👑Out of Chamber (Book 1.5) {Age-Gap}

Ashleigh's POV

The SUV slows as it turns onto the private drive, gravel giving way to smooth pavers, and I already know this stretch of road too well. Palm trees lining the path like sentries.

I’ve been here before. Last time, I remember what it felt like. The quiet, and I remember thinking I could breathe here.

I don’t feel any of that now. I just feel empty.

Wesley’s beside me, close enough that his knee brushes mine every time the car takes a turn, but he hasn’t said much since we left the airport. I don’t think either of us has the words yet. I stare out the window at the estate coming into view. The white stone, wide windows catching the late afternoon sun. Bougainvillea climbing the far wall in shades of pink but none of it registers the way it should. I know it’s beautiful, but today I just can’t feel it.

My reflection in the glass is pale and hollowed out, and I look away from it fast.

The SUV rolls to a stop under the portico. Neither of us moves right away.

“You okay?” Wesley asks, quietly.

“No,” I say, because I’m too tired to pretend otherwise.

Something in his jaw tightens, like that answer costs him something too. He reaches over and squeezes my hand once, brief, grounding, then opens his door.

The driver’s already pulling my bags from the trunk, and I watch him like it’s happening to someone else, like I’m not the one who packed that suitcase in a daze, throwing things in without really seeing them.

The front door opens before we reach it.

Serena is exactly as I remember her—composed, elegant. But her eyes find mine immediately, and whatever she sees there makes something in her expression soften.

She doesn’t say anything at first. She just crosses the distance between us and pulls me into her arms.

I go rigid for half a second before I let her hold me. She smells like jasmine, and her arms are steady around my shoulders in a way that makes my throat go tight.

Over her shoulder, I catch Wesley watching us, his hands shoved in his pockets, his expression unreadable except for the tightness around his mouth.

Serena pulls back, hands still braced on my arms, and studies my face like she’s cataloguing every hollow, every shadow. “Look at you,” she says softly, and it isn’t a compliment. It’s an observation, gentle and grieved.

“I’m okay,” I say, which is a lie so thin it doesn’t even sound convincing to me.

Serena doesn’t call me on it. She just squeezes my arms once and lets go. She turns to Wesley with a warmth that’s different from what she just gave me. Something older. “Wesley.”

“Serena.” He steps forward, and they embrace briefly, the kind of hug between people who trust each other. “Thank you for this.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” Her eyes flick to me, then back to him, something passing between them I can’t quite read. “She’s exactly where she needs to be.”

We move through the house like a procession, Wesley trailing behind while Serena guides me through the foyer and into what I recognize as the sitting room—cream linens and floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the ocean like it’s meant to be part of the decor. There’s a salty breeze coming through and it does nothing to ease the weight pressing down on my chest.

Serena settles onto one of the sofas, gesturing for me to sit. I choose the chair across from her needing the distance, needing something that feels like my own space even if it’s just a few feet of air between us. Wesley takes the other end of the sofa, his presence a kind of anchor I’m not sure I want.

“Can I get you anything?” Serena asks. “Tea? Water? Something stronger?”

I shake my head. My throat feels too tight for anything.

She waits patiently. She’s always been patient, which somehow makes this harder. She folds her hands in her lap, and her eyes find mine, not demanding, just open. Inviting.

“Ashleigh,” she says softly, “if you’re comfortable telling me... what happened? Your email said you were looking for a change of pace, and Wesley called me last night and said you needed to get away, but he didn’t give me the details. I’d like to hear it from you, if you’re ready.”

The gentleness of the ask cracks something open in me. It would be easier if she demanded it, if she was clinical about it. But her careful consideration of whether I can handle saying the words out loud almost breaks me.

I take a breath, and then I start.

“You know I was working at Fordham Consulting,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “As a policy fellow."

She nods.

"Well, I was—” I hesitate, “I—was— sleeping with my boss.”

Saying it makes my stomach turn.

“It was supposed to be private,” I continue, and my voice cracks slightly. “But someone found out. There was an accusation made in front of the entire office during a meeting.”

Serena’s expression doesn’t change, but I see her process it. She’s a smart woman. She knows what it means.

“Liam said the optics were impossible to manage,” I say, and there’s bitterness in my voice now that I can’t quite suppress. “So we agreed to a mutual resignation. For the firm’s sake. For his sake… and for mine, I guess.”

I finally look up at Wesley. His jaw is tight, his hands clenched in his lap.

“I trusted him,” I whisper. “I thought he’d protect me, but he didn’t. He threw me under the bus.”

The shame of being discarded so efficiently, so professionally, lands hard. I got fired and then gaslit into thinking it was good for me.

Serena leans forward slightly. “And you’re worried about what comes next? About how this affects you professionally?”

I nod, the fear spilling out now. “Everyone at the firm knows what happened. How long before it gets out? How long before it becomes the story about Ashleigh Sullivan, the girl who slept with the boss and torpedoed her own career? I was on a path, and now—” I stop, my jaw clenching. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have a career in DC again.”

Wesley stands up abruptly. He doesn’t interrupt, just moves to the window, his shoulders tight. I watch him take a breath, compose himself, turn back to face us.

“It’s been contained,” he says, his voice steady and sure in a way that cuts through my spiral. “No social media blowout, no whisper campaigns on the Hill. Nothing.”

I want to believe him. The wanting of it aches in my chest.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“Because I made sure of it,” he says simply. “Conversations were had. Damage control happened.”

My stomach drops. He cleaned up after me. Wesley Whitmore, with his networks and his influence and his ability to make things disappear, made sure the wreckage of my life stayed contained to a single firm instead of burning its way across the entire political landscape.

“When you’re ready,” he continues, quieter now, “when you’ve taken time to breathe and heal, you can go back to DC. Your career isn’t over, Ashleigh. But right now, you need to focus on yourself.”

Serena nods, picking up the thread. “Don’t worry about it now. Don’t worry about any of it. You came here to get yourself back, and that’s all that matters. Everything else—the politics, the career, the aftermath—it can wait. Your mental health can’t.”

The kindness in her voice is almost worse than anger would have been. Anger I could fight. This gentle insistence that I matter more than my ambition, that my survival is more important than my trajectory cracks something open in me.

But I don’t fall apart. I just sit there, hollow and numb, and let them tell me things will be okay while some part of me doesn’t believe them.

Wesley watches me for a long moment, and I can see him cataloguing the doubt on my face, the way my hands are trembling slightly, the fact that I haven’t managed to cry even though I feel like I’m drowning.

“There’s something else,” he says, and his voice takes on that careful quality it gets when he’s about to ask me to do something difficult. He moves back to the sofa, sitting on the edge of it now, closer to me than before. “I found a program. It’s an intensive outpatient program—dual diagnosis, which means they treat the depression and the substance use together. It’s six weeks, a few sessions a week.”

I don’t respond right away. The words are landing but they’re not connecting cleanly. Substance use. Like I’m someone with a problem. Like I’m someone who needs an intervention instead of someone who was just... coping. Managing. Surviving the way anyone would.

“What substance?” Serena asks, looking at me, then to Wesley.

“Ambien. I—I took a few too many,” I try to down play. “I’m fine,” I say, and even I can hear how hollow it sounds. “I already told my parents I don’t need a program. I came here to work at the foundation. That’s why I’m here.”

Serena tilts her head slightly, studying me with that same patient, unhurried attention. “What did they say?”

“They don’t agree but it’s my decision. They think I need help. But it’s not like that.” My voice comes out shriller than I mean it to. “I didn’t fly down here to be treated like I’m falling apart. I can handle this. I’ve always handled things.”

“I know you can,” Serena says gently. “You’ve handled more than most people twice your age ever will. That was never in question.”

“Then why—”

“Because handling things and healing from them aren’t the same,” she says, cutting in softly, no edge to it at all. “Pushing through, holding it together, being the person everyone else can depend on. I’m not asking you to stop being capable. I’m asking you to let yourself be taken care of, just this once.”

I open my mouth to argue and find I don’t have anything behind it.

“The position at the foundation isn’t going anywhere,” Serena continues. “It’ll be there when you’re ready for it. I’m not offering it to you because I need bodies in the building. I’m offering it because I’ve seen what you’re capable of. I’m looking forward to what you’ll do here.” She pauses, her eyes steady on mine. “But I need you healthy first. Not performing healthy. Actually healthy. That has to come before anything else, or none of the rest of it will matter.”

The words land somewhere soft and aching in my chest, and I have to look away, out toward the window, toward the ocean I still can’t quite bring myself to feel anything about.

“I don’t know how to just... stop,” I admit, quiet now. “Stop pushing. Stop proving something.”

“I know,” Wesley says. “That’s what the program is for.”

“Wesley—” I start, but he’s already moving closer, crouching slightly so we’re eye level.

“I’m worried about you,” he says, and the rawness in his voice stops me cold. “You took Ambien like it was water back in DC. You slept for two days straight, and I couldn’t wake you, and for a few minutes I didn’t know if—” He stops himself, jaw tightening, like he can’t finish that sentence without it undoing him. “You need help. Real help.”

The weight of his care is suffocating in the best and worst way. That he cared enough to research, to vet, to arrange all of it quietly while I was barely functioning. That he’s standing here in front of Serena and me, admitting he was scared, admitting he watched me slip somewhere he couldn’t follow.

I nod slowly. He’s not wrong. I know he’s not wrong.

And then, because his honesty cracked something loose in me, I find myself saying the rest before I can stop it.

“There’s something else I need to tell you,” I whisper. “About how I’ve actually been handling things. It’s not just the Ambien.”

His brow furrows slightly, waiting.

“I used Adderall,” I say. “I’ve been using it for years. To study. To work. To keep up, to push through the day when I felt like I was falling behind everyone else.” My voice starts to shake. “I’d take it before big meetings, before presentations, whenever I needed to be sharper, faster, better than everyone around me. And then I’d crash, and I’d take more to get back up again.”

Serena’s expression doesn’t shift, but I see something flicker across Wesley’s face. A kind of grim recognition, like some part of him suspected this but hearing me actually say it makes it undeniable.

“When things fell apart with Liam, when I got pushed out,” I continue, the confession spilling faster now that I’ve started, like a dam giving way, “I just used more of both. The Ambien to sleep. The Adderall to wake up and pretend I was fine. I was just trying to survive it, one day at a time, and I didn’t care what it took.”

Wesley doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just reaches for my hand, and this time I let him take it.

“That’s what we’re going to address,” he says finally. “All of it. Not just the depression. The program will help with both, if you let it. And you’ll have people helping you. Me. Serena. Your parents. You’re not going to do this by yourself.”

I want to believe him. I want to believe that six weeks in a program, that saying all of this out loud, that showing up every day will be enough to put me back together.

The evening settles slow around the estate, the light outside shifting gold, then dimming into that deep blue that comes right before dark. Serena excuses herself at some point to check on dinner, though I suspect it’s really to give Wesley and me a moment alone.

Wesley finds me on the back terrace, where I’ve wandered without really deciding to, my arms wrapped around myself despite the warmth still clinging to the air.

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just comes to stand beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch, both of us looking out at the water going dark.

“I have a car coming,” he says eventually. “I’ll be at a hotel nearby tonight. Back in the morning before I fly out.”

I nod, staring at the horizon like it might tell me what to feel about that.

“I don’t want you thinking I’m just leaving you here,” he says, and there’s something rough in his voice now, something he’s been holding onto all day. “I know how that might look.”

“I don’t think that,” I say, though a small, exhausted part of me isn’t entirely sure it’s true.

He turns to face me fully, and when I meet his eyes, I see the fear he’s been carrying since he found me and thought I was dead. It’s still there, right under the surface.

“I was so scared, Ashleigh.” His voice cracks slightly on my name. “I don’t think I’ve told you that. I was scared I was going to lose you, and there was nothing I could do about it from where I was standing.”

My chest tightens. “Wesley—”

“You’re in good hands here,” he continues, cutting off whatever apology or reassurance I was about to offer, because he doesn’t want it. “Serena will take care of you. The program will help. And I need you to actually let it. Not just go through the motions.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

He steps closer and pulls me into his arms, and I let myself sink into him, into the solid warmth of his chest, the familiar scent of him that still undoes me every time. His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, holding me there like he’s trying to memorize the shape of me before he has to let go.

“I’m not going to hover,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m not going to call every day, or text you every hour asking if you’re okay. You need space to do this without me in the middle of it. But I need you to know I’m still here. One phone call away. Always.”

I close my eyes, my fingers curling into the front of his shirt. “I know.”

“Whatever you need,” he says, quieter now, “whenever you need it. I’ll be there. That doesn’t change just because I’m not standing next to you.”

I don’t say anything. I just hold onto him a little tighter, breathing him in, trying to store up enough of him to carry me through whatever comes next.

He presses a kiss to the top of my head, lingering there, his arms tightening around me like he doesn’t quite want to be the one to let go first.

Neither of us says anything else.

We just stand there, wrapped around each other in the fading light, until the sound of gravel crunching under tires signals the car has arrived, and even then, he holds on a moment longer before finally, reluctantly, letting me go.

Here’s the thing no one tells you about being loved—it doesn’t make you feel safer. It just raises the stakes on everything you stand to lose.