“What?” I ask as I pull away from him.
“Come sit down,” he says, his hand on my shoulder to steer me toward the couch.
I shake off the hand. “Just tell me.”
Ash looks at me, presumably deciding if he should insist on having me sit. He lets out a long breath. “Don’t freak out when I tell you this.”
“Oh my God. I’m already freaking out! Just tell me,” I snap.
Ash inhales deeply. “There…therewassomeone in your house that night besides your mother,” he says finally. “I didn’t just hire the security team to be on the safe side. I hired them because I knew for a fact someone broke into your house.”
My blood goes cold. “How do you know?” I ask. The words are a puff of air, not even a whisper. They aspire to be a whisper.
Ash goes over to where he dropped his jeans when we came out of the bedroom earlier. He finds his wallet in the pocket and opens it to pull out a piece of paper that he hands me.
I open the paper with shaking hands and read it. “You belong with me, not with him.”
I jerk my head up. “What is this?”
“I found that on your bed that night when I went into your house. Along with red rose petals,” he says.
It takes a second for his words to sink in and another three seconds for me to remember the dried rose petal I found on the floor under the kitchen sink the morning after the supposed break in. I couldn’t conceive of where it came from unless one of the police officers tracked it inside that night, but the horrifying reality hits me like a sandbag to my stomach.
The entire world tilts sideways as my vision blurs and my legs give out. Strong arms catch me before I fall, and Ash scoops me up to carryme to the couch and lay me down.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
“Gray, stay with me, baby.”
My eyes meet his. “Did you tell the police what you found?” I ask.
He looks at me apologetically. “No. I thought about it, but if I told the cops, they would’ve told you, and I was afraid it would fuck with your mind. I hoped the security team I hired would notice something and catch whoever broke in if they tried again.”
He’s right about one thing. Knowing the truth is completely fucking with my mind. Not only was someone in my house, but they went into my bedroom and put flower petals and a note on my bed.
The mental image of that alone sends me shooting off the couch toward the bathroom. I just barely make it to the toilet before I lose my battle with the soup, and it comes back up.
Ash is there a second later, and he pulls my hair away from my face as I retch into the toilet again. His hand rubs slow circles on my back.
“Easy now,” he says softly. “Just breathe.”
The toilet flushes, sending the contents of my stomach down the drain, and I pull back enough so I don’t get a face full of toilet spray.
Part of me would give anything to unlearn what I just learned, and I rest my head on my forearm as I lean over Ash’s toilet again.
“How are you doing?” he asks a few seconds later. His hand still makes slow circles over my back.
“Your toilet is clean at least,” I say weakly.
Seriously, that’s a blessing. I’ve been in the bathrooms of men who live alone, and they’re not always pretty.
“The housekeeper came today,” he says.
Of course he has a housekeeper. Apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t.
“Are you done?” Ash asks. “Do you want to get up?”
I pull my head off my forearm and spit bile into the bowl. Ash gets up from the floor and pulls me to my feet. He helps me to the sink whereI swish my mouth with water.
