Page 42 of Sentinel's Kiss
“He’d care.” Ashley leaned her head against his shoulder. He let go of her hand to put his arm around her. The highway was clear enough that he could steer with one hand.
“You told me about your dad. How’s he recovering?”
“Kicking and screaming,” she said with a giggle. She blew her nose on one of the napkins and tossed it in the empty doughnut bag. “My brother has his own family. He’s a journalist too. He’s back from Syria to film the Netflix special, but he’ll be flying somewhere else real soon. He can’t stay in one place. Luckily, his wife doesn’t mind. They take my niece and nephew with them and travel around the world.”
“Sounds great.”
Ashley shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a big fan of indoor plumbing and air-conditioning myself.”
“Wuss,” he said, squeezing her.
“Yeah, that’s me. A little dysentery, malaria, and genocide and I have to have a nap with a cold compress over my eyes.”
She was sounding much more like her old self, and that helped ease the feeling of helplessness he’d experienced when she freaked out. He stroked up and down her arm and he thought she had fallen asleep. He couldn’t blame her; he would have liked to have nodded off as well. He would have slept a lot better last night if she had been in his arms. That’s why she couldn’t be a booty call anymore. But as they entered Pennsylvania, she started to speak again.
“I got pregnant in high school.”
He tightened his arm around her. “You don’t have to tell me right now.”
“I want you to understand. If this relationship is going to exist beyond the bedroom, you need to know this part of me.”
“All right,” he said.
“My family was disappointed in me, but supportive. My boyfriend wasn’t thrilled, but he stood beside me. We decided to keep it. Her. Her name was Dawn.”
A sick feeling started to grow in his stomach. He held her tight.
“I had a trauma and she came early.” Ashley’s voice was flat and emotionless.
Sentinel held in his groan. No wonder she didn’t want to hear about the babies.
“She didn’t survive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Everybody was,” she whispered. “But they were also relieved. I wasn’t relieved. I wasn’t able to grieve. I wanted to die too. But no one wanted to hear that. So I chased death my own way.”
Sentinel pulled her closer and kissed her forehead.
“I’m still not over it. Obviously. But I’m trying. Some days are better than others. The better days are when people don’t say, ‘It’s been twelve years, get over it already.’ There’s more, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
“Did it change your mind, about the girlfriend thing? Because I’m still all right with it just being about occasional sex.”
“I’m not,” he said, and he meant it.
—
Ashley’s emotions were all over the place and her head was spinning. They drove for a while in silence. She didn’t know what to say or how to handle this. Rubbing her arms, she felt like she was going to climb out of her skin. She didn’t want to have Dawn and Brett in her mind right now. They existed in the quiet when she was alone. Certainly not when she was out on a date or with a man she just had sex with.
Brett’s face haunted her, but mostly because she couldn’t remember it as clearly as she wanted to anymore. It was a betrayal far worse than just randomly sleeping with a stranger. It was a betrayal even though she was only now starting her first real relationship since she was sixteen.
Fuck, this couldn’t be happening.
She wanted to forget these emotions. Glancing over at the speedometer, she saw they were doing eighty. But it wasn’t enough speed. Looking at the billboards, she didn’t see anything that would send her adrenaline into overdrive. They were on a long, rural stretch of road with no one even in sight.
No one in sight.