She didn’t say anything else, and a moment later he heard the door close, so he suspected she only asked in case he hadn’t thought about it.
As if he could ever stop thinking about it.
Making his way back to his car, he figured that if the little dig made her feel even fractionally better, it was worth it. He would stand there and let her fling pure venom at him if it would make her feel even a little bit better.
Perhaps the flagellation would make him feel better. Knowing that she had to lie to her family and remain silent about what happened to her really ate away at him. He knew that was unhealthy. Having grown up with a physically abusive father of his own and a mother who was more concerned with keeping the family secrets than her own child’s well-being, he knew just how much her silence was costing her.
And she shouldn’t be the one paying.
Before Ethan’s car made it out of the driveway, Ashlynn was staring Willow down with a look of determination all over her face.
Intending to evade the coming onslaught, Willow said she was going upstairs.
When she made it to her bedroom alone, she thought she was safe—until she heard footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Ashlynn stood in her doorway.
“You seemed incredibly uncomfortable the whole time he was here.”
“Yeah, well… it’s not like we share great memories.”
That was true. It wasn’t the truth, but it was true.
Ashlynn stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Slowly approaching Willow, she glanced at the bed—unmade—and asked, “May I sit?”
Sighing audibly, Willow said, “I can’t stop you.”
Ashlynn glanced down, but took a seat on the edge of the bed anyway. “Did your mother ever tell you about my childhood?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a good one. A close friend of the family… well, let’s just say he wasn’t as trustworthy as my family thought he was.”
Willow squirmed, but said nothing.
“When he would come over, I behaved the way you just did. Silent, angry, repressed, resentful… It wasn’t fair that I had to pretend everything was all right when it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair that my parents were nice to him, that they even spoke to him after what he had done to me. It made me feel terrible.”
“That sucks,” Willow muttered, feeling she should acknowledge what Ashlynn had experienced, but not wanting to feed her imagination either.
“Yes, it did suck.” Ashlynn paused. “That man, the PI, he was living as one of them, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Willow ground out, not wanting to think about it.
More hesitantly, Ashlynn asked, “Did he hurt you?”
Willow shook her head, not able to get the word out. “He wasn’t one of the bad guys, he was just pretending to be.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she replied gingerly.
“He almost died,” Willow stated, finally looking over at the other woman. “Do you know that? He almost died because I wouldn’t listen when he told me to do something, so he blew his cover to convince me, and one of the girls in the room was a spy. She had a gun. She almost shot him in the face. You have no idea what we went through, either one of us. I’m sorry that I’m not as gregarious as I was before, but I spent days locked up in a dark room with no idea what was going to happen to me, and I don’t feel great about it. I’m back now, it’s over for you guys, but it isn’t over for me. I’m not ready to be around people yet, I’m pissed off at everyone who so much as looks at me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I feel this way, I can’t just turn it off, but seeing him—it just makes me think about what I went through, okay? Maybe he’s used to doing stuff like that so he could recover faster, be polite, but I don’t have it in me. I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me right now. I don’t give a fuck if people think I’m being rude or antisocial, to be perfectly honest.”
Ashlynn nodded, averting
her gaze. “I just… don’t know how to help you.”
Laughing joylessly, Willow said, “Join the club.”
Appearing to be at a loss for words, Ashlynn just sat there, sadly gazing at the carpet.
For a second, Willow felt bad for snapping at her, but then she told herself to stop. It was not her job to babysit anyone else. She was going through something, and if she needed space, they needed to give it to her.