Dusk Snow Hides All Return (Rowan and Adrienne) novel Chapter 17

Chapter 17.

Adrienne stepping in personally coming down this hard, willing to publicly cut ties with Desmond – the message couldn’t have

been clearer.

Meanwhile, Adrienne had zero bandwidth left for the firestorm back home.

On the train to Montreal, she got a transoceanic call from Mr. Ashford Sr.

His voice came through old and exhausted, thick with congestion, like he’d been crying. “Adrienne… we, we saw what Desmond posted, and we saw your statement too…. That kid, he really… he was lying about all of it? The Walk–in Freezer, the car accident, those injuries on him… all of it was him…?”

“Mr. Ashford,” Adrienne cut him off. Her voice was just as drained, but there was no room for doubt in it. “Rowan never once hurt him. Not a single time. Desmond staged everything. All of us we all got played. We were blinded by our own favoritism.”

On the other end, she could hear Mrs. Ashford breaking down, sobbing, and Mr. Ashford Sr.’s heavy, choked breathing

“Then what we… what we did to Rowan… locking him up, making him take the fall…” Mrs. Ashford was crying too hard to get the words out. “How much pain must he have been in! He was still hurt! We… we aren’t human! Adrienne, you have to find Rowan… Please, tell him his mom and dad know we were wrong, we were fools, we failed him… Tell him to come home. We’ll make it up to him, we’ll spend the rest of our lives making it right, we’ll love him twice as much…”

Come home?

Adrienne’s lips twitched into a smile more painful than tears.

“Come home?” She stared out the train window at the bleak foreign autumn tearing past. Her voice came out quiet as a sigh. “Mr. Ashford. Mrs. Ashford. Do you really think he has a home to come back to?”

On the other end, the crying cut off. Just dead, heavy, suffocating silence.

A long time passed. Then Mr. Ashford Sr.’s voice came through, pagged and broken, drowning in regret. “We… we’re the ones who took his home away.”

Adrienne hung up and leaned against the cold window, eyes closed.

Rowan, did hear that? They regret it.

you

But it’s too late, isn’t it?

I regret it too.

I regret not seeing my own heart sooner. I regret not standing by your side when you needed me. I regret hirting you, pushing you away, over and over.

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