Boom.
It was damn near deafening.
She stepped away from Grayson, tipping her head back to look up at me, eyes starting to shine. “She wants to thank you.”
My head snapped up to the door, and through the screen, I could see the end of her cream couch. Her feet were no longer there.
Had she gotten up?
Was she looking for me?
Or was she curled into the far corner of the couch, scared to come outside because of me? Because I reminded her of the past?
The flames raging in my chest were suddenly snuffed out by a freezing wave of guilt. It shrouded my heart in darkness yet again. “Is she all right?” I pressed, putting my hands on Carrie’s shoulders. I shot a worried glance at Grayson, who pressed his lips into a thin line.
“Aside from the bump on her head, she’s okay. Margo also made sure to check her blood sugar one more time, and everything is normal, but—”
“Blood sugar?” I repeated it in a rush.
Carrie nodded. “Angel is a type-two diabetic.” My shoulders loosened, the new information chasing away the cold rush of guilt. In its place was something I didn’t have the energy to decipher. “Like I was saying, she’s asking for you, Ash. She wants to thank you—face to face.”
My hands fell away from her, and I started to take a step back, shaking my head. “No, I can’t. I don’t want—”
Grayson spoke then, cutting off my words with a gentle observation. “You’re acting like you are the one who hurt her, who abused her, Ash…and that doesn’t sit right with me.”
Panic clung to my skin like sweat, seeping into my bloodstream, mixing with everything else that kept me a mess. That’s all I was. A fucking mess who’d made too many mistakes. But hurting Angel, scaring her in any way, would never be one of them. “I just don’t want to scare her…or hurt her.”
“You aren’t going to do either of those things,” Carrie murmured, confusion crossing over her face. “You’re Ash. That’s not who you are.”
Fucking Carrie.
Always so damn helpful.
Despite the need to argue, to prove to her and Grayson that I didn’t belong in Angel’s life, I couldn’t. Not while Carrie was looking at me like I was a kicked puppy she’d found on the street. I owed her so much, not just for everything she’d done for Grayson, but also for holding off on their wedding. According to Dominic, Grayson had told Carrie that marrying her without my presence felt wrong. He didn’t expect anything to come out of it, but Carrie pushed the wedding because she agreed.
“Carrie, you saw the look on her face that day.”
“Well, yes, but Ash, it’s been nearly two years. Her shock was…understandable,” she admitted. “You were probably the last person on earth she expected to see, and then to find out you never gave up on trying to find her…”
Grayson’s eyes met mine.
He never told her that I had given up.
Shaking that off, I rubbed the back of my neck, ready to make another excuse. Footsteps echoed from inside the house, and Margo appeared behind the screen. At the same time, the familiar rumble of Hayes’ Jeep came up the driveway, his headlights flashing over the porch as he parked behind Grayson’s truck.
“Ash?” Margo called.
My eyes slid over to her green ones as Hayes stalked through the rain, his jaw set. I jerked my chin at her, unable to trust my mouth.
She pushed the screen door open and held it. “Angel is asking to speak with you.”
“I—”
“Look, if you don’t come in here, she is going to come out, and I can’t stop her,” Margo talked over me. At the last word, Hayes was on the porch. Carrie, Grayson, and I watched as he scanned over her.
“Angel all right?” he asked, raindrops falling from his hair.
“Yes,” Carrie piped up. “She wants to speak to Ash, but Ash is being stubborn.”
