Page 173 of Dirty Like Dylan

“Look…” I sighed heavily, weary, but knowing we needed to have this conversation. After the courage it took for Ashley to say what he said to Dylan, I could do this, right? “I’m not gonna sit here and blame my parents for my problems. I’m a grown woman. But they used to yell at each other, Dylan, a lot. And I can’t even pretend it didn’t fuck me up.” I had a hard time meeting the compassion in his eyes as I spoke, so I stared at his broad chest instead. “They screamed and smashed things. I mean, screamed. They’d keep us up at night like a couple of lunatics. They’d storm out. They’d walk out on each other. On us. Be gone for hours, or days. When whoever had walked out came back, they’d scream again. They’d grab and push. And afterwards, they’d make up. They’d cry and kiss and be all over each other.” I shook my head again, as the memories came back. The awful feelings of instability and uncertainty, of being in that house. “They were so in love.” I could feel the tears welling in my eyes, as I allowed myself to go back to that place in my mind where I always felt so damn unstable. Like the ground could fall out from beneath me at any given moment.

My mom or my dad could leave. Or they could erupt in a rage. They never directed their rage at me, but that wasn’t what scared me.

I managed to look up into Dylan’s eyes. He looked back at me, steadfast.

“They were crazy about each other, literally. Passionate. Their love was so… volatile. It was violent. And as a little girl all I could do was sit there and watch. I couldn’t do anything about it. Liv, though, she was different. A different personality, and she was five years older than me. She would storm right into the middle of it and scream at them, tell them to stop, try to drag them apart. But nothing would stop them. It never stopped, until the day my dad walked out, and he didn’t come back. He broke Mom’s heart.” My voice broke, and tears started streaming down my face. My heart broke, for her, all over again as I said the words to Dylan. It broke for us, Liv and me.

Dylan took my other hand in his, as I sat here trembling with emotion.

“Mom never recovered from it. He broke all our hearts, but she never recovered. She still talks about him like he walked out yesterday. She knows he’s gone, but she talks about him like he’s coming back, like he never really left. I mean, she talks about him like he’s still with her. Like they’re still in love. It’s sickening. And… it scares the shit out of me.”

“I can see that,” Dylan said, his hands tightening gently on mine. “I can imagine… that the whole idea of loving someone would be fucking scary. If that’s how you grew up.”

“That’s what I thought love was,” I said. But, no. It was worse. “I thought that’s all love was. I thought that was the only kind of love there could be between a man and a woman, if they were really in love. If there was passion. I thought that was what passion looked like. That was what passion felt like. Painful and heartrending, fucking scary and unstable. Traumatic. That it was something you never recovered from.” I pulled my hand from his to swipe the tears from my cheeks. “I know that’s why I’ve kept the bar so damn low with men. Why I’ve let them treat me so shitty. Why I’ve let them use me up and dump me. Because I couldn’t bear to hope for more and find out I couldn’t have it. Or worse, that it didn’t even exist.” I sniffed, looking at his perfect face. “And then… I met you.”

Dylan reached up to smooth his knuckles along my jaw. He brushed my hair back and laid his hand gently on the side of my neck. “There are all kinds of passion, Amber,” he said, looking in my eyes. “Not all of them painful.”

“Yeah. I’m learning that now.” I sniffled and dabbed the tears from my eyes. “It’s strange, you know, how differently my sister and I came out of that situation. It affected us both so powerfully. But Liv takes no shit. I just kind of avoid the shit.”

“Well… what if it’s not shit?” His mouth did that cute quirk, that crooked smile of his that totally slayed me. “What if it’s really fucking good?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged uncomfortably. “I guess I never really… um… asked myself that before. Until you came along.”

He laughed. He fucking laughed at me.

“And I thought I was bad at relationships,” he teased.

“Please. I’m fucking terrible at love.”

“Terrible?”

“I’ve been dumped by every guy I’ve ever dated,” I admitted.

Might as well just lay it all out there.

Dylan raised both eyebrows at me. “Every guy?”

“Every guy.”

“Even Johnny O?”

“Even Johnny O.”

“You didn’t dump his ass? I thought he cheated on you.”

“He did. And then he sat me down and suggested we’d rushed into things. Really, he let me down easy, considering how many vaginas he’d been up inside behind my back.”

Dylan’s eyes flashed with something that I was pretty sure was anger, on my behalf. “Amber—”

“Don’t feel too bad for me. We really weren’t together all that long. And we did rush into it. You know, me and my low bar.”

He considered that, his green-gold eyes thoughtful. “Have you ever been with anyone longterm?”

“Not really.” I tried to smile. “What, are you telling me you’ve had a serious relationship with anyone? And Ashley doesn’t count.”

“Why doesn’t Ash count?”

“Because you were never in love with Ashley.” I swallowed, staring into his eyes. “Were you…?”

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