I wake the next day with a hangover that threatens to split my skull right open. The blare of my alarm is like a gunshot right in the brain.
I groan and roll over, slamming my hand against the screen of my cell until the horrible sound goes away. I'm stiff, and my skin is oddly both dry and sticky. The hair that flops across my face feels gross too, and it smells like the ocean. And that's when I remember everything that happened.
I leap up from the bed, then nearly fall over as the hangover vertigo hits—and a sharp pain shoots up from my ankle. I fall back on the mattress, cursing at myself. How could I forget about my injury? I lift my foot, giving myself a better view of the damage. My ankle is currently a lovely shade of purple and about three times its normal size. I remember icing it sometime between the bottles of wine last night, but I'll need to wrap it before I do anything else.
"Jack?" I call. He was good enough to bring me back to my place after the party—and he threw back a couple of drinks of his own while I drank myself into oblivion. I only vaguely remember him getting me into bed, and though he's spent a few drunken nights on my sofa in the past, only silence greets my call. He probably found his way back to his apartment. After all, he has work this morning—not to mention a serious live-in boyfriend who'd probably prefer him home in his own bed. My friend did his duty by me. I definitely owe him.
And sure enough, there's a text from him waiting on my phone. He must have sent it when he left for work this morning.
Take it easy today, Ash. I'll call you later.
Yes, I owe him. I owe him a cake the size of a horse. But first, I need to get cleaned up and back to feeling like a normal human being again.
I alternately hop and limp my way into the bathroom. I scrabble through the medicine cabinet, but there are no bandages or rolls of athletic tape to be found. I almost have a heart attack when I see myself in the mirror. I look like I was dragged behind a boat. Through a hurricane. My hair is clumped and knotted, my makeup smeared. I'm still wearing my ruined, salt-crusted dress from last night. And—I realize suddenly—Dante's jacket is still around my shoulders.
Dammit. I whip off the jacket and throw it down on the ground, glaring at it like it's some infectious fungus that attached itself to me. But it's my fault I still have it. I accepted his damn coat. I stormed out—er, was carried out—of his party without remembering to give it back. With my luck, the damn thing is probably worth a few hundred dollars—assuming it wasn't ruined by sand and seawater. As much as I'd like to burn it, I'm going to need to have it dry-cleaned and sent back to him somehow.
But clothes are the least of my worries right now. All I can think about is what happened on that beach last night—how Dante and I lay next to each other in the sand, how we almost kissed, how it felt as if no time had passed at all...
These are not good thoughts. These are not good thoughts at all.
I pull off my dress and stumble to the shower. I need to get the seawater off me. I need to get him off me. Because now that I've spent a whole night in his damn coat, I can smell him on my skin.
God, that smell...
As I lather up my hair, I try to refocus my thoughts on the day ahead of me—I was planning to spend a few hours at the bakery this afternoon testing out a new rolled fondant recipe—but my mind doesn't want to cooperate. It doesn't help that every time I twist around or bend over I'm forced to put a little weight on my ankle, which then shoots me another painful reminder of last night. Everything comes back to Dante—to the way his fingers twined with mine on the sand, to how solid and strong his arms felt around me as he carried me up the beach, to the feel of his breath against my face...
Nope. Not going to think of that.
To punctuate that thought, I slam my body wash back down on the side of the tub, forgetting in my frustration that I'm effectively crippled at the moment. I put too much weight on my ankle, then jerk back in response to the pain. But in this small, confined space—this slippery, confined space—that's the worst thing I could do. My foot shoots out from beneath me. My hands grab desperately at the tiled walls, but it's too late. I fall. First against the wall, then ass-first to the floor of the shower.
I thought I knew pain before, but I was wrong. Now, pure agony shoots through me. I'm pretty sure I scream. Tears fill my eyes and my entire body spasms. The pain in my ankle is the sharpest, but I throb in a dozen other places I either twisted or hit on the way down.
For a long moment I just sit there, stunned and whimpering in pain, while the water comes rushing down on my head. Finally my mind clears enough to tell me to turn off the spray, and I paw at the dial as I slowly turn onto my knees.
It takes me a solid five minutes to get to my feet. Somehow, I manage to blink through the blinding pain and grab a towel. I wrap it around my body and drag myself back into my bedroom. Halfway to my bed I give up on trying to walk and fall to the carpet, crawling the rest of the way.
When I reach the bed, my cell is ringing.
Thank God. Oh, thank God. Jack has made good on his promise to check up on me.
"Jack," I say into the phone, my voice cracking as the tears run down my face. "Jack, my fucking ankle... I fell in the fucking shower and I made it worse and it hurts so bad and I don't know what to do and I can't even think straight it hurts so fucking much." I'm sobbing, but my relationship with Jack is far past the point of feeling self-conscious about something like this. He's seen me at my lowest.
But it's not Jack's voice that answers me. "Ashlyn?"
My entire body goes rigid. I've heard that mesmerizing voice say my name a hundred times before, but it's the last voice I want to hear right now. If I weren't stunned out of my mind with pain, I'd hang up, but Dante rushes on while I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this.
"Where are you?" he says. "At your place? Have you moved since the last time I was there?"
At least my shock has managed to completely shut down my sobs. But the panic is already setting in. He intends to come here.
"I'm fine," I force out through pain-clenched teeth. "I thought you were Jack. I'll be fine. I'm fine."
"Like hell you are. You can hardly even speak."
"I don't need you to come here. I'll call Jack. Jack will come." Fuck—but Jack is at work for another eight hours. I rush on, "Or Mama Pat. She'll help me." I grimace as another wave of pain sweeps through me. "I-I'll be fine. Really. Fine."
"Where are you, Ashlyn?"
"I'm fine," I repeat, but my resolve wavers as the pain once again threatens to pull me under. And the thought of waiting for Jack to get a break at work, or for Mama Pat to get here from the opposite side of town, makes me feel worse. No, no I'm not fine.
And we both know it.
I let out a shaky breath. "I'm at the same house."
"I'll be there in fifteen."
My home is a lot more than fifteen minutes from his place, but I'm in too much pain to find the presence of mind to ask him where he is or what sort of business I'm interrupting. Not that I should care, anyway.
But it's hard to ignore the questions in my head. His big movie just came out—shouldn't he have a hundred interviews and press events to do? And he called me—why? Was he checking up on me after the disaster that was last night? How can I recover from that?
More importantly, how am I going to recover from this? I'm curled up on my floor, sopping wet and wearing nothing but a towel.
Oh God—if I don't manage to get some clothes on, I'm going to be wearing nothing but a towel when Dante gets here. That is not an option.
I take a few deep breaths and assess my injuries. My ankle is in bad shape. And my left wrist is killing me too. There's a dull ache in my left hip—and down most of that side, honestly. But I think I can move if I'm careful.
I reach up on my bed and feel around under my pillow until I find the pajama pants and tank top stuffed there. I drag them down into my lap and go about the process of trying to pull them on without making the pain worse.
I barely succeed. By the time I'm dressed, tears are stinging in my eyes again, but at least I'm not naked anymore. And that's when I hear my front door open.
"Ash?" Dante calls.
"In here!" I call back, grateful—and worried—that Dante managed to walk right in my front door.
He answers that mystery as soon as he gets to my bedroom. "You still hide your spare key in the same place."
How the hell does he remember that? But I don't get the chance to ask him because he's suddenly kneeling beside me, a frown in his eyes.
"What happened?" he asks.
My cheeks, as usual these days, probably match my hair. "I put too much weight on my ankle and fell in the shower."
"May I?" He waits for me to nod before pushing my pajama leg up my calf and carefully taking my ankle in his hands. I try not to wince as his fingers press against the sensitive flesh. His frown deepens. "It might be broken. It's a bad sprain at the very least."
The concern in his eyes reminds me of the Dante from the early days of our relationship—the one who never would have dreamed of hurting me, the one who promised me that I wasn't alone. But no matter how he's looking at me now, no matter what happened between us on the beach last night, I know that man is long gone.
"We should get you to the ER," he says, rising.
"What?" I ask as he's scooping me up. "I'm sure it's just a sprain. If you can get me to a pharmacy, I'll grab some athletic tape and painkillers."
I stiffen as he settles me in his arms. My body nearly betrayed me last night, and I don't trust it to behave itself now. Not when we're this close. Not when he's looking at me like that or treating me so gently. This is too familiar.
"You're going to the ER," he says. "Even if I have to carry you there myself."
I want to argue, but now that I'm firmly in his arms, now that I'm pressed against the warm comfort of his chest, I start to dissolve, finally succumbing to the physical agony and misery. My fingers curl around his shirt as I turn my face into his shoulder, fighting back tears of relief. I'm not alone. Dante will make sure I'm okay. Even though pain still throbs through my body, there's a sweet comfort in his presence that allows me to relax.
God, I am pathetic.
"You can't tell anyone about this," I murmur into his chest.
"Who would I tell?" he returns.
I guess it was a stupid request, because he's right—who would he tell? As far as I know, he never talked to his family about me. We never went out in public together. I never attended any industry events on his arm. At the beginning, I was fine with that arrangement—it made our relationship more intimate somehow. But as our relationship wore on, as tenderness and passion became love, I began to wonder why he never wanted to go out in public together. Why he hid me from his family. Why he insisted we exist only in a bubble. And those questions were like poison, eroding our relationship bit by bit while I wasn't looking.
I'm not the kind of girl who dates celebrities. I wasn't back then, and I'm even less so now. But somehow I ended up in this mess, and I don't know what Dante wants from me.
But he invited you to a party at his house last night, a voice in my head reminds me. He carried you back into that crowd of people. He caused a scene. That has to mean something, doesn't it?
But as he carries me out to his car, I'm not sure I'm strong enough for the answer.