Page 94

“I understand that you believe you pushed your mother.”

“I don't believe it, Max. I saw the video.”

“And I haven't, which means I'm not going to insult you by claiming I know exactly what happened. I wasn't there, and I haven't seen whatever your father showed you.” I shifted carefully until Ash could look at me without twisting his body. “What I do know is that you were seven years old, your mother was trying to get both of you away from a man who frightened her, and you've spent most of your life carrying what happened next by yourself.”

“That doesn't change what I did.”

“No, but it changes how I see the seven-year-old boy who was on those stairs.” I swallowed against everything else I wanted to say. “You know how my mother died, Ash. Believe me when I tell you I understand what it is to spend years wondering what you could've done differently.”

Something broke briefly across his face before he managed to hide it. “That's not the same. You didn't kill your mom.”

I couldn't answer immediately.

Ash was too wrapped up in his own fear to notice the hesitation, but I did, and the irony was almost unbearable. He was sitting in front of me believing himself responsible for his mother's death while absolving me of mine, without knowing I'd spent fifteen years believing almost exactly the same thing about myself.

Eventually, I brushed my thumb beneath his eye. “We're not talking about me.”

It was a coward's answer, made worse by the fact that Ash let me get away with it.

For a while neither of us spoke. His gaze dropped to the sheet gathered across his lap, and he worried the edge between his fingers while I fought the urge to fill the silence with reassurances I couldn't honestly give him. I couldn't tell him the video was wrong when I hadn't seen it, and I couldn't explain why I understood his guilt without revealing a truth about myself I should probably have told him already.

When Ash finally looked at me again, the fear in his expression had changed. It wasn't about what had happened on the fire escape anymore, or even about his father and the video he'd spent years using as a weapon. This was about me, and the possibility that telling me the truth had cost him whatever had been growing between us.

“Do you hate me?”

Something inside me cracked.

“No, and before you ask, I don't need to think about the answer. I've been awake for nearly an hour, and I've had plenty of time to think about everything you told me.”

He searched my face as though he expected to find the revulsion he'd clearly spent years imagining.

I could've told him then.

The words were right there, frighteningly easy now that I'd admitted them to myself, but Ash had confessed the worst thing he'd ever done while drugged and had woken terrified that I would reject him. If I told him I loved him now, there was too much chance he'd hear reassurance instead of declaration, and I didn't want the first time I said those words to sound like medicine.

So I gave him the truth he was ready to hear.

“Nothing you told me last night made me want you less, and I'm not interested in listening while you explain why you think it should.”

His breath caught.

“You're incredibly bossy in the morning.”

“I'm French-Canadian. Apparently it's cultural.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, and the tiny movement loosened something in my chest. I lifted my hand slowly, giving him every opportunity to turn away before I touched his face. He didn't, and when my thumb brushed beneath his eye, he closed them for a second before leaning almost imperceptibly into my palm.

When he opened them again, the fear was still there, but it wasn't the only thing anymore.

“Max.”

I kissed him.

There was nothing tentative about how badly I wanted him, but there was everything careful about the way I touched him. I kept one hand against his cheek and the other well away from his ribs, leaving him enough room to stop me whenever he wanted.

For one heartbeat he stayed completely still, and then his hand slid behind my neck and he kissed me back.

It wasn't Vegas.