“Excuse you. Who does not love K dramas?” I shot back. “And if you wanted real emotional damage, C dramas existed.”
“You are impossible,” she sighed. “I do not watch things like that. See? This is exactly how it influenced you.”
“Of course,” I replied. “You were more into romance novels. No wonder you fell head over heels for your Adam.”
Sissy laughed. “It helped, did it not? At least we were married.”
“Seriously, Sissy, I might be right about this,” I said. “Ashton was planning something. He had been quiet ever since he found out he had a son.”
“Then go and ask him.”
“Are you crazy? I was not seeking him out. And I definitely did not want to bump into Lynda.”
“Well, Ashton already knew the truth. Were you not curious about what happened next? Especially between the two of them?”
“I honestly did not care,” I said. “They had been together for a long time. I doubted anything would change.”
“Uh huh,” she hummed. “Keep telling yourself that.”
I lowered my voice. “It was just… his words kept replaying in my head. He said he had been planning for my return. That he knew the truth long before I came back. It was messing with my head.”
“That,” Sissy said, suddenly serious, “was why you two needed to sit down and talk like adults.”
“Do you think I should prepare myself?” I asked. “Maybe hire a lawyer or something?”
She snorted. “With his money? Bailey, even if you hired a lawyer, he could probably buy the entire firm.”
I groaned. “Great. I was doomed. Maybe I should ask Adam for help. I was sure that among his billionaire clients, one of them owned a private island. I could hide Tristan there.”
“Now you were being dramatic,” Sissy sighed. “Adam was just a junior accountant. I highly doubted he had billionaire clients.”
“Hey, I would do anything for my son, okay?”
Then a voice sounded behind me.
“I dare you to try that and see what I would do, Bailey.”
“Argh—”
I nearly screamed and almost dropped my phone when I turned around and saw Ashton standing right behind me.
He looked furious. Slightly out of breath. Sweat glistened on his face beneath his casual clothes, his presence overwhelming even without a single word.
My heart sank.
Please tell me he had not been listening to that entire conversation.
I barely had time to recover from the shock of his presence before everything spiraled again.
“You… you son of—”
I was dangerously close to throwing a punch at him. Sneaking up on me like that nearly gave me a heart attack. The growl in his voice had been so deep and sudden that, for a split second, I honestly thought a bear was about to pounce on me from behind.
Ashton almost laughed at my outburst. A flicker of amusement broke through his expression, but he reined it in quickly, schooling his face back into something unreadable.
“Do not ever do that to me again,” I snarled.
I grabbed my water bottle from the ground and started heading back down the trail, deliberately ignoring him.
