“And I mean what I say now. If Ash is another girl you want to fuck, we can dissolve Date Crashers right now.”
“Someday,” Dylan says, his hands shaking. “I’ll marry Ash… if that’s what she wants.”
Sloan looks at me, and I nod.
“So, it’s settled,” Sloan says, lifting his beer from the counter. “I’m going to bed.”
Sloan finishes his beer, throws it into the trash can, and then heads upstairs. When his door slams shut, Dylan spins me around, pulling me into his strong arms. He dips down to meet my height, and his lips brush against mine.
After we kiss for a while, Dylan carries me to his bedroom. A weight feels as if it has been lifted off my shoulders. Now that Sloan knows about us, we can finally be together.
Dylan lowers me to his mattress and crawls between my legs. He cups the side of my face with his hand and smiles, and my expression mirrors his.
“What you said to Sloan—”
“I meant it,” he breathes against my lips. “Every word. I love you, Ash, always have.”
“Then, you should know something.” I pause for a second to think about the best way to tell him about the past, hoping it doesn’t impact our future.
“Do you want kids?”
He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Someday, yeah, but not anytime soon.”
“I can’t have kids,” I blurt out.
“Yes, you can.”
I shake my head. “No, not anymore.”
“You were pregnant five years ago.”
“I should have told you sooner,” I admit. “I wasn’t sure if you would go through with telling my brother about us, and now that you did, I feel like you should know the truth.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you I had a miscarriage, but I lied.”
His expression darkens. “Please tell me you didn’t have my baby and give it up for adoption.”
“No. I was pregnant, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. My fallopian tubes are damaged… and I can’t get pregnant again.”
“Ash,” he says in a hushed tone. “I’m… I’m so sorry.” Dylan props himself up on his elbow and leans closer. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have been there for you. I wouldn’t have let you go through that by yourself.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I just wanted to be alone.”
He kisses my forehead, my cheek, and then my lips. “This doesn’t change how I feel about you, Ash.”
“But what if you want kids someday?”
“Your chances of conceiving might be unlikely, but nothing is impossible.”
“How can you be so okay with this?”
“Because I love you. I want to be with you.”
“You really don’t care?”
“I care about you,” he says with sincerity in his tone. “If it’s just you and me forever, I’m okay with that.”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” I whisper.
“I’m willing to take the chance,” he says with a grin. “As long as I have you, I’ll be happy whether we have kids or not.”
“You know, I think I may love you a little more than a burrito with extra rice and sour cream right now.”
His laughter shakes through me, and then he kisses me.
Chapter Thirty
Ash
Three months later…
Willow strolls into the café, dropping her bag on the ground as she takes her seat. I slide her favorite non-fat latte across the table in front of her with a smile.
“Two Splenda, extra foam, just the way you like it.”
She beams with delight. “Thanks, babe. This is exactly what I need after that long plane ride back with Burke.”
“How did that go?”
Weston Burke is one of Vinnie’s partners at Brenton-Lake. A few hours ago, Vinnie decided to drop Nico Chase, and I messaged Willow on her way back to Los Angeles from a business trip. Her boss said she could start signing new clients but only with his approval.
“Good, good,” she says, taking a sip from her cup. “We signed Carrie LeBlanc.”
My mouth widens in shock. “No way. That’s amazing.”
She nods. “I helped close the deal. And now, Burke is letting me work directly with our clients. I talked to him about Nico. He doesn’t want him, but he gave me the green-light to pursue him.”
“I feel kinda bad for Vinnie,” I admit. “After he got off the phone with Nico, he told me to cancel the rest of his afternoon and slammed his door.”
“So, why did he let him go?”
“All of the bad press. Plus, his movies haven’t done well at the box office in years.”
“The scripts for those movies weren’t very good,” she says. “He can turn his career around with the right project.”
I shake my head. “I doubt it. None of the studios will work with him.”
She leans forward, resting her elbow on the table. “If I approach him, what am I getting myself into? How bad is he?”
“You’ll have to repair his relationships with the studios. Do you remember when he cut his thigh while he was filming a scene in Off Road?” She nods, and I continue, “The studio made Nico take a drug test. The results came back negative for drugs but positive for alcohol. He’s a mess. Every time I’ve gone to his house, he was drunk. No one can get through to him.”