Page 205 of Hot Mess
“Okay.” She looked unsure about this, at best.
Uncomfortable, at worst.
But fuck it. This was happening.
Even though I was pretty fucking scared of losing her over it, I knew I had to tell her this shit. It was inevitable, which meant the sooner the better.
I shoved the bag of groceries I’d brought into the fridge. Then I took her by the hand.
“Come with me,” I said, and drew her out the back door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ash
Iled Danica through the gate into Dylan’s yard, and up the steps to his back deck. I used my key to open the back door off the kitchen and disabled the alarm. Danica followed me inside, where I tossed my keys on the big island in the middle of the kitchen and opened the fridge.
“You want another cider?” I asked her. “Or there’s wine or beer or pretty much anything you could want.”
“I’ll have a cider, please,” she said softly, looking around.
“There’s peach. Or there’s Strongbow, too.”
“A Strongbow would be great.”
I cracked one open and handed it over to her, and grabbed myself a beer.
“Cheers,” she said, before taking a sip. “Um, do you always loot Dylan’s booze when he’s away on tour?”
“It’s my booze, too,” I said. “I use his fridge a lot. I spend more time here than at my place anyway. I use the gym downstairs. My Camaro is in his garage, and I work on it a lot. Or I hang on the deck. His is about ten times the size of mine, as you noticed. Plus, he’s got the view.”
I snagged her hand and led her back out onto the deck, where I took her over to a couple of lounge chairs set up in the shade, beside the giant hot-tub-slash-lap-pool that was sunk into the deck. I sat down while she went over to the railing and checked out the view.
The deck was in a V-shape, the farthest point jutting out over the rocky cliff below like the prow of a ship. Big open stretch of water beyond and bluish-green mountains along the distant coast.
It was pretty fucking epic as far as views went… especially with Danica standing there in her peach dress.
When she turned to me, I patted the chair next to me. She came and sat down.
Then I looked in her pretty eyes and told her, “No jokes. No flirting. No bullshit. This is the truth.”
“Okay…”
“People call me Player for a reason. It started out as a play on words, in one of my first bands. You know, guitar player, but also, I liked juggling a few people in my social calendar, so to speak. Or maybe a few dozen.”
Danica smiled softly. “I kind of figured that by now, Ashley.”
“But that was back then,” I told her. “And, honestly, most of the time over the years since then. But I have had girlfriends, more serious relationships. Committed relationships, even. I mean, I’ve had a few. I could tell you whatever I think you want to hear, whatever you need to hear, to get you in bed. I’m good at that. But I like you more than that, Danica. And that’s not just something I’m saying to get you in bed.”
She sipped her drink and considered. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, then.”
Yeah. I was really hoping she would. “I wanted to be honest with you from the start. That’s why I told you all that shit about my past relationships. But I was also looking to see how you took it. If it scared you away.”
“Did you want to scare me away?”
“Maybe. I didn’t see it that way at first, but yeah. Maybe I did. Bottom line, I just had to know if you were gonna bolt right out of the gate. I didn’t want to put anything more into it, into you… you know, think about you any more, if you were gonna jet. That’s the truth.”
“I know you’ve been hurt, Ashley,” she said. “I understand.”
