Page 35 of Keeping Mr. Sweet

CHAPTER TWELVE

SAM

“You need to know something.” I’ve been biting my tongue all evening. All through dinner with Summer and Dylan and Gabe. All through the crazy game they made up, Cards Against Charades, where you’re given a sentence and have to act out the silly answers. Through the hour and twenty minutes of incredibly bad karaoke that came next, until I couldn’t stand another second of it.

Ash stares out at the empty lot while she waits for me to unlock the back door to the restaurant. She’s been avoiding being alone with me since I overheard her confession to Summer about Talon. I’d bet my last dollar on the charades and karaoke being her idea. Is she upset that I heard her, or does she assume I am? All these years I believed she loved that asshole so much she couldn’t bear to talk about what happened, so I bit my tongue.

I push open the door and wait for her to enter.

“’Night.”

She heads for my office, and I grit my teeth while I take off my jacket and hang it over a hook. If I let her shove me away now will she disappear out of my life again? “Hey.”

Ash stops to glance back at me. “Sorry?”

“Bed’s up there.” I point at the ceiling above us.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” She holds her ground, gaze flaring. “I think maybe I should stay down here.”

“And I think it’s probably about time we have a long overdue conversation about what really happened with Talon Whyte.”

“You didn’t hear enough?” she asks, affecting the same kind of arrogance she used to treat her nannies with. It would be disarming if I hadn’t seen her turn her nose up and narrow her eyes all her life. She could make a grown man beg for his job before she was eight. I’m not that man. I see her spikes and understand why she keeps them up with other people, but haven’t I earned more than that?

“Two things.” I grind my teeth until my jaw pops, then soften my voice. “What happened to Talon wasn’t your fault. Whether it was an accident or not, it wasn’t because you were driving. He was dead before impact.”

“He was?” A flicker of pain crosses her features. It must be a struggle to reconcile her patchy memories with the truth, especially after so long.

“The autopsy showed he most likely died an hour before you crashed, due to an overdose. You didn’t know that because you were stoned out of your tree. But that’s why the manslaughter charge didn’t stick. There was too much evidence to the contrary, even before the coroner’s report.”

“Overdose?” she echoes, her chin moving in an almost imperceptible nod. She knows that I’m right, even if she’ll never recall the details herself.

“You didn’t kill him. You didn’t even hurt him. He chose his own path.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m not good for the people around me.”

“Bullshit,” I spit, crossing the floor. “That’s bullshit. You think people get hurt if they love you because you’re not worth it, but that’s not fucking true.”

“Isn’t it?” She looks frightened, shrinking in on herself. “Talon died, my dad won’t talk to me, and you can’t trust me. How much can I really be worth?”

I grip her shoulder, tell myself to breathe. Not because I’m angry, but because there’s something else I need to ask her, but finding out the truth... I’m scared of the answer. “When you told Summer you weren’t in love with Talon, because you couldn’t fall in love, what did you mean?”

“Nothing,” she whispers, unable to look me in the eye.

“I swear, Ash.” I shake her shoulder, before pulling myself together. I need to know if she’s never felt like I do about her. “Tell me right now.”

“Or what?” She glares at me, her mouth set in an angry little line. “You’ll kick me out? You’ll stop talking to me? You’ll give up on me?”

I release my grip on her body, let my arms fall to my sides. Could I do any of that? What would it take? Would knowing she never loved me do it? Maybe.

She exhales sharply and places her hand on the front of my shirt. “Do you know how old I was when I realized you weren’t just my best friend’s older brother?”

“No.”

“Eleven,” she says. “You were all muscles and manliness when I was surrounded by boys. I didn’t know what that meant, but I was pretty sure it meant you were better than they were. And then your dad had his second heart attack. I found you in the bathroom, remember? Summer and I were having a sleepover and I woke to the ambulance lights in your driveway.”

“I thought that was going to be it. There was no way he was going to make it through another one. He was only in his early forties.” That was when I realized even if he did get to come home we were all just waiting for the inevitable.

“I’d never seen anyone so lost before,” she muses as she plays with the buttons on my shirt. “And you always had my back. I always imagined that if I loved Summer like she was my sister, then I must have the same type of feelings about you. I mean, surely there was too big an age gap between us for it to be anything else.”

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