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Speaking of Brandon, it was long past time to congratulate him on an exceptional hotel launch and thank him for the beautiful dress before she headed to her apartment to pack for her early-morning flight home.
Her brother spotted her as soon as she stepped out of the restroom, making his excuses to the couple he’d been speaking with. “Ash, there you are. Sorry I wasn’t able to say hello earlier.”
She smiled, a smile that felt totally fake but that she hoped he’d believe was real. “Your launch party was fantastic, Brandon, just like I knew it would be. Congratulations! You’ve done it again.” Before he could look closely at her face, she added, “Thank you for the dress. It’s beautiful. And for the apology. I appreciate it. And now, considering how early my flight is, I should probably head back to the apartment to pack and get some shut-eye.”
Before she could dash away, he put his hand on the small of her back and propelled her into an office tucked behind a side door.
He closed the door behind them, then took a good look at her red, puffy eyes. “What happened between you and Nash after I left your apartment this morning? I would have pinned him down to ask him earlier, but I was run off my feet dealing with last-second emergencies and never got the chance to corner him.”
“It’s none of your business,” she told her brother, squaring her shoulders and looking him in the eye.
But her bravado didn’t fool him. “I knew I shouldn’t have let him come to play tonight. Hell, I should never have let him near you, period.” Brandon looked utterly furious. “If he’s still in the building, I’m going to find him and destroy him.”
She put her hand on her brother’s chest to hold him in place, even though she knew Nash was already gone. Just as her apartment had felt empty without him, the hotel felt empty too.
“Nash hasn’t done anything wrong, and neither have I. We’re two people who made a decision to be together for one night only. He didn’t take advantage of me. And I didn’t take advantage of him.”
“Then why have you been crying?”
“I didn’t think I would,” she replied honestly. “But even though I’m more emotional about having said good-bye to him than I thought I would be, it’s nothing that you or anyone else needs to try to fix for me.”
“Of course I need to fix it. If it wasn’t for me, you never would have gotten involved with him in the first place.”
Whirling away from her brother in frustration, she looked out the window at the lights of Vienna. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t see beyond her accidental high school pregnancy. Though she was tempted to keep her revelations to herself, she knew Brandon would never understand why her night with Nash had been so important if she didn’t at least try to explain how the experience had changed her.
“For the first time since I was seventeen,” she said as she turned back to face him, “I’ve finally reached beyond the boundaries I’ve put around my life. With Nash, I went into the world and had an adventure. A wonderful adventure with a good man. I know you might not think Nash is a good man,” she said before her brother could argue, “but he is.”
“Ashley—”
She put her arms around her brother before he started arguing with her, thinking he knew best. “Thank you for always caring. Thank you for always loving me.” She stepped back. “But you have to let me live my life the way I’m going to live it. You can’t protect me forever. None of you can, not Mom or Dad or the rest of our siblings. It’s true that I did desperately need your help when I was barely eighteen and raising Kevin without a partner. But now, at long last, it’s time for me to stand on my own two feet and have some adventures. Even if some of those adventures end in tears, I’m not going to regret them. Because I’m ready to live, Brandon. Beyond ready.”
Her brother stared at her for several long moments. She could practically see his brain warring over whether he should do what she asked and let her deal with her own life on her own terms, or make good on his threat to avenge her honor with Nash, even though she’d told him there was nothing to avenge.
Finally, he nodded. “Okay, I’ll back off. I’m not going to lie to you and say I’m happy about you and Nash, but I can see where you’re coming from. After all, I’m the one who encouraged you to come to Vienna to live a little. But then when you went and actually did some of that living, I couldn’t handle it. So I’m going to work on that, okay?”
