Page 165 of Dirty Like Dylan

“I’ll call you again when I can, give you the update.”

“Good. Amber?”

“Yeah?”

I looked out at the water in the dark; I was standing on my back deck in the cold. “I’m proud of you.”

She sniffed loudly. “Don’t do that. I can’t shoot if I can’t see.” She sobbed a little and added, “I’m hanging up now, for real.”

“I love you.” The words spilled out before I could think about it. There were tears in my eyes; the girl was fucking slaying me.

Amber Malone had such a capacity for compassion, she just didn’t even have a clue… the girl was all heart.

There was so much to her I knew she hadn’t even let me get near yet. I wanted to keep peeling back all the layers of her and expose it all, kiss her and keep her and make her feel safe to be naked like that with me.

Shit… I’d never felt so mushy-romantic with a woman. It was kinda nice.

With her, actually, it was becoming addictive.

“Goodbye, Dylan.”

She hung up. I knew she’d heard what I said.

But she hung up.

I looked out at the water. I blinked back the tears in my eyes and got my shit together, grounding myself with that serene, unchangeable view. It was here a long fucking time before I came along. Wasn’t in the least moved by my tears. It was steady. Permanent. Filled with a kind of wordless promise.

The way I wanted to be.

For her.

When I made my way back into the house, I found Ash waiting in the kitchen. He’d made a late dinner of wings and dirty rice for us after I came back from the studio, then we’d hung out, tinkered in the workshop, listened to some music.

He’d been kind of off, tense, ever since Amber went into town for the baby shower. I figured he was missing her, too.

And his growing attachment to her was worrying me.

Maybe I kept hoping he’d lose interest, like he so often did. Realize he wasn’t as compatible with her as I was and let me have her.

Something selfish like that.

But it just didn’t seem to be happening.

And I was getting more and more scared, every time he looked at me with that anxious look in his eyes, that he was gearing up to confess something to me I did not want to hear—like the fact that he was falling for her, too.

I’d thought he’d gone to bed a while ago. But here he was, staring at me, and I felt myself tensing up. He glanced at the phone in my hand as I stashed it in my pocket.

“Hospital?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Heavy?”

“Yeah.”

“How is she?”

“Good, I think. I mean… she’s in the middle of having a baby, so maybe… not good?” I swiped a bottle of water from the fridge. Would’ve rather had a beer, but I was planning to hop in the boat in a while, and I was never gonna be that guy—driving after I’d been drinking. Not with Amber around, counting on me to be decent. “She’s having it any minute now.” I shook my head, my mind kinda blown. “Sounds like Brody’s gonna be a dad before the sun’s up.”

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