Mack sat in Charlie’s trailer, trying to get her mind off Ash. She knew as long as she stayed there, it would be impossible. He almost literally drove her crazy. On the one hand he acted like he hated her, but then he did something crazy like attacking Tensee for taking her out for a drive in his new convertible BMW. Wolf had gone into that office with him and everyone had scattered like roaches. It made her worry about what his punishment would be. She didn’t know Wolf well, but he had looked royally pissed off.

Tensee, on the other hand, seemed to be taking it well. At the time, he got as much into the fight as Ash had. Mack was appalled at Ash, but in the same vein each time one of Tensee’s fists connected with him, she wanted to pick up a bottle off the bar and crack it over the fighter’s head to get him to stop. When it was all over, though, the young fighter was smiling, and she even heard him telling his own boss, Jacob Wright, that it had been no big deal. He stood there with an ice pack to his jaw, laughing about it, and he’d even apologized to Mack when it was all over. That was more than she could say for Ash, whom she hadn’t even seen since the fight.

The worst of it all was probably Sledge, though. Now that she was alone, the memories of them as kids came flooding back. Sledge had always been big, and to his detriment, smart. Sledge was raised by a single mother who spent a lot of time out looking for a man, and not much time with her son...or working to support him. They lived in a trailer park on the worst side of town and until he was in middle school, he practically raised himself. Luckily, his brain kept him out of the kind of trouble he could have gotten into unsupervised. He was no angel for sure...but by the time he was thirteen he’d qualified for a scholarship to one of the most exclusive private schools in Manhattan...the school that Mack and Ash both attended. But that was where Sledge’s problems only got worse.

They all wore uniforms, but even so, the other kids could look at Sledge’s shaggy hair and acne-riddled skin and they knew at a glance that he wasn’t like them. Most of the kids at that school were heirs or heiresses to fortunes. They were the sons and daughters of CEOs, politicians, oil barons, and the like. Unfortunately, being raised with that kind of money and privilege didn’t make them nice people either. A group of them...a very large, very popular group...made it their mission to antagonize poor Sledge, and the day she decided Ash was her hero and she was going to love him forever, was the day he stood up to them all, and took Sledge’s side.

She and Ash were already friends, but from that day on the three of them became inseparable. Their loyalty to Sledge hadn’t made the others decide to be nice to him. As a matter of fact, it earned them their own torment. But neither of them ever walked away from him...and although Mack understood that Sledge’s hatred of her now was because of his love for Ash...it still hurt. As she’d been walking out of the great room earlier, Sledge had stopped her at the door. His words had been hurtful, but it was the disgusted look on his face that hurt the most as he said something to her that she had heard one of his tormentors say to him once, a long time ago,

“You need to disappear. You’re no good to anyone. Why won’t you just go away?” She had held back the tears, and even spent the next two hours after she convinced Charlie she wasn’t going to talk about Ash...talking about business. Charlie was offering her one hell of an opportunity. It was something she wasn’t even sure she was qualified for, being the CEO of Bennett enterprises in Manhattan. She told Mack they would still have to sit down with the company attorneys, but the unofficial offer was for five years, until Charlie could get her life together and at least get started toward a business degree...or find someone else to do the job, if Charlie decided it wasn’t what she wanted to do. As of then, the girl didn’t know, and Mack didn’t blame her. Fifteen was much too young to have to even think about things like that. Even if the job weren’t going to benefit Mack in a way that no job she’d had thus far had, she might have considered taking it, just to take some of the pressure off Charlie. Mack wished that Allison would step up and be a real mother and stop caring so much about the money. But she doubted that would happen, at least any time soon.

Once she’d promised Charlie she would seriously consider it, Charlie returned to the party and Mack took refuge in the fifth-wheel, unwilling to show her face, afraid that everyone might think the same thing as Sledge did...that this was all her fault. She had thought about leaving for the airport and seeing if she could get an earlier flight home, but decided to wait it out for the night and leave early in the morning. She sat on the little sofa and listened to the sounds of the party going on outside and her thoughts began to turn to the days leading up to her and Ash’s wedding. Up until then, those had been some of the happiest days of her life. Ash had proposed to her at a club on top of one of the tallest buildings in New York. The full moon was out, and her favorite song had been playing in the background. He got down on one knee and told her that she was the most precious thing in the world to him and he wanted her to be his forever...and then he’d slipped a gorgeous ring on her finger. Ash knew her so well back then. He hadn’t bought her a ten-thousand-dollar diamond ring, or even sapphires or other precious stones. What Mack loved was simplicity, and the ring he slipped on her finger, a solid gold band with an infinity knot on top, was exactly what she would have picked out for herself.

The only drawback to planning her wedding had been the new job she’d taken only weeks before Ash proposed. Her boss was demanding, and he wasn’t a nice man; Mack felt overwhelmed a lot of the time. Things only got worse when her boss began hitting on her. She turned him down over and over. Even if she hadn’t been with Ash, the man was at least thirty years her senior and married. He told her that he and his wife had an “agreement,” but Mack wanted no part of any of it. She didn’t tell Ash about the pressure her boss was putting on her, or the “accidental” touches or the late-night meetings that just the two of them were present for. She knew if she had, that he, and maybe Sledge, would get themselves into trouble defending her. She didn’t tell her own parents, her mother and stepfather. By that time, they had both retired from their jobs as political advisers and were finally living in the dream house they’d bought in upstate New York and enjoying a life of no pressure. She didn’t have any really close girlfriends, she and her stepsister weren’t close, and she’d always just spent her time with Ash and Sledge. At one point, finally so sick and tired of it, she’d finally told someone...and that was where she made her fatal mistake. Okay, so it wasn’t fatal...she didn’t die...but for a long time afterward, she wished that she had.

Her memories were beginning to move toward the darkest days when, thankfully, a knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. She had to shake herself when she got up, trying to leave those ugly thoughts behind and pasting a fake smile on her face when she pulled open the door. She let the smile fall as soon as she saw who it was. “Ash...Charlie isn’t here...”

“I know. She’s putting the baby to bed so Sabrina and Bruf can stay at the party for a while. She told me you were here.”

“Oh...”

“Can I come in?”

“Okay, I guess.” She stepped back and let him in. His face was bruised on one side and his right eye was swollen. His lips were puffy too and he had a small cut along one side. It looked painful, but since he’d started the whole thing, she had little sympathy for him at that moment. As soon as she closed the door he said:

“I’m sorry. I acted like a huge ass today. It won’t happen again.”

She was surprised. The old Ash used to be good with words and apologies, but the guy she was getting to know again didn’t seem to be. It took her a few seconds before she finally said, “Thank you. But you won’t have to worry anyway. I’m leaving in the morning and I’ll stay away. Sledge is right, I’m nothing but trouble to you.”

He sighed and sat down on the couch, burying his face in his hands for a second before looking back up at her. “Sledge just worries about me...too much. He’s got this eternally grateful thing going on since middle school, you know that. He doesn’t mean the things he says to you...it actually hurt him, to pick a side.”

She chuckled at that. “He doesn’t seem all torn up over it. He’s firmly on your side. But that’s okay, I understand. Anyway, I’m sure it will be better for all of us if I stay away. If Charlie needs me, we’ll find somewhere else to meet, or she can fly home and see me there.”

“I appreciate the way you look after her.”

She sat on the edge of the small couch. She didn’t trust herself to get any closer. She wanted to touch him so badly, even when she was angry enough at him to chew off his head. It was confusing and annoying as hell. “I like Charlie. She’s like my own little sister. When I was working with your dad, she was around a lot. We went shopping together and I took her to the zoo and roller-skating in the park. We had some really good times. I miss her.”

“Thank you for being there for her. I should have been there.” Mack wasn’t going to tell him he was wrong there. She always thought he should have been too. No matter how angry he was with her, there had been no reason to punish his family for it. “I can’t make up for all that time she and I lost, but I hope I can figure out a way to have a relationship with her now. She doesn’t make it easy.”

Mack smiled. “She’s still punishing you. I know a little something about that.”

Ash grimaced. “Fuck, Mack. You broke me. You fucking broke me and I didn’t know how to go on.”

It was the most real thing he’d said to her in five years and she wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Offering another empty apology wouldn’t do either of them any good. For the first time in five years she wondered whether, if she had handled the whole thing differently from the beginning, all of their lives would have turned out better. “I never meant to hurt you, Ash. God help me, I’ll regret what I did to you for the rest of my life.”

“Why, Mack? You never told me why.”

She slid down off the arm of the couch onto the cushion. Five years ago she’d had a million different lies prepared for when he asked that question...but he’d never asked it. Instead, he had packed up his things and gone home with Sledge...and he’d refused to talk to her. Nobody knew why except her, her ex-boss, his wife and daughter...and right before he died, Asher Bennett III. When Ash’s father heard the story, he’d urged her to tell his son. He told her that Ash was more mature now and could handle it. Seeing how he reacted to Tensee today made her glad that she hadn’t.

“Does it matter now?” she asked him.

He put his head back into the couch. “Maybe not,” he said. “For five years I told myself it didn’t matter, and I managed to make a life...a good life that I love. I never forgot and obviously, couldn’t forgive, but I moved on. Then I saw you again and it all came rushing back. I can’t get you out of my head and I fucking wanted to kill Tensee today when I thought you...” He growled and shook his head.

“I didn’t do anything with that kid except take a ride in his car.”

He nodded. “I know. I feel like shit for attacking him. I’m embarrassed as hell. I apologized to everyone, but I know they’re still all thinking that I’m a fucking idiot and I’ll probably never live it down.”

“What did Wolf say?”

He chuckled. “That I’m a fucking idiot. I’ve got guard duty in an hour...and the rest of the week, night shift.”

Mack smiled. “I guess that’s a lot less punishment than I thought you might get, so that’s good.”

Ash nodded. He turned and looked at her then and she could feel the sadness in his eyes. “You keep changing the subject, Mack. Don’t you think I deserve to at least know why you left me? Maybe...I don’t know, maybe it would help me let go, if I knew.”

“It wouldn’t,” she said. “I need to just go home and let you move on with your life. I’m sorry...for everything.”

“You don’t get it. I don’t want you to go home. I don’t want to move on with my life and act like I never knew you while still carrying all this hurt and anger around inside of me.”

“You and I would never work, Ash.” She said the words, but her heart was screaming at her to shut up. She wanted nothing more than to be with him. But it wasn’t possible. He’d never forgive her...or if she told him the truth, he might end up in jail. Either way, he lost, and she’d be just as much without him as she ever was. “You would never be able to fully forgive me, and I couldn’t live with a man that didn’t trust me, even if it was my own damned fault.”

“Then just tell me the fucking truth, Mack!” She jumped at the sudden increase in volume of his voice. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell...but fuck! I’m begging you here, Mack. Just fucking tell me.”

“I just didn’t want to be with you anymore,” she said, nearly choking on her words...and watching him crumble before her eyes.