Page 55 of The Master

“It came from me.”

Her words were quiet, but they might as well have been a shout. “What?”

“The quotes, the things about my mom and Mona, the things about me and you…” She rubbed her upper arms as if she was cold, but my gut said her movements had nothing to do with temperature. “I wrote about all of that in my journal.”

I stared at her. “You didwhat?”

“I have a journal. Diary. Whatever you want to call it. Them. I’ve been keeping them since Mona left. They helped me work through my thoughts and problems.”

“You wrote it down? All of it?” I was still trying to wrap my head around how monumentally stupid that had been.

“Whoever broke into my apartment must’ve found my box of journals.”

“You said nothing was missing,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.

“The box was in the back of my closet. I didn’t think to look for it.”

I shoved my hands through my hair. “What the hell made you think that it was a good idea to write down details about our sex life?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “It’s not like I planned for anyone to ever read them! They were private!”

I made an annoyed sound as she stood up. She was completely missing the point. “Not so private anymore, are they?”

She came around the bed, eyes flashing. “I don’t think someone who kept recordings of sexual encounters has any right to be upset with me for keeping a journal.”

“I explained why I did that.”

“You’re saying that your reasons for recording sex tapes are more valid than my reasons for keeping a journal?” She crossed her arms.

I shook my head and walked out. She didn’t get it. She might be embarrassed by all this stuff, but it could ruin my life. Ruin my business and everything I’d worked for. All because she had to write it all down.

Even as I stalked into the kitchen, I knew I was acting like a jerk. If she’d told me at any other time that she kept diaries, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Keeping journals wasn’t even close to the same as what I’d done, no matter how logical my thinking had been about the recordings when I’d made them.

I’d fucked up Ashlee’s life, and now I was blaming her for something that wasn’t even close to her fault. Once an asshole, always an asshole, right?

Thirty-Six

Ashlee

I hadn’t neededto hear both sides of Nate’s conversation to know that someone had been telling him the same thing my mom had told me. My guess had been Finley, but I supposed it could have been Jailene. Or one of his family. The information was out there for anyone to see, after all.

The thought that Nate’s parents now knew intimate details of our sex lives made me sick to my stomach. The fact that it was my fault made it so much worse. Logically, I knew it wasn’t actually my fault since it wasn’t like I’d handed my journals over to reporters, but I still couldn’t help feeling like I could’ve done something different.

Then Nate had gotten short with me, and my natural instinct had been to defend myself. Hearing the words come out of my mouth made me accept the truth of them more than just thinking them had. When he stubbornly kept insisting that I shouldn’t have written things down, my frustration turned from myself to him.

He should have been the one reassuring me that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t need to feel guilty about the things I’d said that I thought would always be private. I’d done it for him. Instead, he’d lashed out, and then he’d walked away.

Hell, no.

I followed him from the bedroom to the living room. We were going to have this out now.

“You know, if you’d been paying more attention, you’d realize that you should be more concerned with the source who told about you and Isti Mollen.”

He turned toward me, the question on his face telling me that I’d guessed correctly. He’d completely blown by that little fact because blaming me was easier than acknowledging that yet another person had betrayed him.

“I didn’t know about Isti until yesterday. How would I have anything about her and you in my journals?” I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance with him. “Someone else had to have fed the reporter or one of those three that information and then said it was from my journals too.”

All the air seemed to go out of him. Seeing this strong, dominating man suddenly looking vulnerable bled away my anger.

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