10. June #2
I want to spit back that I did wait. That I waited longer than anyone ever should. But my throat closes around the words. “Well, you thought wrong.”
There’s a shadow on his face that hasn’t been there before. He looks…undone. Less stone, more flesh. “I needed you, June. I needed someone who believed in me, even when the rest of the world was sharpening its knives.” His brow furrows, lined with pain, as he grits out, “I still do.”
I grip the railing until my fingers cramp. “And what about what I needed, Ashton? I needed you to be honest with me. I needed you not to make me feel like a fool every time someone asked what happened in New York or why I’d given up my whole life for a man who wouldn’t even meet my eyes in court.”
His hands flex on the railing, nails scraping the wood. “So, what, this is quid pro quo? I failed you, so you fail me back?”
It infuriates me—the righteousness, the refusal to see past his own narrative. “No, this is about me not letting anyone use me as a pawn again. Not after the year I just lived through.”
He’s breathing heavy now. The mask slips; everything he is or was or wanted to be leaks out in the way his face goes slack, the way his posture bows, almost unnoticeably, toward me. The fight is fully joined.
“Did you ever think I might’ve needed you to reach out anyway?” His voice is rough, the whisper of it nearly lost in the wind. “That maybe it wasn’t about legal strategies or optics but actually needing to know if you still gave a crap? Maybe it was about me needing my wife!”
I almost flinch. “I did give a crap. That’s why I didn’t call. That’s why I didn’t show up in court—I couldn’t risk being hurt again, Ashton.”
He drags one hand through his hair, breaking his own rule of composure. “So, all this time, you’ve just been sitting on your hands, waiting for me to show up and apologize?”
I shrug because the answer is yes. “I’ve been waiting for the truth.”
His stare softens, but it doesn’t lose its intensity. “You’re so sure if you wait long enough, the truth will be simple.”
He’s right. And so, so wrong.
I shake my head. “I didn’t want simple. I wanted real. I wanted the version of us that could survive the storm, remember?”
His face cracks at that. Just a little—but it’s what I’ve been looking for all along.
He’s quiet for a minute. A gull shrieks down the shoreline, and every hair on my arms stands at attention. “If you’d called…” he says, finally, voice metallic. “If you’d even texted, I would’ve answered. Even if all you gave me was the gift of hearing your voice.”
I blink, refusing to let tears steal the last word. “Why?” The question is more vulnerable than I mean it to be.
He seems startled by the force of it. “Because you’re it for me, June. Even after everything, that hasn’t changed. When I told you I loved you, I meant it. When I asked you to be my wife, it was for forever.”
The wind carves the words into the air. I let myself absorb them, let them settle against the wall I built so carefully.
I want to believe him. God help me, I do.
But I’m scared.
I can see he is, too.
The distance between us pulses, narrowing. My hands burn from holding the railing so tightly, but I can’t risk letting go—not yet.
“I’m not the same person you left behind,” I say, finally. “I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore.”
He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “I never expected you to be the same, June. I just hoped something would survive it.”
His words settle, gentle and jagged all at once.
The world shrinks to the slow slap of water, the creak of dock ropes, and the two of us standing stupidly apart, desperate to be understood.
I square my shoulders. “If you want honesty, here it is. I’m terrified. Terrified you’ll try to charm your way back into my life, and I’ll fall for it all over again. Terrified I’ll never know whether you ever loved me at all, or if I was just convenient.” The words shake free, ugly and needed.
He looks down, rubbing his thumb along a groove in the railing. “You were never convenient. You were the hardest, wildest part of my life, and I wouldn’t trade a second of it.” His voice is wrecked. He means it.
I know that now.
The anger slips away, replaced by something heavier—exhaustion, defeat, maybe even hope, if I squint. He lifts his eyes, and I swear there are tears there, glimmering at the edges.
We’ve hit bedrock. There’s nothing left to hide behind, nowhere else to run the circuits.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “We’re a mess,” I say.
He actually smiles. “We always were.”
He’s three feet away. Maybe less. And for the first time since this started, I allow myself to wonder if the distance can be crossed. If we want it to be.
I’m still braced on the railing when Ashton shifts—just enough for me to feel the difference in the air. The fight leaks out of us, replaced by a raw, unsettled quiet. The draw between us that’s always been there.
His eyes stray from mine, darting to the water, the yacht, then back to me.
Whatever walls he built before, they’re gone now—chopped down to nothing by the force of what just happened.
“They never told me anything, June. Not what changed. Not who else might be tangled up in it. One day I was under fire, the next—exonerated. Just like that. No explanation. I still have no idea how I got ensnared or how I got out.” He shrugs, the motion loose and haunted.
I study him. Hard.
All year, I’ve been expecting a mask—a trick, some artful dodge. But there’s nothing here except fatigue. It etches lines around his mouth; it drags at his shoulders. Every inch of him says he’s lived a hundred years since the last time we were together.
He keeps going, the words less argumentative, more confessional.
“I kept expecting the other shoe to drop. That maybe the feds would come after you or someone else. That’s why I stayed away.
I thought if I didn’t reach out, if I just let everything cool off, maybe you could get your life back.
” It’s hypnotic, the way pain can be quiet instead of loud.
“I don’t know who they’re after, but it isn’t me. Not anymore.”
It lands like a stone skipping the surface—slow, then fast.
The urge to keep interrogating is still there, but all I can do is look at his face, searching for the tells, the glances, the micro-expressions I’d trained myself to decode in my sleep. There aren’t any. He looks like a man with nothing left to spin.
For a moment, I see all the ways I might’ve been wrong. “So you’re just…free? Nothing hanging over you?”
He lets out a shaky exhale, nodding. “Nothing official. But you and I both know that’s not the same as safe.”
He’s right. Still, the truth of it shifts something fundamental in my gut. I want to be angry, I want to cling to the old grudge, but I can’t muster it. Not while looking at him.
I close the gap. Barely a foot of empty night left between us. My hand finds the rail right next to his, our knuckles nearly touching. “You could’ve told me.” This time, it isn’t an accusation. It’s hope, thin and wobbly.
He glances down, blinking too fast. When he looks back up, the hope in his eyes is so naked that it almost hurts. And to make matters worse, his whisper is so raw it’s still practically bleeding. “I didn’t want you dragged under with me. Not again.”
I nod, absorbing the weight of it. “I’d rather be in the mess with you than out here, pretending I’m not.”
He manages a laugh. It’s wrecked, but it’s genuine. “I never deserved you.”
I take a breath that tastes like brine, regret, and something dangerously close to forgiveness. “Maybe you did. Or maybe we both deserved a second chance.”
We’re unsteady—both swaying, like boats with their moorings shot out.
And then, suddenly, the space isn’t there at all.
It isn’t a kiss, not at first. I fold into his chest, arms sliding instinctively around his waist. He gathers me in, greedy and desperate, one hand in my hair and the other pressed to my back like he’s scared I’ll slip through the cracks if he lets go.
The impact snaps something electric through my spine. Our bodies find each other—easy, automatic, like picking up a favorite brush after a year of nothing but broken pencils. He buries his face in my neck. And I hold tight, refusing to let the fear creep back in.
When words return, they’re gentle.
He murmurs into my hair, “We don’t have to fix everything tonight.”
The relief that rushes through me almost drops me at his feet. “Good. Because I’m not sure I even know what fixing looks like.”
He tightens his grip. “We start here. With this.”
I let my body melt into his. For the first time since New York, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for disaster. I just stand there, arms wrapped around the only man who ever made sense and no sense at all. The serenity is almost worse than the pain had been—because I don’t know what to do with it.
With my cheek pressed to his chest, I whisper, “So, what now?”
He tucks his chin over my head, adjusting to cradle me closer. “We don’t rush. We don’t pretend the past is gone. We just…acclimate.”
The word makes me smile. “So we’re not going back to where we were?”
He shakes his head, just enough for me to feel the motion. “You’re still my wife—that won’t change—but we’ll find something better.”
That’s all the future I need for now.
We don’t need witnesses. We don’t need vows. Just an agreement—no more running. Not from each other, not from the mess.
I let myself believe, for a little while, that maybe the next sunrise will be kinder.
But for tonight, I have what I need. All of it. Him. Me. And a feeling I haven’t dared call home in far too long.