“He said this would be better coming from me, and that if I didn’t tell you by tonight, he was going to.”
“Well, he wasn’t wrong.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but I wasn’t entirely successful and Asher dashed a stray tear away. “So now you can explain to me what you said and why.”
Leaning back, I kept my stare focused on Asher, so he’d know he had my undivided attention. The story he told wasn’t a good look on him.
“So basically, you saw Sawyer minding his own business and then verbally abused him in public.”
Asher shrank in on himself, curling his shoulders inward. “There’s more.”
I leaned forward and dropped my face into my hands, barely suppressing the urge to scream. “More?”
I loved Asher like a brother, and the way I wanted to strangle him reinforced that brotherly bond I felt for him.
“I—I said one day you were going to start filming again, and you’d be fucking men who weren’t him and—fuck, Lukas. I’m sorry. And then he was like blah, blah, I know his real name and you don’t, and I realized he was right and I was stupid.”
The sigh I let out came from the depth of my soul, and Asher looked over at me, wide eyes full of sorrow.
“I’m sorry.”
I stood up and motioned for him to stand.
“I know I’m probably fired and, like, not welcome here anymore, but?—”
“Good grief, Asher. Am I happy with you? Not particularly, but you’re young, you’re going to fuck up. You’re going to do stupid shit, and that’s why I’ve tried to keep you around. So I could look out for you and try stop you from making big, dumb mistakes the way I did. Now get over here.”
I held an arm out for him and draped it over his shoulders when he came closer. I steered him to my desk and sat him down in the chair. Closing the video, I pulled up the document Sawyer had sent over with his progress on the book so I could listen to it with one of my text-to-speech programs.
“What’s this?” Asher looked at the screen, his brow furrowed.
“It’s the book Sawyer has been working on for me. It’s not done, but it’s finished enough for you to get a first impression of it.”
Asher looked up at me and blinked, his wide eyes making him look even younger than his twenty years.
“I want you to sit here and read it.”
He looked at the screen and then glanced back up at me. “All of it?”
“Every word.”
His brows pulled together in confusion. “Why?”
“You’ll figure it out.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. No calls or texts from Sawyer yet, which didn’t sit well with me. “I’ll be back in two minutes. Start reading.”
Slipping out into the hallway, I followed Lara to the back door where I let her out into the yard. I took the opportunity to call Sawyer. It went to voicemail, which I should have guessed it would have, but worry smacked me in the chest, knocking the air out of me.
“Sawyer, Ash came over and told me what happened. I’m going to come see you as soon as I deal with this, but it might take a bit.” I let out a breath and leaned against the wall. “Asher was not only out of line, but he was dead wrong. Call me back, okay.”
I ended the call feeling like there was more for me to say, but I didn’t want this conversation to happen over the phone.
When I slipped back into the office, I stretched out on the couch and played on my phone. I kept an eye on Ash as he read through my book. Though he’d been around for the past couple of years, there was a lot about me that he didn’t know. Though I didn’t exactly keep the mistakes of my early career a secret, they’d never been laid out in such detail before.
The terrible contracts I’d signed. The naiveté and desperation that had been a beacon to predators looking to take advantage of me. I’d been young and inexperienced and easily lured into situations that I wasn’t equipped to deal with. And from the look of increasing horror on Ash’s face, I could almost guess what parts of the book he was reading.
At one point, he wiped some tears away and glanced at me, the heartbreak clear in his expression.
“Don’t look at me like that, kid. I turned out okay.”
Asher sniffled. “I’m so dumb.”
