Another buzz.
Ashton: Please. Please pick up. I’m begging you.
“Hey, do you two mind watching the registers for a bit?” I ask. “I need to make a call.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Jade answers. “We’re dead today, anyway.” She turns her attention to Justin. “Okay, brat, would you rather…”
My phone buzzes incessantly as I make my way through the back of the store, but I manage to ignore it, gripping it tight in my fist until I’ve closed the stockroom door behind me and locked it.
The buzzing stops when I finally pick up. “Ash, this better be important. I’m in the middle of work and?—”
“He’s not married.”
The words hit me so hard they knock the air out of my lungs. The phone slips in my grip, and I almost drop it. “What?”
Ashton swears. “I mean… Okay, heismarried, technically, but?—"
My temper snaps. “I’m hanging up.”
“No! Wait, Babygirl, listen—please.” His voice is frantic, edged in panic. “It’s not real. The marriage was never real!”
“What the hell does that mean, ‘not real’? I saw the certificate, Ash. Looked real enough to me.”
“Look, Annika’s dad… He’s not a good guy. And he was going to marry her off to someone she didn’t know, send her away to another country, like Russia or something. She was young andscared and…” He stops to take a breath. “She came to Alec for help, to get her out of it. And he did. He married her on paper so she could stay. But they were never…Nothing ever happened. There was nothing between them, I swear it! She’s like our little sister. You have to believe me.”
My throat constricts. I remember the look on Sebastian’s face when I confronted him—the shock in his eyes, like he hadn’t even realized why I was angry.
It was never me.
On the other end of the phone, Ashton laughs, almost wild with relief. “So this was all just a huge misunderstanding! You have no idea what a weight off my chest this is. But it’s okay now. You know the truth. We can go back to the way it was. I’ll come over tonight and?—”
“No.”
The silence on the other end of the line is long.
“No?” His voice cracks. “But Babygirl?—”
“Let’s say I believe you,” I interrupt, anger filling my voice. “And I’m not sayingI dobelieve you?—”
“But it’s the truth!
“Even if it is true, Ash, you lied. You and Alec. Over and over again. About who you were, about her, about everything.” My voice wavers, but I bite it back, forcing the steel into my words. “And when I told you I needed space to figure it out, you refused to give it to me.”
“Sydney, I?—”
“No.” I grip the phone tighter. “I’m talking now. And you’re going to listen. You haven’t given me a reason to trust you. Not you. Not Alec. Neither of you. So no, Ash. You don’t get to come over. You don’t get to pretend this is fine. We’renotfine.”
On the other end of the line, there’s only the sound of his breathing, jagged and uneven.
“Give me time,” I say. “Actually give me time to think about it. To figure things out, okay?”
A long pause. Then a broken, “Yeah. Okay.”
I take a shaky breath, trying to calm myself.
“Goodbye, Ash.”
I don’t wait to hear his answer before I hang up.
