Page 42 of Don't Hate Me
I heard a thump, then a few seconds later the door was open and the look on her face…it was like nothing I’d ever seen. Not from my mother. Not from George. Only from Ash. Always from Ash.
As if I was her very own savior.
Immediately, she started struggling for her breath. I’d startled her, and when she was rattled, she stopped focusing on her breathing.
“Oh no, no, no. Don’t you do this. If I have to take you to the hospital, that fucks everything up.”
Together we worked to calm her down. Breath after breath. Slowly in, and slowly out, until she was calmer.
“What are you doing here?” she wheezed. Then she turned away from me and got her inhaler from her nightstand. She took a few hits and it gave me a chance to look at her.
See her for the first time since that day at the office back in August.
“What the fuck?” I asked, as I stepped forward and cupped her face in my hands. She was rail thin and ghostly pale with dark circles under her eyes.
But none of that compared to the bruise on her right cheek.
“Who hit you?” I barked at her.
She shook her head. “You have to leave. It’s not safe.”
“I’ve got a window of time. It’s going to look like I came to pack up my shit and leave. Now talk to me.”
“Not enough time. Why are you here?”
“Because I had to see you. I had to know if marrying this guy is what you want. George doesn’t think it is. I know what you told me last year, but I don’t believe it. Seriously, Ash. Tell me you know you don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head and pulled away from me. “You don’t understand. If I run, they’ll pursue me. They have means I can’t beat. Not yet.”
“Why run? Why not just tell the guy, no? Sorry.”
She sighed. “Why are you here?”
“To remind you you’re a grown-ass woman who can make her own choices in life. I’ve graduated. Your father can’t touch me. I’ve already set up interviews with other firms, so if he fires me, that’s no skin off my nose, either.”
She looked at me as if she was committing every detail of me to memory.
“When I saw you in August, I had to act like that,” she said. “I had to act like you meant nothing. Everything is a performance. I told you not to believe anything you saw.”
I closed my eyes against the pain of those words. Because it had hurt so damn much, and now, I knew it had all been an act.
“What do you want me to do, Ash? What help do you need to get you out of this?”
She slumped down on the bed. “There’s nothing you can do. I have to go through with it. It’s the only way…out. Ironically.”
“Who hit you?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You need to go.”
I got down on my knees in front of her and took her hands. “Talk to me. Why do you lock your own bedroom door? Who the fuck hit you? Why can’t you get in one of those fucking cars downstairs and drive away? The money can’t be worth it.”
She reached down, cupped my cheek, and smiled gently. “I missed you,” she said softly.
I pressed my head against her knees. “Ashleigh, you need to tell me what to do. I can’t guess at this.”
She was quiet when she said it, it was barely a whisper.
“You could marry me.”
