He lost Jenna. He would understand.
Pulling away from his urgent kiss, I looked him in the eyes. “Ashton … I need you to know something.”
This was it. Do or die. What had started as a simple kiss in the river had morphed into passionate sex in his grandmother’s guest house, and now it was going firmly into a relationship zone. He needed to know, even if it broke us before we could begin.
He frowned. “What?”
Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself. “I came here—”
A loud smack against the glass front door made a shattering noise, filling the space as we both leapt off the counter and ran to see what had happened.
“God dammit, Wayne!” Ashton cursed as my gaze fell on the front door. The glass was shattered into a hundred pieces with Wayne standing there, holding his arm, which was bleeding.
My eyes widened. “Ohmygosh!” I rushed forward, grabbing a cloth napkin as I did. “Are you okay?”
Wayne swayed where he stood, rocking like a gust of wind was about to knock him over. “I burrily yunkked it,” he slurred as I flipped the lock on the door and opened it, glass crunching at my feet.
Reaching out to wrap his arm with the cloth, I looked down and my eyes widened. It was a bad cut. Was that bone?
“Ashton we need to take him to the hospital.” I wrapped it quickly and looked over, expecting to see concern in his gaze, but all I saw was venom.
“I’ll call 911, they can deal with it,” was all he said, and dialed on his phone.
My eyes widened.
Was he serious?
He hated his father that much that he wouldn’t even drive him to the hospital … unbelievable. I knew they had problems, but this wasn’t the Ashton I wanted to see. Family was family no matter what. You didn’t give up on them because they had a disease. I knew that was easy to say from my perspective with my perfect, still-married parents, but still. The way Ashton treated his father made me sick.
I helped Wayne step through the now open glass frame door and made him lay down and hold his arm above his head.
“Hey, I got a homeless man over at Wayne’s Place bar,” Ashton told the operator on the phone, no emotion in his voice, no indication that this was the man who gave him life. “He crashed through my glass door and cut himself pretty bad. Seems pretty drunk. Can you send an ambulance?”
There was a pause. “Thank you.”
Ashton hung up and a strangled gasp left my throat. “Are you fucking serious? This is your father!”
I understood that being raised by an alcoholic must have been hard, but this was fucked up. Ashton’s eyes narrowed. “Princess gonna judge me now?”
“Itz my fuallt,” Wayne mumbled.
I sighed. “No it’s not. It was an accident,” I told him, eyeing the insane amount of blood coming from his arm. What if he hit a major artery?
Julie. My best friend popped into my head and I texted her. Completely forgetting she was upstairs and an ER nurse!
Me: 911 come down to bar. Ashton’s drunk dad bleeding out.
I was going to ignore Ashton, but he stepped forward, glaring his father down. “Everything’s your fault, old man. Everything.”
“Ashton Knight!” I shouted. What if his father bled out right now? How would he feel if that was the last thing he’d said to him?
“Hiz right.” Wayne nodded, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I killed ‘er. My baby guurl.”
Every hair on my arms stood up then.
No.
The accident Ashton got in with his sister … Wayne wasn’t driving … was he? Was he driving drunk?
I looked up at Ashton and his face fell, confirming my thoughts. “It wasn’t enough that you have to ruin your own life, but you had to ruin mine too.” He chucked the phone and it hit the wall, splitting into two pieces. “I’m done with you, old man!”
Ashton left the bar through the back door just as Julie burst inside and they almost collided. She was carrying kitchen towels and my favorite skinny belt.
“Over here!” I shouted for her, unable to process what I’d just witnessed. Ashton’s dad killed his twin sister. Nearly killed him.
Wayne was the reason Ashton needed Colin’s heart.
Holy fuck.
My head swam with dizziness as I processed that information.
Julie took in the scene before me and went right into ER nurse mode. “Move!” she barked.
I stood and she lifted Wayne’s arm, tying the belt around his upper arm and cinched it tight. Wayne just stared at the ceiling, tears rolling down his cheeks.
This was heavy, heavy shit. I didn’t want to be here right now, dealing with this, seeing the blood. It was starting to remind me of the night Colin died.
Wayne killed Jenna. Ashton almost died. Colin saved Ashton. My mind was racing a mile a minute as I stared at the door Ashton had run through.
What would it be like to live with knowing your own father accidently killed your sister? And yet he still fed him, let him sleep at the bar and not on the street.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized Ashton was a kinder soul than I’d given him credit for. I’d judged him all wrong.
Sirens wailed in the distance and I had to shake my head to clear the thoughts.
“Get yourself together, hun,” Julie said, and I realized I was openly sobbing.
Wiping my eyes, I straightened my hair as the EMTs rushed into the bar.
“What happened?” They looked at the glass and then at Wayne.
I swallowed hard. “He fell through. It was an accident. Cut his arm. He’s drunk.”
“He’s got a deep laceration on his inner forearm, might have hit the brachial artery,” Julie told them.
They nodded, strapping him into a gurney. “Cops should be on their way to file a report if you want to press
