You Had Me at Hola(71)

He knew her well enough now to know her moods, and she was furious. Her eyes blazed, and she stormed past him into the room.

He quickly shut the door behind her. “Jasmine, I—”

“First step: context.” She cut him off and held up one finger, as if counting. “You had sex with me. You told me something that made me think you trusted me, and then I had to find out yet again from a fucking magazine”—she shook a copy of Buzz Weekly at him so violently the cover tore—“that a guy I was screwing had lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. All the times he’d omitted Yadiel from their conversations flashed in his mind. Fuck, he hated that she was right. Hated that he’d done the same thing to her as that pendejo McIntyre.

“Well, you sure didn’t tell me the whole truth, did you?” Her tone dripped with sarcasm and she held up a second finger. “Step two: communication. Your turn.”

She tossed the magazine at him and he caught it by reflex. The cheap paper crumpled in his hand. If he hadn’t already ripped up a copy earlier, he would have done so now.

She wanted communication? He didn’t even know where to begin, and he was too stressed out from the calls with his lawyer, his agent, his former boss in Miami, and his father to figure it out.

He’d kept everything related to Yadiel locked inside him for so long. The revelation should have been like opening a dam. Instead it was like pulling teeth.

Then, before he could think of what to tell her, she gasped. Her jaw dropped and she said, in a hushed voice, “Oh my god. This is why.”

“Why what?” he repeated irritably. Unable to stand holding it any longer, he tossed the magazine into the garbage can under his desk.

“This is why you don’t fuck your costars.” Jasmine’s eyes widened as she put it all together. “You worked with her, didn’t you? On a telenovela.”

The reference to Yadiel’s mother had his stomach dropping like he’d just fallen ten stories on a roller coaster. Panic made his voice tight. “I’m not telling you who—”

“Did I ask?” Her voice was sharp with anger. “No, I didn’t. And while I do respect your privacy, I also think someone who is allowing you to enter their body deserves a modicum of respect and trust as well. We got close, and you hid a major aspect of your life from me. And don’t even try to tell me this was just sex because you and I both know goddamn well it was more than that.”

Her words were like a kick in the gut, because she was right. Nothing between them had been “just” anything. But he couldn’t tell her that now.

He shoved a hand through his hair, ruining forty-five minutes of the stylist’s work in half a second. “I wasn’t just hiding it from you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Her voice was high with outrage and disbelief, and something else. Co?o, he’d hurt her. “Ashton, I’ve dated enough guys who didn’t care about me to know that you do. And honestly? That only makes it worse.”

On that, she spun on her heel and left, but not before he heard the crack in her voice, or saw the tears in her eyes.

All of his instincts screamed at him to go after her, to beg her to come back and let him explain. Her pain cut him to the core, made worse by knowing he’d caused it, however inadvertently.

This was so much worse than dumping a coffee on her. And it couldn’t be fixed with a simple apology and a few cups of Café Bustelo either.

But what was there to say? She was right. He’d had his chance to tell her about Yadiel on his own terms, and he hadn’t taken it.

Whatever hope they’d had as a couple was gone now. And it was all his fault.

WHEN THE DAY from hell finally ended, Jasmine called Riley on the ride to the hotel. Her agent said all the right things about how all press is good press, but Jasmine could barely take it in.

Tanya sent a slew of texts to schedule interviews to capitalize on the media attention and do damage control, but Jasmine couldn’t focus on them.

Michelle and Ava waited for her in the hotel lobby when she arrived, with bottles of wine and fancy chocolate and a giant margarine tub full of their grandmother’s arroz con pollo. They took her upstairs to her room, hid her phone, and said all the right things about how he should have told her, but as soon as they left, Jasmine crawled into bed with her phone and kept searching for what people were saying about them.

It wasn’t healthy, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop. Sure, she got that celebrity gossip could be fun and intriguing, but god, did people have to be so mean?

Even after Jasmine shoved the phone under a pillow, the headlines and quotes plagued her.

When sleep eluded her, she went back to scrolling social media for commentary about Ashton. Both their names were trending, but she already knew her own baggage. Ashton, on the other hand . . .

After so many years of secrecy, everyone wanted to know about his son, and by extension, who the boy’s mother was. Apparently it was the best-kept secret in the world of telenovelas, and everyone was dying to know.

Jasmine cared less about who the woman was and more about why Ashton had kept it from her.

He couldn’t fucking tell her he had a child?

She was tempted to text him and ask for the real story. But he would have told her if he’d wanted her to know.