Now, she had someone else to bestow affection on and why wouldn’t she choose him? He would never be as mean to her as I was. As cruel.
He would only love her.
I made my way toward the fridge and pulled out a beer. The thought of getting drunk suddenly seemed like a great idea. An escape from my brain filled with so much crap.
I sat on the couch, popped the top and sucked it back.
I startled when the door was slammed shut, hard. Glancing up at George’s face, I thought, for the first time, this was the guy who used to steal cars. This was the guy who went to prison, who joined the army.
Not the docile driver/butler of a rich dude, the category where I’d always put him before.Thisman was a badass.
“Don’t you walk away from me when we’re having a conversation,” he shouted. “Not with some lame-ass excuse. We’re not talking about some high-school girlfriend. We’re talking about Ashleigh.”
“I know who we’re talking about. You weren’t there when I found her in Florida. She doesn’t want me anymore.”
“What a pile of horseshit,” he said, his hands on his hips, more ornery than I’d ever known him to be. “That girl has loved you her whole life. The two of you have a son together. You’ve got to make this right. You don’t have any other option.”
I took another sip of my beer and shook my head. “I don’t know if I can. Everything I’ve done and said to her over the years, it’s like suddenly she believes it all now, when she never did before.”
“Then start withI’m sorry,and go from there.”
I looked at George. “Hey, I’m not the one who followed me around like a puppy dog. I’m not the one who pushed me into taking her to the prom. It’s not my fault her father was a prick, but I sure as hell paid for it. To get her out of Switzerland. To try to save her from a sociopath. I pushed through college in three years, worked my ass off, only to end up in fucking jail trying to do the right thing. For her!”
“Are you done?” George asked.
I was. Because, hearing myself, I wanted to kick my own ass. Those things that happened to me hadn’t been Ash’s fault. Everything I did had been my choice. Including fucking her in Vegas without a condom.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I began.
“No, you don’t,” he said, cutting me off. “You think I’m going to tell you to pull your head out of your ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself. But that would be too fucking obvious.”
My head snapped back. I’d been with George since I was twelve years old, and I don’t ever remember him using that word. Not once.
“The only thing I need to remind you of is that you have a son. A son! A living, breathing DNA copy of yourself. I know, because I held you for the first time when you were exactly that age. If I had any impact in the raising of you, which I know there was very little, then I sure as hell didn’t raise someone who would skip out on his family.”
“I told you. She doesn’t want me!” I shouted at him, feeling how strange those words sounded coming from me. Because that wasn’t it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me, it was that she’d stopped believing in us.
“Then make her want you again!”
Was it that easy? Was that all I had to do to get her back? Prove to her that none of what had been done to me was her fault. That we weren’t doomed or poisoned or whatever the hell she thought.
He must have seen the dazed expression on my face, because he lost his righteousness.
“You’re in shock, son,” George said, coming over to sit by me on the couch. “I know, because I am, too. But it’s over now. You have to wake up. Ashleigh isn’t dead and you have a son.”
Ash wasn’t dead and I had a son.
It was like hearing George say it, suddenly made it real. For weeks I’d been focused on taking Sanderson down. Removing him as a threat once and for all.
I wouldn’t let myself think about Ash, about the baby. Certainly not what she’d said about us in Florida, because it all seemed like too much to handle. I had to compartmentalize, if only to stay sane.
Now here I was, sitting on the couch, and it just occurred to me. She’d left. She was taking the kid, going back to her life in Florida, and she thought that was going to be it?
That we were done?
Oh, hell no, we weren’t done.
I set the beer on the table and got up, heading to the room where I’d stayed when I was here before. George followed me and watched, as I started shoving everything I owned into a duffel bag.
