20. Ashton
Ashton
Imogen’s already dressed before I’m awake, and that tells me how this ends before either of us says a word.
I surface out of four hours of sleep to a zipper closing, and there she is at the foot of the bed, last night’s clothes back on, the duffel on one shoulder, the tote in her fist, her hair scraped back off her face.
There’s nothing left on her of the woman who shook apart under me a few hours ago.
She got up, dressed in the dark, and packed the rest of her belongings without making a sound.
“You could’ve woken me.”
“I thought about it. Then I figured a man who sleeps four hours doesn’t need me stealing two of them.” She settles the tote next to the duffel. “The cab’s on its way.”
I get out of the bed and into yesterday’s pants, because I’m not doing this lying down or naked. She’s already gone into the hall by the time I’m upright, walking toward the front of the house. I go after her, because the only other option is standing here listening to an engine carry her off.
“Stay until the contract’s over.” I keep my voice down out of habit, though there’s no kid in the house to wake. “Luke’s settled into the pattern now, the tide pools, the schedule. Yanking him back early undoes all of it.”
She doesn’t slow. “Don’t put him between us. You’re better than that.”
That’s fair.
“Then stay because I’m asking you to. Not for him. For me.”
That stops her at the mouth of the front hall, one hand on the strap. She turns, and the brightness has gone off her face, scrubbed down to nothing.
“Last night was goodbye, Ashton. I need you to actually hear it, because you’ll spend the whole day telling yourself it was the opposite, but it wasn’t.
I shut the physical part down on purpose, in the dark, so I’d be the one who ended it instead of waiting around for you to.
That was me keeping the last piece for myself. There isn’t another one behind it.”
“Imogen.”
“Starting now you’re my boss, and I tutor your kid.
You’re the father of a boy I’d throw myself in front of a truck for, and that’s the whole of what you are to me.
” There’s nothing underneath the words, no heat, no shake.
“An employer and an employee. A dad, and the woman teaching his son. We don’t cross past that again.
That’s my boundary and if you want me in your son’s life, you’ll learn to respect it. ”
She’s close enough that I catch the trace of me still on her skin, and my whole body tips toward her without my say-so, wanting to close the gap she just drew straight down the middle of the hall. But I keep my feet planted, and she’ll never know the effort it takes.
“You lied too,” I say, wanting to see some emotion in her even if it’s anger.
She watches me a moment, and then she pulls out the one thing I’ve got no defense against, which is a small, sad smile with all the fight gone out of it.
“You’re right. I did.” She shifts the duffel higher.
“I lied to my father to keep him out, but you lied to me to keep me in. We’ve both got our reasons, and neither of us can do the one thing that actually counts, which is tell the truth to the person we’re closest to.
That’s not a good argument that would help you win the fight, Ashton.
That’s the proof. We’re not opposites. We’re the same thing, broken in the same place. ”
“I know,” I say. “I know that, and I’m sorry, and I know that doesn’t fix it either.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “It’s a start,” she says, and the way she says it doesn’t sound like a door shutting. It sounds like someone setting a thing down carefully, intending to pick it back up later. But not now.
A horn goes off outside, one short note.
“That’s me.” She gets the door open one-handed. “Tell Luke I’ll see him Wednesday. Make sure he understand that I didn’t leave.”
“He’ll think you did anyway.”
“Then make sure you convince him that I’ll be back.” Her eyes hold mine one more second, and there’s nothing in them I can pull on, no spark and no fight left. “Goodbye, Mr. Fraser.”
She throws the title between us and then she’s through the door, down the steps, and into the car. The door shuts behind her, and the house goes quiet in the one way I can’t stand, the quiet that means the person worth listening to has gone.
I stand there a moment, then I go find some distraction for my hands, because what they want to do right now is to go through the nearest window, but I’ve got a board, a custody fight, and a kid with Lola, so I can’t end up bleeding on the floor over a woman I nearly blew my entire world up over for fucking a few times.
I lift the coffee she never touched and pour it down the sink. I’m rinsing the cup with more force than a cup has ever asked for when the phone goes.
It’s my lawyer and I nearly let it ring out, but he never calls me this early, unless it’s bad, so it’s bad.
“What is it?”
“Sophia filed an emergency motion for an expedited hearing an hour ago,” he tells me, going straight to the point.
“She’s citing instability in the home, and I’m reading her words back to you, ‘inappropriate live-in staff influence on the minor child.’ She wants custody reviewed before the IPO closes. ”
I run my fingers through my hair. “She’s got nothing. There’s no instability in that house. There’s a tutor with references that’ll humiliate anyone she drags onto a stand.”
“A tutor living under your roof.” A short breath down the line. “One question, and keep in mind that I’m your lawyer, so give me the real answer. Is there a romantic element to it? You and the woman named in this filing.”
“There was.”
Silence on the line.
“Past tense,” he says.
“As of this morning.”
Another silence, longer. “That’s going to make this harder to argue.”
“I know.”
“Ashton.” His voice drops. “If there’s any chance this is more than past tense, I need to know now, not when we’re standing in front of a judge.”
I look at the door she went through twenty minutes ago, telling me that we’re done.
“Build the case you can build,” I tell him. “I’ll deal with the rest.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got right now.”
But right now, the only thing standing between my ex-wife and my son is the woman who just made it clear she’d rather sit in traffic than spend another hour under my roof.