Page 34 of Impulsive Saint
He started to turn and leave the room but Ashtyn reached up and caught his hand, “Tyler?”
“Yeah?” He turned back slightly, looking from their clasped hands to her face.
“Thank you.”
She wasn’t sure what response she expected from him but he surprised her when he didn’t say a word. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and then let go as he stepped out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Ashtyn sat on the floor for a couple of minutes longer, trying to figure out what had just happened.
Something between them had shifted. She’d spilled her guts, in more ways than one, and she felt better for it. Tyler hadn’t told her she was being childish or immature. He hadn’t said she was overreacting to what she’d experienced as a child or tried to tell her that she was crazy for thinking she would end up like her mother if she’d married Aaron. He’d just listened and then reassured her that it would be okay.
He’d taken her side, agreed to help her with her bucket list, and basically become MVP of Team Ashtyn all at the same time.
She smiled as she pushed herself up from the floor. She’d never had any of the men in her life take her side on anything. She thought she was really going to enjoy being friends with Tyler St. James.
10
After their strangely heartfelt talk in the small motel bathroom, Tyler felt like a grade-A shithead. He’d only agreed to this trip because Ashtyn was a job to him. He’d told himself they’d both be better off if he could convince her she was making a mistake and get her back home as soon as possible, but after what she’d told him he knew that wasn’t the case.
He was supposed to be looking out for her. That was what her mother was paying him to do. Instead he’d taken every opportunity to make her miserable, let her slip away into the night unguarded, get drunk alone with strangers who could have easily taken advantage of her, and then tried to give her hell for having a hangover.
He’d been an asshole and yet, she wanted them to be friends.
Somehow, it was that above everything else, that had gotten stuck somewhere in his chest and made him ache with something he couldn’t name. It didn’t sound like Ashtyn Echols had ever had many friends, at least not many that got to see past the façade she presented to the world at large. But she’d let him see her, the real her, since the moment they met, only he hadn’t realized it.
Hell, he hadn’t even bothered to ask her why she was doing all of this now.
He’d taken one look at her and seen nothing but the spoiled, privileged daughter of a Senator who had always gotten whatever she wanted and expected him to fall in line like everyone else in her life did. He’d made assumptions and jumped to conclusions without ever really giving her a chance.
After talking to her, really talking to her for the first time in that bathroom he had realized there was so much more to the girl than the image she presented to the world. She was more than just a politician’s daughter. She was a woman with doubts and fears and a past that haunted her, but she was trying to be strong. She was trying to hold it all together and be who everyone expected her to be without losing herself in the process. She was trying to take control of her life for the very first time and instead of helping her he’d been just like every other man in her life, her father, her ex-fiancé, all of them trying to tell her what was best for her instead of letting her decide for herself.
Well, no more.
He wouldn’t be like those other men who had stood in her way. They didn’t understand Ashtyn but he did. Now that he’d listened to her story, watched her cry with frustration, seen her pull herself back together and tip her chin back up and ready herself for another fight if that was what it took to get what she wanted, he knew that they were more alike than he’d have ever believed.
He knew what it was like to have the people you loved look down on you, to think they knew better, to tell you what they thought you should be doing with your life. He knew Vaughn and Hunter meant well, just like he was sure that Ashtyn’s father did, somewhere deep down. But the thing they all had in common was that they wanted Tyler and Ashtyn to be people they weren’t.
He had forged his own way and become his own man and he couldn’t, more like wouldn’t stand in Ashtyn’s way as she fought to forge her own path.
He’d meant what he told her in that bathroom. He was going to help her. He was going to do everything in his power to make her dreams come true. All of those bucket list items she was trying so hard to fulfill on this one epic road trip were now his mission too.
Except for the one-night stand, anything but that. That wasn’t happening on his watch.
“Tyler?”
“Hmm?” He blinked, realizing that Ashtyn must have said something that required a response from him because she was staring at him from across the table with a puzzled expression. “Sorry, what?”
He’d found them a diner to grab breakfast that was only ten miles up the road from their motel. By the time Ashtyn had showered, dressed and repacked her bag it was already past ten o’clock so the fast food restaurants weren’t serving breakfast anymore, not that he’d seen any nearby even if that was what he’d been searching for when he googled nearby eateries on his phone. Instead he’d found this place; a run-down roadside diner with black and white checked flooring, red vinyl booths and miniature vintage jukeboxes on every table.
He’d grinned when they walked in and he’d seen the look of wonder on Ashtyn’s pretty face, as if she’d never seen anything like it. Maybe she hadn’t. But he was fairly sure he shouldn’t take so much pride in being the one to introduce her to the simpler things in life.
He had also been very certain that he shouldn’t be thinking of how pretty she was, which was why he’d been purposefully ignoring her chatter since they sat down. Having her on the back of his motorcycle, wrapped around him for hours on end had done weird things to him even when he hadn’t liked her. Now that he was beginning to understand her and enjoy her company, he wasn’t so sure he would survive the case of blue balls he saw in his future.
“I just asked if you could pass the sugar.” She pointed to the dispenser that was on his side of the little jukebox.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He shoved it at her and watched as she poured a mountain of the stuff into her coffee cup.
She was on her second cup already and they’d barely placed their order. Despite the shower and the change of clothes, she still looked as hungover as she must feel. She’d made a face at him when he suggested she order a big breakfast so they could drive through lunch. He figured her stomach was still in revolt so he’d ordered his special hangover cure for her even though she’d looked sick at the mere mention of the items that went into the drink.
He figured she was full on regretting the urge to fulfill that particular bucket list item right about now, surrounded as they were by the sounds of the busy truck stop diner and the smell of about a hundred different meals cooking.
