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Vera cocked her head. “That’s probably what needed to happen. Rock bottom.”
“I’ve already been there when Greg left.”
Vera laughed. “Oh no. As humiliating as it was to be dumped in favor of the babysitter, you have to admit to a certain relief that it happened. It should have happened years ago. You didn’t love Greg.”
Ashley couldn’t disagree with that. She’d been wasting her life on a man she’d never loved, out of a sense of duty as a mother and fear of being alone.
“But when he left, it really hurt.”
“Of course it did,” Vera said. “But how are you feeling now?”
She leaned on the counter, for the first time acknowledging the pain that practically had her doubled over. “Crushed. I-I don’t know why I feel like this.”
Vera shared a glance with Maeve. “Because you guys really connected. I saw it that first night.”
“I told him I loved him,” she whispered as if a lower volume could disguise the horror.
“Oh, Ash.” Maeve covered her mouth.
Vera looked concerned. “And what did he say?”
“That he wasn’t good enough for me. We had a fight about something else and I forced the issue. Told him how I felt because—well, he needed to hear it and I needed to say it. To get it out there, but now I’m not sure it was a good idea.”
“It’s always a good idea to tell someone you love them,” Vera said gently.
Ashley couldn’t agree right now, not when the end result of sharing that love felt so shitty.
“I shouldn’t have let my heart get involved. You were right about that.” She addressed that last statement to Maeve.
“Maybe it’s for the?—”
“Best?” Vera snapped. “Is that what you’re going to say? Because what I see is you so down on men that she’s never going to trust again.”
“And you,” Maeve said, pointing at Vera, “just see men as vessels to be used. Sex machines with nothing else to recommend them.”
“That wasn’t the case here, was it? Maybe at first, but Dex was the perfect boost to her self-esteem. Until he wasn’t.” Vera put an arm around Ashley’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Ash. I shouldn’t have invited him over to dinner.”
“You meant well, Ms. Meddler. You wanted me to get back out there. Now, I can move on, get back on the apps.”
No more lookers, though. No more ocean-blue eyes and wavy hair and strong arms that felt perfect around her body. No more giggling in sleeping bags or wistful sighs at the sight of a man showing kindness to her daughter. No more falling hard and fast because hauling yourself up off the floor took such effort.
Vera looked stricken, and Maeve, who would usually have an opinion, wasn’t much better.
“You guys should get back to the club. Make sure no one is drunk dialing their ex or planning a murder.”
While Ashley would get back to her boring black-and-white life before it received a Technicolor boost from one Dex O’Malley.
A sun-kissed Cora looked up from the pile of paperwork on her desk and grinned at Ashley.
“These Empty the Shelters numbers are amazing! Almost three-quarters of the cats adopted or fostered, and half the dogs. And I’ve heard from the Rebels people—cha-ching! The donation is in. It should keep us going for another year.” She sat back in her chair. “And all you had to do was put up with an oversexed, immature hockey player. I hope it wasn’t too awful.”
Ashley screwed her smile on tight. “A rocky start, but we made it in the end. Everyone’s a winner.”
Cora glanced at the numbers again. “Don’t know what I’d do without you. Now, didn’t your shift end ten minutes ago?”
“Yep, just waiting for Greg to drop off Willa.”
A couple of minutes later, she headed into the kennels and found her daughter, sitting in front of Bandit’s cage.
