Page 194 of Wicked Angel
Was I here to ask her to photograph me? To use her connections with Dirty to help my career somehow?
All I wanted was to apologize, like I said.
“I figured out that I was in the wrong band. With the wrong people. Noah Vaughan aside. And it was time to let go. Build something new.”
“That happens,” she said evenly.Where the hell are you going with this?her guarded expression seemed to say. If I was here to make excuses about why I’d broken up withher, clearly, she didn’t want to hear it.
I couldn’t blame her.
But I didn’t have any excuses.
I’d realized, through a pretty deep conversation with Noah last night, on the heels of similar conversations with Shane and Lex—conversations where I’d told them all basically the same story I told Angeline about the carjacking and the shooting from my childhood and my PTSD—that I’d fucked up. Badly.
I couldn’t make any amends with my mom; it was too late for that. She’d died, and there was nothing I could do about the way I’d hurt her by refusing to see her those last few years. But there was one more person who I needed to speak with, someone who’d suffered serious collateral damage from that traumatic event in my life through no fault of her own.
Amber had loved me, and I’d hurt her. Badly.
I had no idea if she’d forgive me. But I needed to try to make amends. I couldn’t just run from the damage I’d suffered and the damage I’d caused forever.
“I also realized recently that I never did tell you I was sorry.”
She frowned, entirely skeptical. “You just realized that?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been nine years, Johnny.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m a slow-ass learner.”
She studied me, like she was expecting to catch me smiling, making a joke. I wasn’t joking.
“I cheated on you.” I didn’t say it to hurt her. I was trying to take ownership of the shit I’d done. “Many times.” I realized this probably wasn’t news to her. She knew about at least some of those times.
“We were only together for a very short time,” she pointed out.
“Yes.”
“Seven months,” she said. “Really seems short now. But, seven months of my life, Johnny. And married for only sixteen days…”
“Yes.”
“And you were with multiple other women.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you marry me?” she asked me, kinda like she’d wanted to ask me for years, and yet the answer really didn’t matter, because it didn’t. Not anymore.
“Because I wanted to.”
She actually rolled her eyes slightly.
Maybe it didn’t matter. But I knew she deserved more than that.
“I was drawn to you,” I told her, “because you had this thing about you. This soft, down-to-earth thing that made me feel safe, and at the same time, you had a guardedness about you, like you didn’t want to give your heart away too easily. I think I partly liked the challenge of winning you over.”
“So I was a game to you.”
“No. You were something lovely that I didn’t know if I deserved. And I liked how hard for me you fell. It felt good.”
