Page 107 of Tangled Ambition

CHAPTERTHIRTY

Taylor

Some Asshole

Where are you?

Some Asshole

We need to talk.

Some Asshole

I’m sorry.

Some Asshole

Taylor

Some Asshole

Answer me

Some Asshole

Come on

Some Asshole

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Some Asshole

Stop being so fucking stubborn.

Some Asshole

Though if you stopped being stubborn, you wouldn’t be the woman I loved anymore.

Some Asshole

Stay exactly the way you are.

It was that last text that had me calling my grandmother in tears. I’d been curled up on my couch, crying. Possibly more tears than I’d shed in my entire life.

“Start at the beginning,” Nan said, and I explained everything that had happened between Dean and me, skipping out on the dirtier details, but making sure to let her know how I felt.

“It hurt so much because I’d started thinking of him as the one person who really knew me, who accepted me for who I was. So, to stand there listening as Seth said all those horrible things about me, verbalizing all the things I think about myself, I…” Sniffling, I tucked my hand into the arm of my sweatshirt and wiped my face with the cotton. “I wanted Dean to stand up for me.”

“The world still resents a woman with a brain and a working mouth, and I understand why you’re so hurt. It’s because the people we love the most have the ability to hurt us the most. If it were anyone else, you probably wouldn’t have cared as much, hm?”

I nodded to myself as she went on, “As a woman, we learn to let a lot of things roll off our backs, even when we shouldn’t have to. Especially in this business that is sometimes so cutthroat.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, tucking my knees into my chest.

“You shouldn’t need to defend yourself based on your gender or personality. Work, yes, but not anything else. And sometimes it gets to be too much, that you’d like someone else to take the load for a while and do the defending, instead of you all the time.”

“Yes.” I sniffed. “You get it.”

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