Page 89 of All Right No
“That’s the thing, though, Ash. You don’t. You barely know me at all. There are things about me, important things that no one knows. Not you, not any member of your band, not even Dani.” She swallowed hard, desperately trying to clear her throat to keep on talking. “I never deliberately set out to deceive you. There’s just…” There was just no fucking easy way of saying this. No way to make it make any kind of sense for him. Now that she was forced into revealing it, it didn’t even make sense to her why she hadn’t told him the truth right from the start. After all, what would he have done with that knowledge? Sold her out to Miles? Yelled, “Here she is. Your wayward missus is over here, better come and collect her.” No, of course not. He’d have used the information to make an informed decision about whether the two of them dating was really a good idea. She’d stolen the opportunity from him to make that decision.
“Ginny? Whatever it is, you know it’s going to make no—”
She pressed her index finger to his mouth ahead of him saying something he might want to take back a few seconds later. “I want you to know that I do love you. You’re absolutely the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and that I am so honoured you chose me, and asked me to become your wife. I want that so much.”
She did, she realised as she spoke. She really did. However bad her impression of marriage was, based on her experiences with Miles, she was absolutely prepared to give it a go with Ash.
Ash was nothing like Miles.
Nothing at all like him.
“The thing is, much as I want it. I can’t do it right away.” Her voice was so thick with emotion now, she was struggling to make herself heard. “I’m not free to get married.”
Ash’s brows furrowed into deep grooves. “What are you saying? How are you not free? Are you saying that someone is going to pop up and say it’s not allowed?”
She nodded, whereupon his confusion transformed to anger. “No one gets to dictate what you do, Ginny. If there’s someone threatening you…”
“No one’s threatening me exactly.” Ginny scraped her teeth over her lower lip. The sound of his parents’ footsteps drumming upon the stairs told her she had seconds left. She’d been trying so hard to find the right way to say this, but there was no right way, only a wrong one, and this was the wrongest of the wrong, yet the only way left to her.
The time for obfuscating was over. She needed to say this now.
“Ash, I’m already married.”
***
Ash gawped at her. He was tempted to stick his fingers in his ears and wiggle them about until he was sure they were clear, and then get her to repeat what she said, because there was no way he could have heard her correctly.
She was already married. How could that even be? To whom? How could they have dated for all this time without him having any inkling whatsoever that she was involved with another man?
“This has to be an alternative universe episode,” he muttered, dropping the wrench into the indoor paddling pool they were both kneeling in. “How can you be? We’ve been together nine months, and you’ve been with me all that time.”
“I left Miles three years ago. I don’t consider him to be my husband any more, but legally…”
Ash shook his head. “How? Seriously, how? You’re not that old.”
“I married him at seventeen,” she said. “I did it against my better judgement and suffered for it. That marriage has been over for years, but we never legally separated. I filed for a divorce as soon as I could after I realised how incredibly happy you make me.”
“You’re married, and you’re going through a divorce, and you didn’t think that might be something you should share with me?” Anger ousted the disbelief from his face.
“It’s a part of a life I’d left behind. When I left him, I started over Ash.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to burden you. You’ve had issues enough of your own to deal with these last six months.”
“The way partnerships work is that you support one another. You trust each other, and you don’t keep secrets.”
He stood, and brushed his hands through the longer strands of his hair, pushing them backward so that the undercut sections were revealed. “Fuck!” He waded away from her. “FUCK!”
Ginny rose to her feet too.
Ash faced her again. “I thought I knew you. I thought it was real.”
“Ash it is. It’s so fucking real.”
“No. You belong to somebody else.”
“I don’t. There’s nothing between him and me. Didn’t you hear me? I’m trying to end it. He’s making it difficult.”
