw worked a bit.
Good.
I wanted to piss him off. I wanted him to say something mean and give me an excuse to punch his motherfucking lights out. Drag him to the floor and fucking pound him with everything I had.
“I thought we were just messing around,” he said, still calm. “We were drinking a lot. We were fucking women together. I didn’t know you felt…”
“Fuck you, you didn’t know,” I snarled.
“Ash…” he said, his voice and his eyes going soft, and totally fucking sad. “I love you, but…”
And I drew back. My head snapped back, like he’d motherfucking sucker-punched me.
Those words, coming out of his mouth, were pretty much my worst fucking fear come to life. Me, Dylan, and the I love you, but… conversation.
I didn’t want him to go on. I didn’t need him to.
I could fill in the blank myself. I could imagine a whole shitload of ways that sentence could finish, and none of them were anything I wanted to hear.
I love you, but I don’t love men that way.
I love you, but I don’t love you that way.
And the worst, the most important of all, the most fucking true of all…
I love you, but I’ll always love Amber more.
“I’m gonna ask Amber to come on tour,” he said.
I nodded, stiffly, even as my chest cracked.
“I want her to move in with me.”
It actually felt like someone had hit my breast plate with the claw end of a hammer, and split me right the fuck open. Everything inside me was gushing out, making me vulnerable and raw and fucking fragile.
Helpless.
Because there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I cleared my throat and finished my beer, but my hand was fucking shaking. “You’re choosing her,” I choked out. “But that’s perfect, right? ’Cause she’s choosing you, too.”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “You’re coming on the tour, too.”
“Yeah? How’s that gonna work? You two are the hot new couple and I’m the boy toy on the side?”
“You know that’s not how—”
“The Pushers aren’t coming on the tour.”
Dylan kinda froze, staring at me. “I just talked to Brody like two days ago. He didn’t mention anything.”
“Brody doesn’t know. The new album isn’t gonna be ready in time. There’s just no way.”
“What do you mean, not ready?”
“I mean, why do you think I’m always hanging here instead of working?” I tossed my beer bottle into the trash, thinking how that would irritate the shit out of Amber. “The Pushers are on fucking hiatus.”
“What?”
“Truth is, we haven’t even started on the new album. We’re supposed to be writing. We aren’t writing shit.”
“You’re writing all the time, man. I hear the stuff you’re working on.”
“Yeah. Me. While Pepper’s off in L.A. dealing with his marriage falling the fuck apart.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And Janner blew his royalties on another fucking binge in sin city. He’s a bona-fide addict now. And Coop’s off fuck-knows-where. He can’t even stand to hang with Janner anymore.”
“Well… what the fuck are you gonna do? You can’t just let the album and the tour slip away.”
“Yeah, and I can’t hold the band the fuck together by my goddamn self, either. They don’t wanna be here, I’m not forcing anyone.”
Dylan stared at me, absorbing those words. “I want to be here,” he said, his green eyes holding mine, unflinching.
“It’s your fucking house,” I said, helping myself to another beer; those were mine, at least.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yeah.” I sucked some beer back. “Well. I wish you well, man. You got a great band and a great woman.”
He sighed a little, hissing through his teeth. “Ashley—”
“I mean it.” I looked away. It was getting harder by the second to look at him anymore. Especially when he called me fucking Ashley.
I was gonna have to walk away soon, but in a way that made it look like I was totally fucking fine, so he didn’t come after me.
How the fuck was I gonna pull that off?
All I really had to do was come to fucking terms with the fact that Dylan wasn’t—and would never be—falling in love with me.
Super fucking easy, right?
Simple.
But I hadn’t come to terms with it. I’d lied to Amber; I’d never accepted that Dylan wasn’t in lov
e with me.
Maybe I never, ever would.
“You’re really taking her on tour?” I asked, trying not to sound bitter about it. Apathetic; I sounded fucking apathetic. But it fucking grated me.
Dylan had never taken a woman on tour with him before.
“Yeah,” he said. “At least, I’m gonna ask her to come.”
I tipped my beer at him. “I hope she says yes.” I took another swig, and tried like hell not to look so goddamn devastated. Destroyed.
But fuck…
Did I just lose Amber and Dylan, in like a two-day span?
“Seriously,” I said. “She’s the perfect girl. I thought she was the perfect girl for me. For us. I was wrong.” I shrugged, downing the rest of my beer. “I’ve been wrong before.” I slammed the bottle down on the counter. “She’s the perfect girl for you.”
Dylan didn’t even say anything. What could he say?
For once, I was right.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Amber
WOW.
I’d just witnessed pure love in action.
That was the only way to describe it.
All I could feel was awe and gratitude with every part of me. I’d actually had to remove myself from Jessa’s delivery room, twice, to burst into tears in the bathroom, before scraping my shit together and going back in.
Some professional.
I definitely didn’t see a future for myself in birth photography. If this experience was any indicator, it would wreck me.
These two people, people I barely knew—well, barely knew until last night—had welcomed me into this intimacy in their lives, and shared their love with me. Now, I felt like I knew both Jessa and Brody in an incredibly intimate, personal way.
The whole experience was beautiful, moving, and totally life-altering.
When I wandered out of the recovery room for the last time, in a total daze, I did not feel like the same woman who’d walked into the hospital the night before.
And it was all because of my camera. My camera had gotten me here.
And it really hit me… That this was what my photography was ultimately all about: bringing people together.
I was still trying to wrap my head around the profound majesty of it all. But I’d always been drawn to photography, and maybe now I knew why.
When I’d taken that class about the history of photography in university, I’d definitely fallen in love. It had introduced me to the fascinating fact that there was a time, not so long ago, when human beings had such a limited view of the world. We hadn’t been into space yet. We’d never seen the Earth from the air. We’d never seen the world from the top of a mountain, and most of us had never even seen it from the top of a tall building.
The earliest explorers got to see the world in a whole new way; a way that most people would never even dream of. But it was photography that gradually brought those views to the masses. Because of photographs, an ordinary person could see places and things and people that they would otherwise never get to see in their lives.
Photography totally opened up our view of the world, and I believed that it still had the power to do that. To make us see each other in ways we never would’ve had a chance to before.
The power of photography had invited me into the delivery room, where Jessa and Brody’s baby boy had entered the world. I’d been one of the very first people to see him as he squirmed and cried and gazed up into his daddy’s eyes for the first time, as he latched onto his mother’s breast, as Brody cried and Jessa laughed in delirious ecstasy.
My camera had captured it all, so they could share those moments with their loved ones. So that years from now, they could see themselves in those tender moments, the way I’d seen them.
My work was never about keeping myself at a distance. It wasn’t about keeping some imaginary safe barrier between myself and my subjects. It was about making contact. Breaking barriers down.
It was about connection.
So why was I so fucking afraid of that in my own life?
Why was I so afraid to let Dylan pull me out from behind the lens, where he could really see me?
As I pushed outside, through the door from the hospital, I actually felt kind of reborn myself. It was the surreal, floaty feeling from the lack of sleep, from being inside the hospital too long, so focused through my camera, and the adrenaline, the early-morning sun shining in my eyes; I knew that. But it was something else, too.
It took me a long minute, as I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light, to see the man standing there, looking at me, his auburn hair flaming in the morning sun.
“Hi,” I said, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
“Hi.”
I drifted toward him. “Um… I don’t think they’re allowed visitors right now. I just got kicked out so they could sleep. You might have to come back later in the day.”
“I’ll come back,” Dylan said, taking a step toward me. “But I’m not here to see them right now. I’m here for you.”
I blinked up at him. I was seriously sleep-deprived. “Me?”
“I didn’t want you to have to go home alone.”
“Oh. Well… thank you. I could use the ride. In all the excitement, I left some things back at Jessa’s house, and—”
“Amber. I’m not talking about Jessa’s place. I’m talking about home.” He reached out and pulled me closer. “We’ll go get your stuff. Then you’re coming home with me.”
He kissed me, and I sank into his arms. I was so fucking tired. And so glad to be held—by him.
“Okay,” I whispered, giving in… unable to fight this anymore.
Maybe I was tired of fighting the love I felt for him.
Maybe, in a way, I’d just finally learned what love was.
As we walked into the silence of Dylan’s house, I asked, “Ashley’s sleeping?”
“He’s gone,” Dylan said.
“Next door?”
“To the city.”
I turned to him. I was processing too slowly, probably, but again, lack of sleep. “He didn’t come back with us…?”
“No.” Dylan stood in front of me, his green eyes on mine. “We had a talk.”
“Oh.” I got the feeling I knew what that talk was about, more or less, from the look on his face. “So… he told you…?”
“That you told him to tell me he’s in love with me? Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And… how did that go?”
“Not so good.”
Shit.
I followed him into the living room, where he dropped onto the couch, looking exhausted himself. I wondered if he’d slept at all.
I sank down next to him and put my hand on his thigh. I was kind of afraid to touch him any more than that. Was he mad at me? I didn’t know. I’d rarely seen Dylan mad. Well, other than the time he straight-up punched my ex-husband in the face, I’d never seen him mad.
I wasn’t even sure what an angry Dylan Cope looked like.
“I can understand…” I said, treading carefully. “I mean, why he was afraid to tell you for so long. Sometimes… it feels easier to just avoid things than face them head-on. You know that.”
Dylan had told me he tended to avoid drama. But I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about myself now as much as I was talking about Ashley. There was so much in Ashley that I recognized in myself.
His fears.
That self-protective chip on his shoulder.
“You know something about that, too,” Dylan said, and it wasn’t exactly a question. Of course, he’d told me over the phone that he loved me. And I’d said exactly nothing in response. He was probably wondering what the fuck, right about now.
“I might know something about that.”
“Yeah? You want to tell me about it?” He raised an eyebrow at me expectantly, like he was too emotionally tapped out to ask me twice.
Which meant I should really give him an answer.
&nb
sp; And as he patiently waited for me to speak, it occurred to me that I’d only told Ashley. Ashley was the one I’d talked to about my parents. About the things that scared me and scarred me most. It had just seemed easier to talk to him about it.
At the time, I thought it was a sign that our relationship was deepening. I was growing to trust him. And maybe that was partly true.
But it was also because talking to Ashley was like talking to some guy I’d meet on my travels. Someone I could share an intimacy with, without truly becoming intimate, because as soon as I moved on it wouldn’t matter.
Because it didn’t matter to me, truly and deeply, what he thought of anything I might tell him.
That was the painful truth of it.
But I cared, truly and deeply, what Dylan thought.
“I do want to tell you,” I said. “It just kind of stuns me how hard it is.”
“Why? You can tell me anything, Amber. I’m hardly gonna be shocked by anything you have to say. You’ve met my friends, right? You really think anything you tell me will come as much of a surprise to me, after everything I’ve been through with people like Ash and Zane in my life?”
I smiled a bit. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel… I don’t know, embarrassed, trying to tell you about my parents.”
“What about your parents?”
“How they used to fight, in front of us. In front of Liv and me.”
He laid his hand over mine, on his thigh, and squeezed. “Lots of parents fight, Amber.”
I shook my head. Not like mine.
“Look…” I sighed heavily, weary, but knowing we needed to have this conversation. After the courage it took for Ashley to say what he said to Dylan, I could do this, right? “I’m not gonna sit here and blame my parents for my problems. I’m a grown woman. But they used to yell at each other, Dylan, a lot. And I can’t even pretend it didn’t fuck me up.” I had a hard time meeting the compassion in his eyes as I spoke, so I stared at his broad chest instead. “They screamed and smashed things. I mean, screamed. They’d keep us up at night like a couple of lunatics. They’d storm out. They’d walk out on each other. On us. Be gone for hours, or days. When whoever had walked out came back, they’d scream again. They’d grab and push. And afterwards, they’d make up. They’d cry and kiss and be all over each other.” I shook my head again, as the memories came back. The awful feelings of instability and uncertainty, of being in that house. “They were so in love.” I could feel the tears welling in my eyes, as I allowed myself to go back to that place in my mind where I always felt so damn unstable. Like the ground could fall out from beneath me at any given moment.
Dirty Like Dylan: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 4) Page 37