He probably wants this as bad as you do. He may not say it or show it, but he’s kind of hinting at it.
Take it.
“Ash, you know you really hurt me, right?”
I looked at him. He looked at me. He looked back out on the road. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to; I could see in his eyes he understood the pain.
“You hurt me by leaving more than you staying could hurt me physically, regardless of what you think,” I said. “You think you put me in the line of danger, but you never did. Never once, in all the time you were with the King’s Men, did I ever wonder if I was in danger. I never even felt like danger needed to be turned away. So why did you do what you did?”
Ash’s face contorted. It was like he was trying to get to the truth, but it was buried so deep in him he couldn’t access it. I needed to help dig him out of the hole he’d buried himself in. I needed to play a part in getting the truth out of him.
“Did you do it because you were trying to protect me?”
Ask the question you’re afraid to ask. Ask what you need to ask in order to get to the truth.
“Or were you just scared for yourself?”
Ash sighed. There was something about the sigh, though, that almost seemed liberating.
“I should have known that this would happen,” he said, but it sounded like he was covering his ass, as if he was trying to protect himself from the truth. “I was…yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
Ash grimaced.
“I was worried about you,” he said. “But I suppose it was for selfish reasons.”
That was probably as close as I’d get to him saying that he was just scared for himself and trying to protect himself. That alone was a huge win, a huge step for us to try and get back together—if that was still even in the realm of possibility. It was only a start but hearing him admit something like that was more than even I would have expected before this evening.
“But I still stand by it being the right decision,” he said.
I was brought back down to Earth a little bit. But I refused to forget what he’d said just before.
“It’s different now, Callie. Things are getting much worse. When we dated, King was fighting battles from afar. The violence and mayhem weren’t coming to our front door. But when I came here the first time? I got my ass beat. It was the first time anyone had literally fought back to my face. And I knew what it was. A message to King. A fuck you to him. And let me assure you, that man doesn’t take disobedience of any kind well.”
He shook his head.
“If I went back to King bloodied and beaten and told him that I’d failed, the fallout would have extended to you. I’d failed before, and I always feared he would do something to you as a result. Thank fucking God he didn’t. But I was sure—”
“How?”
“Don’t question me on this Callie, please.”
Those words were said more seriously than anything up to that point. I decided to take his word on this particular topic.
“I understand that and won’t question it,” I said quietly. “But you’re here. I’m here. We understand the risks of your lifestyle. I understand it may end soon. Ashton…”
I didn’t use his full name very often. It was like calling a kid by his full name, though; it certainly had his attention.
“I need to know from before. When things were good, when we didn’t think life would turn into this kind of situation, when things were, well, normal. Did you ever want to be married? Was that just something you did because—”
“Of course.”
He let the words hang. I felt my heart swell with…gratitude. He was sincere.
“Of course I wanted to be married. I love…d you, Callie.”
I caught the forced past tense. I tried not to read too much into it. But Ash had not moved on as much as he may have wanted me to believe, at least not yet.
