Page 63 of Enchant Me

This man’s heart has been poisoned against Damien. And I don’t know if there’s any way to fix that.

Under the circumstances, I’m surprised that Ashton lets us in to his hotel room so easily. It’s my first time up close with this man, and the moment is surreal. This is Damien’s son, after all.

As the door closes behind us, Damien walks past me. He passes Ashton the phone with the screen open to the blackmail demand.

I watch as Ashton’s eyes move as he reads the text. He looks up at Damien. “I didn’t send this,” he says. “But you already know that.”

“Do I?” Damien’s face is a mask, showing no emotion at all. Even I can’t read it. And I have no idea what Ashton’s talking about. Damien had been silent in the car, and I hadn’t wanted to press as he works through all the pieces of this family drama.

Ashton scoffs. “If you really thought I’d sent this, you’d release it to the press. Reveal me as a hypocrite.”

“Would I?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe I believe you had a shit childhood, and I’m sorry about that. Maybe I wish I’d known you existed, and I’m sorry about that, too. Maybe that’s something you and I will both have to live with for the rest of our lives.”

He pauses, drawing a breath. “I know you’re hurt, and I get that. You’re pissed, and I get that, too. You want to know why someone kept you a secret from me, and so do I.”

He reaches for me, and I take his hand. “But I don’t think you sent that note. On the drive over, I wasn’t completely sure. Now, I think I am.”

“Think?”

“When Nikki got pregnant for the first time, we had a talk about how we would raise our kids,” he says, in what seems to be a complete non sequitur. “Ashley didn’t survive to birth, but everything we talked about that day was reiterated when we adopted Lara, then again when Anne and Bradley were born. Your sisters and brother.”

Ashton is slowly shaking his head, clearly confused by the direction of Damien’s thoughts. “What does that—”

“We swore we would tell them the truth. Always. We might pull it back to a kid-friendly truth, but we weren’t going to lie to our children. I figure you fall within parameters.”

“I see.” We’ve been talking in the small entryway. Now, Ashton turns and heads to the sitting area. Damien and I follow.

“I still don’t understand why you think I didn’t send that text.”

Damien shrugs, his mouth curving up at the corner. “Call it a father’s intuition. Or maybe I still owe you one more truth. For that matter, maybe you owe me one.”

Ashton stares at him for a moment, then starts to chuckle. “I feel like I’m living in an alternate reality. And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but yeah. I do know Jeremiah. He’s the one who told me you’d snubbed me.”

Damien nods. “I know.” He opens the phone again, this time showing Ashton the picture of him talking with Jeremiah.

Ashton groans, and rubs his hands over his mouth and nose. After a moment, he looks between the two of us. “I was telling him what happened. That you’d offered me the trust, so that maybe you weren’t the shit that he thought you were. Maybe you were okay.”

“And what did say?”

“He said you played games.”

“I do,” Damien said. “But not about this.”

Ashton got up and went to the window, looking out over Century City toward the Pacific Ocean. “Yeah,” Ashton said. “I’m starting to believe you.”

18

Damien forced himself not to let his emotions show on his face, but damned if that wasn’t hard. There was such joy in knowing that Ashton had this breakthrough, small as it might be. That the son he hadn’t known he had—the son who had been raised to hate him and distrust him—was no longer looking through the lens that Jeremiah Stark had handed him.

God, how he hated that man. The father whose blood ran in both his and Ashton’s veins. Jeremiah had poisoned them; he’d poisoned their lives. But somehow, Damien had come out ahead. He’d survived, and he’d thrived. And from what he could see, Ashton was doing the same.

Jeremiah might have been in Ashton’s life, but with the exception of the poison that Jeremiah had fed him about Damien, Ashton was doing well. And that made him proud. Possibly a ridiculous feeling, considering he’d had nothing to do with Ashton’s upbringing, but he liked to think that whatever strength and fortitude were in the man had come from him.

He was trying to find a way to express all of that to Ashton without sounding too sentimental, when his phone pinged. It was on the coffee table, and he reached for it, then saw that it was a text from Matthew Holt.