Page 31 of Don't Hate Me
Nothing, in his opinion, was ever going to make me good enough for Ash.
The ironic thing about that…Landen was probably right.
* * *
Sedona
The following week
Ashleigh
“Tell me what you’re wearing,” I said in my most sultry voice into the phone.
I was still at the spa, not scheduled to leave for home for another three days. I’d been primped and pampered to within an inch of my life. There was nothing more they could do to my skin. I should have been rested and glowing, instead I was going stir crazy.
I had calls and texts with Marc. The occasional check-in from Arthur, most likely to assure himself I hadn’t run off again, but that was it. Over two weeks of no real contact with anyone who wasn’t instructed to ask me immediately how I was. It was maddening.
“I’m not doing this with you tonight.”
I pouted. “You did it last night.”
“That’s because I was stressed and needed to come. Tonight, I’m too tired to even think about it.”
“Fair enough. Since I’m the reason your schedule is so crazy. Also, if I’m being completely honest, I sort of faked coming for you last night.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. A silence I knew was Marc’s angry silence. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did.
“Um, maybe I shouldn’t have shared that?”
“You faked it?” he asked, his voice low.
I winced. Definitely angry Marc. “I sort of had to. It wasn’t working…I mean, I couldn’t do it with just my fingers, and you said you really needed to come, so I kind of made the sounds. I told you the girls at the finishing school did it all the time.”
“And I told you what I would do to you if you ever faked it with me.”
His voice was all growly, and it made me shiver. “That’s different. I wasn’t with you. I was just reminding you of what I sound like when I am with you.”
“Semantics,” he said curtly. “We engage in sex, and that includes phone sex, we both get off, or neither of us gets off.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” I told him, outraged. “Girls have it way harder than guys do in that regard.”
“You tell me if you don’t think you can get there, and then I think of ways to make it happen for you. I’m serious, Ash. It is not cool with me. I don’t like the idea of…”
He stopped talking, and I had to fill in what I thought were the gaps. Why wouldn’t Marc want me faking an orgasm over the phone? A pride thing? Sure. But there was something else.
“Tell me,” I pressed him.
There was more silence, but this wasn’t the angry silence. This was about him not wanting to share. About not being vulnerable with me.
“No secrets,” I whispered. “That’s what we promised each other.”
“I don’t like the idea of it being one-sided,” he said tightly. “I don’t like the feeling of being out there alone and you watching from afar. It’s why phone sex, which is all we can have, sucks!”
“I wasn’t distant,” I told him. “I wasn’t going through the motions. I promise. I just couldn’t make myself come. I still felt connected to you. Intimate with you.”
He sighed. “This is so crazy, Ash. What are we doing?”
Immediately, the panic set in. This had been my fear since Florida. That we weren’t strong enough to sustain this distance. That he would become frustrated and ultimately bored with our relationship. That he would want to cut the strings, which, right now, were strained between us. Strained, but still holding. Or at least I thought they were.
