Page 79 of All That Glitters
Why wasn’t I? I’d asked myself that question more than once. I’d taken the safe route, finished my degree, and took the job my father offered me. I took the route that was expected of me after Hale was given the ride.
That wasn’t fair. Hale deserved it as much as me. I just hadn’t been taken as seriously as him. I wasn’t as marketable. I’d seen firsthand what was looked for and it wasn’t a woman behind the wheel.
But that was then…
No.
He could be anything he wanted. A woman couldn’t be anything less than perfect or she wasn’t worth taking a chance on. If her reputation slipped even a fraction, she would be out of the seat. Better safe than sorry. And a male driver, Hale, was the safest bet.
“You’re chicken.”
“Fuck you.”
“Anytime, you know that, but you’re still chicken.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Then clue me in.”
I scrambled off my knees but Ashton’s hand grabbed for my wrist before I could get out of reach. He tugged me toward him and the downward pressure had me on his lap. “Straddle me.”
“No.”
“Fucking. Straddle. Me.” He stared at me and I glared at him but caved. Of all things, I wasn’t ready to lose this. I wasn’t ready to lose him so I gave in. The smirk on his face made me second guess all my decisions leading up to this moment. “Good girl.”
“Prick.”
“Yeah, I know how much you like mine.”
I hated how right he was about that. I hated that him calling me a good girl melted everything inside me and pooled between my thighs. I had a sneaking suspicion he knew it, too. Egotistical ass.
I hated that with him I had a praise kink the size of the ocean. I was sure he knew that, too.
I tugged my wrist from him and crossed my arms over my chest. Defiant and somewhat protective. It was no use against him and I knew it, but I still tried.
“Now what?”
“My beautiful Helen. Tell me.”
He said ‘beautiful Helen’ like an admonishment, like he was disappointed in me and it hurt somewhere inside. That he put a ‘My’ in front of it… He could be cruel without meaning to be. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“Then what aren’t you telling yourself that you should? Why aren’t you in a car? Why aren’t you in a conversation? Why aren’t you marketing for one of them, at the very least? Why are you still working for your family?”
The questions came like rapid fire bullets hitting me one after the other, attacking my weaknesses, my uncertainties, my fears. Each one drove me into myself, mentally pulled me away from him.
I should’ve left when he told me to. I shouldn’t have been so stubborn as to think I could fix him, help him, heal him with tenderness, with my heart, my body. And God, how I loved him. The admission of that was another bullet tearing into me, only this time it was one that I fired myself.
“I didn’t know you cared,” I said, my voice whisper soft. It was so unlike me to shy away, to make myself small for anyone. Then again, hadn’t I done just that? Wasn’t that what he was sitting there accusing me of? Tucking my tail and running to safety, running from the thing I loved most in the world?
But Ashton’s disappointment was different. It made me feel small and weak and silly and stupid. It certainly didn’t make me want to feel anything else. It made me want to hide away. It didn’t make me want to try again, to learn, to grow from whatever went wrong.
I felt his disappointment so deep inside that I didn’t know how I was ever going to recover from it.
And yet, I stayed on his lap, stayed with him, stayed because I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
It was just the one thing that he was bothered by, so it would be okay, right? If we could just avoid that one topic, we could keep going, keep turning to each other, right? Or he could keep turning to me and I could keep running to him…
What a fucked up mess this was. Why did he have to go and ruin it? Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone. Why —
