Page 83 of Dirty Like Dylan

With that, I stormed off, my body vibrating with anger and my eyes pricking with embarrassing tears.

And what made me most angry wasn’t Dylan. It wasn’t what he’d said about me being Ashley’s, or about sharing me.

It was the thing about leaving me.

Like it would be so fucking easy to do, he just put it right up front, before anything else.

Before he’d even kissed me.

Before he’d even undressed me.

Before he’d gotten intimate with me at all, he’d already planned when, why and how he was going to leave me.

As I rushed through the restaurant, I passed Con, sitting up at the bar. His eyes followed me, but he didn’t.

Near the front entrance, I passed the piano player. He was playing some Adele song I didn’t know the words to. He was really good, and without even thinking about it, I pulled out one of the twenties Laura had put in my/her purse and stuffed it into his tip bowl. Because I’d meant everything I just said; I was going to make something of myself, my work was going to matter, and I believed in that, in following my life’s passion. You didn’t get to be as good as Dylan Cope on the drums or this guy on the piano if you didn’t have a passion for it. And I believed in supporting other artists in the pursuit of their dreams.

Plus, I believed in good karma and good intentions.

And I was a good person.

I deserved more than a meaningless fling or some weird sex role in the lives of a couple of spoiled-ass rock stars who thought they could snap their fingers and make any woman they wanted just bend over.

Fuck that.

I pushed through the front door of the restaurant, shuddering as I sucked in a breath of cool night air, tainted with cigarette smoke and car exhaust and the faint stench of piss. Even right in front of a classy restaurant with a valet stand in downtown Vancouver, the sidewalk smelled of piss and people had to pollute the air by smoking.

I loved this city, and sometimes I hated it, too.

I strode past the valet who offered to get me a cab. I didn’t know where I was going except that I was walking there. I’d walk through downtown and across the Cambie Bridge and all the way to my sister’s house if I had to. By then, maybe I’d have cooled off.

Maybe I’d have stopped crying.

I was breathing shakily as I fought to hold the tears back, to keep them from cascading down my face. I wasn’t crying. I was just angry. I was just gonna be angry and walk until I wasn’t angry anymore.

Shitty plan, since I’d forgotten to grab my jacket on the way out of the restaurant and it was pretty cold out.

Why the fuck did this bother me so much?

I was leaving for Thailand soon anyway. With the money in my back pocket, I could leave tomorrow if I wanted to.

Dylan caught up with me at the street corner. I was waiting for the light to change, feeling cold and directionless and ridiculous, when I felt him towering over me.

“Hey,” he said, gently draping my jacket over my shoulders. “You forgot this.”

I looked up at him, carefully blinking back the tears.

“Sorry,” I said, trying my best to chill the fuck out. “I guess I was trying to make a point.”

“I think you made it.” He hooked his strong hand around my upper arm. “Come here.” He drew me off the sidewalk into a half-empty parking lot, then released me. No one was around, but I saw Con leaning on the wall across the alley. At least he was out of earshot.

Dylan stood in front of me, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans as he watching me slip on my jacket. He hadn’t even grabbed his own jacket before he’d chased me out of the restaurant.

“So… you want me to fuck off?”

I said nothing. I just concentrated on breathing like a normal, non-crazy person, while I hugged myself and looked somewhere over his shoulder.

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to tell me to fuck off, Amber. So don’t feel too bad if you need to let it out.”

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