Page 172 of Dirty Like Dylan

“That you told him to tell me he’s in love with me? Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“And… how did that go?”

“Not so good.”

Shit.

I followed him into the living room, where he dropped onto the couch, looking exhausted himself. I wondered if he’d slept at all.

I sank down next to him and put my hand on his thigh. I was kind of afraid to touch him any more than that. Was he mad at me? I didn’t know. I’d rarely seen Dylan mad. Well, other than the time he straight-up punched my ex-husband in the face, I’d never seen him mad.

I wasn’t even sure what an angry Dylan Cope looked like.

“I can understand…” I said, treading carefully. “I mean, why he was afraid to tell you for so long. Sometimes… it feels easier to just avoid things than face them head-on. You know that.”

Dylan had told me he tended to avoid drama. But I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about myself now as much as I was talking about Ashley. There was so much in Ashley that I recognized in myself.

His fears.

That self-protective chip on his shoulder.

“You know something about that, too,” Dylan said, and it wasn’t exactly a question. Of course, he’d told me over the phone that he loved me. And I’d said exactly nothing in response. He was probably wondering what the fuck, right about now.

“I might know something about that.”

“Yeah? You want to tell me about it?” He raised an eyebrow at me expectantly, like he was too emotionally tapped out to ask me twice.

Which meant I should really give him an answer.

And as he patiently waited for me to speak, it occurred to me that I’d only told Ashley. Ashley was the one I’d talked to about my parents. About the things that scared me and scarred me most. It had just seemed easier to talk to him about it.

At the time, I thought it was a sign that our relationship was deepening. I was growing to trust him. And maybe that was partly true.

But it was also because talking to Ashley was like talking to some guy I’d meet on my travels. Someone I could share an intimacy with, without truly becoming intimate, because as soon as I moved on it wouldn’t matter.

Because it didn’t matter to me, truly and deeply, what he thought of anything I might tell him.

That was the painful truth of it.

But I cared, truly and deeply, what Dylan thought.

“I do want to tell you,” I said. “It just kind of stuns me how hard it is.”

“Why? You can tell me anything, Amber. I’m hardly gonna be shocked by anything you have to say. You’ve met my friends, right? You really think anything you tell me will come as much of a surprise to me, after everything I’ve been through with people like Ash and Zane in my life?”

I smiled a bit. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel… I don’t know, embarrassed, trying to tell you about my parents.”

“What about your parents?”

“How they used to fight, in front of us. In front of Liv and me.”

He laid his hand over mine, on his thigh, and squeezed. “Lots of parents fight, Amber.”

I shook my head. Not like mine.

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