Page 63 of Even if It Hurts

“At the moment, I’m getting a hotel until I can get an apartment,” I said as I shut the trunk and turned to face their enraged expressions. “I know what you want from me—I’ve always known. But you can’t use people like they’re objects, or pieces in some giant game. You can’t use them like they aren’t people too.”

My mom held up both her hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s just go inside and talk this through.”

“No, I’ve tried talking to y’all,” I said as gently as I could manage in that moment. “You don’t wanna talk to me, you wanna control me. And not just y’all—Jackson, and his parents too. And it feels heavy and disgusting.”

“It feels that way because you’re making mistakes and going against your family,” my dad argued.

A heaving breath left me. “But I only feel like that inside this house.” Before either of them could respond, I added, “I love this farm. There’s...goodness, there’s so much I love about it. But not as a career or a life for me.” I gestured to the house. “I was serious this morning when I mentioned Wren. She loves it more than I ever could.”

My mom scoffed, but I just focused on my dad and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so incredibly sorry you’re sick. My heart is breaking, and I haven’t even fully come to terms with it yet, but I still deserved to know. Wren deserved to have you tell her instead of overhearing y’all talk about it months ago.”

My parents shared a worried look, then returned to their refusals and demands when I started for my driver’s door.

“I need time, and I think y’all do too,” I said as I slipped into my seat. “I’ll come by this weekend to talk.”

“You already had six years’ worth of time,” my dad countered. “Time’swhat got us into this situation where you’ve forgotten who you are and your place in this family.”

That soul-deep reaction to do whatever it took to end the fight and make them happy was burning in my veins, but even as I nodded, I found myself saying, “Or maybe I found myself.”

By the time I’d checked into a hotel just a couple blocks from Asher’s apartment, I’d been sure I’d spend the night tossing and turning, going over everything that’d happened yesterday. Every hurtful word said, every disappointing revelation, and the many different kinds of heartbreak.

But despite the mess of emotions and thoughts weighing down my mind, I’d crashed from the exhaustion of it almost as soon as I’d gotten into my room and had woken before my alarm was set to go off.

After walking to the same coffee shop I’d first met Asher at and treating myself to a caramel macchiato in a hopeful attempt at starting the day off right, I’d gone back to the hotel to get ready for a day of hanging out with Kaia and made sure to diffuse my hair so my curls were perfectly big and beautifullychaotic.

I hoped they aggravated Asher on his way out.

Smiling at the daytime doorman as I walked through the lobby of Asher’s building, I tried stopping him when he hurried to the elevator. “You don’t have to do that,” I assured him as I searched my bag for the metal card I’d totally forgotten about the day before. “Mr. Briggs had a keycard made for me so I wouldn’t have to bother you anymore.”

The man huffed out a laugh and fixed how the hat was sitting on his white hair. “I’ll always be happy to help, ma’am. And if Mr. Briggs had a card made for you, it wasn’t so you wouldn’t be a bother, it’s because you’re someone special.”

I just barely managed to keep my eyes from rolling but still made a face to let the adorable man know that wasn’t the case. “I promise you, sir, I’m not.”

He lifted a finger and pulled out his card just as the elevator doors slid open. “I’ve been managing this building since long before Mr. Briggs became a tenant,” he began, and I immediately started kicking myself for ever thinking of him as a doorman. “He’s given prior authorization to a very small list of people to be let up, but in all the years he’s been here, he has never given anyone access to his home the way he did when he had that card made for you.”

If he’d told me that yesterday, I was sure my heart would’ve tried escaping my chest long before my conversation with Peyton. As it was, a few traitorous butterflies were still flapping in my stomach at the chance he might be right.

But he wasn’t. I’d heard Asher loud and clear.

“It’s just because I’m the nanny,” I told him as he finished entering his card and pressing the button for the twenty-ninth floor.

“Well...” He made a small movement that could only be explained as doubtful. “Again, I’ve been managing this building for many, many years, ma’am.” He stepped off the elevator just before the doors began closing and winked, his lazy drawl filling with mischief when he added, “But what do I know?”

I stared unblinking at the doors, trying desperately to get his words and insinuations out of my head because he was wrong. I knew he was.

I’dheardAsher.

Just as the car began rising, my phone chimed, and I quickly searched for it.

I’d woken to so many messages and voicemails from my parents and Jackson—none of which I’d read or listened to—and had contemplated putting my phone onDo Not Disturbor turning it off altogether. But the part of me that wanted to believe Peyton and the daytime manager, and wanted yesterday to have been some terrible mistake, had still been foolishly waiting for Asher to say something.

An explanation I might not believe. An apology I might not accept. Anything.

But when I pulled my phone out of my purse, my chest deflated a little when I saw the message was from my sister instead—the first I’d heard from her since leaving her room.

Opening it, I quickly scanned the contents just as another came through.

Wren

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