At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

Ash polished off his drink and set it down. “I know I’m not exactly one to talk,” he began. “You let me drink the last couple months and never complained.”

“You had a good reason.”

He tipped his head at me. “True. I came out of it on the other side though because you never disappeared or pushed or tried to make me feel bad about slowly turning into an alcoholic.”

“Are you on the other side of it?” I asked honestly. Glad to not be talking about my own fucking problem.

Ash’s eyes went distant for a moment. A pain crossed his face. “I’m better. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully over it, but I don’t want to drink myself to death anymore. My work is suffering. My life is…” He trailed off. As if admitting everything that had been his last several months of existence would make it worse. “Look, it fucking sucks. I just want to be on the other side of it.”

“I’m glad.”

“I don’t want you there either.”

I breathed out heavily and downed the last of my whiskey. “Yeah.”

“So, what happened?”

“You’re actually asking?”

“I’ve known you a long-ass time, man. We’ve been through the wringer. And as much as I hated to see it, you and Marley were happy. Today on the sailboat, you were a different man. Even Amelia has been saying how happy she is for you. And she hated Kasey.”

“She didn’t hate her.” I didn’t know why I was defending Kasey when I currently despised my ex-wife.

Ash laughed. “Yeah, she did. She’s just good at hiding it. She has Ballentine-level emotional control.”

Huh. I knew that Mia hated Kasey now, but I hadn’t realized it was the whole time. Maybe she was a better judge of character than I was.

“Marley went back to Atlanta,” I finally confessed.

“Why?”

“Why do you think? I’m representing her mom in a case to take all the money and the only home she’s ever known.”

“Then drop the case.”

I blew out a harsh breath. “It’s a test from my father. This is how I get partner. It’s what I’ve been working a hundred hours a week to get. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted. And she said it wasn’t fair to ask me to quit and that it also wasn’t fair for us to be together with it between us. We’ve had fifteen years to get this together, and it’s not working. I asked her to stay, but she left.”

“I don’t know how to say this gently,” Ash said with narrowed eyes, “but fuck you.”

I laughed. “What the fuck?”

“Let me get this straight. She left because you care more about this case than her?”

“No.”

He continued as if he hadn’t heard me, “And have you considered that working a hundred hours a week is why you lost your last wife?”

I glared at him. “She was crazy.”

“She was. But you were never home, and she found other ways to entertain herself. Not the right ways, obviously, but it can’t be easy to never see the person you’re married to.”

I sat stock-still under Ash’s imperious gaze. He wasn’t wrong about Kasey, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear.

“Well, I plan to work less once I hit partner. It’ll be a moment to breathe.”

Ash raised his hand. “Just shut up for a second. Stop trying to rationalize this bullshit.” His face went suddenly deathly serious. “I would have given up anything to be with Lila. Anything. It didn’t work, and it wasn’t enough. Are you telling me that you can tell your dad to fuck off and drop this case and you won’t do it?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes or no, motherfucker?” Ash asked, getting heated. “Is your job more important than Marley?”

“No,” I ground out.

“Would you be fired for dropping this case?”

“No, but—”

“No,” he spat. “No, you fucking wouldn’t. And even if you were, you’re a goddamn Ballentine. So, who the fuck cares? You’d have another job tomorrow.”

“That’s not—”

“Do you love her?” Ash asked.

I gritted my teeth and then nodded. “Yeah, I fucking love her.”

“That’s what I thought. You’ve been happier in the last couple months than I’ve seen you in years. Kasey never made you happy like this. Not ever.”

I looked back at the last couple years of my life. Had I really not been happy with Kasey? I tried to remember what it had been like when we first met. With all the bullshit clouding our past, it was hard to think about it. But even then, even in the beginning, it had always been that we made sense. Not that I felt young and in love and carefree. I hadn’t. I’d just wanted someone to make me forget Marley.

I’d told myself that I was as happy as I had been with Mars, but it wasn’t true. It was always hard. It was always a problem. I just ignored the issues. It had been easier that way.