This wasn’t good.
“Hey, Ash. Could I come in?” Kallie asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
“I really don’t want to talk in the hallway. Please?”
“No.”
“Ash, none of what’s going on in that interview is true. James is a spurned lover and he’s being petty. Those text messages? They aren’t real. Look.”
Kallie handed Ash her phone, but he didn’t take it.
“Okay, fine. I’ll hold it,” she said. “Look. The last text message I sent to Eris was before I left the airport, and the only other message I sent to her was after I landed, once I left.”
“So they’re deleted,” Ash said.
“No, look. My call logs. See?”
Kallie swiped through them, scrolling through the few times Eris and she had talked on the phone on the island.
“I called Eris if I ever had to talk with her. I didn’t text message her. All of those messages on the television are fabricated. Every last one of them.”
Kallie looked up into Ash’s eyes and silently begged to see their light. To see her playful, boyish Ash come alive. Her entire reputation was being slandered. People were splattering disgusting things about her on the one social media page she did have. She knew her business was going to tank, there was no question about it. And she needed Ash to believe her.
Ash was the only thing she would have left once James was done with his tirade.
“Don’t you believe me?” Kallie asked.
Kallie watched his face turn to stone. Immovable. Unwavering in his glare. She felt herself melting into the floor. She could see all of the sternness in his eyes that she’d encountered with his mother. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was fluttering a million miles a second. She wanted to reach out to him. To feel his arms drape around her and tell her things were going to be okay. She felt tears brewing at the sides of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She had cried enough over James’s antics and she wasn’t going to let him control her any longer.
She wanted Ash.
She loved Ash.
“No,” he said.
Kallie felt the breath leave her lungs. It felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She took a step back, like someone had backhanded her across the cheek.
Then, Ash became cruel.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Even after you got so upset with me for lying about who I was, you were lying about who you were the entire time.”
“None of it’s true,” Kallie said breathlessly.
&nb
sp; “You’re a gold digger,” he said. “And the worst part is, you can’t even admit it to yourself. Is ruining rich men’s lives a game to you?”
“It’s not true,” she said as tears fell down her cheeks. “What James is saying isn’t true. He cheated on me, Ash. Eris caught—”
“Eris is in on it,” he said curtly.
“Eris is loyal to a fault, but she would never lie for me.”
“And it all makes sense. Eris was an attack dog in that club. And then she just let you go home with me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“She was distracted by Jeremy. Eris is wild, and fiercely protective, but she has a penchant for witty men.”