Chapter 10
ASHLEY
Heath: Every moment with you feels like a beautiful dream I never want to wake up from. You're the love I never knew I needed, and now I can't imagine my life without you. Thank you for coming back to us.
H eath needed to carry me back into the living room because I wasn’t letting him go.
Not even when Royce kissed my hair and Carter stroked my back sweetly to say hello.
I ended up sitting in Heath’s lap on the sofa while Max vacuumed up the broken glass—which my mom had dropped when I’d accused Jocelyn.
“Carina, is it okay if we stay here tonight?” Carter asked politely as he picked up a bottle of scotch from Max’s fancy bar cart on the side of the room.
“Yes, of course it is,” Mom replied with a wave of her hand. “You know you don’t need to ask.”
“Spark?” he asked, holding up the scotch as I rearranged myself between Heath’s lap and the arm of the sofa so I wasn’t totally squashing him.
I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “No, thanks. My head is still a bit…fuzzy.”
“She was heavily sedated when I picked her up,” Nate explained, making everyone stare at me in horror. “It took a decent while for the medication to wear off, and even then, she slept most of the drive back.”
“ She is sitting right here,” I growled, glaring his way.
He just shrugged. “So you tell them. Stop making us stab in the dark for slivers of information, Layne, just start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. It’s all relevant.”
“ All of it?” I countered, raising one brow as he held my gaze with an unreadable expression.
He rubbed his jaw and winced. “Within reasonable judgment.”
Typical. He didn’t want anyone knowing we’d fucked. Apparently he hadn’t changed his mind from that stinging rejection the night of his birthday party.
“Um, what does that mean?” Royce asked, glancing between the two of us with narrowed eyes.
“Nothing,” we both snapped at the same time.
Then, because I could see more questions on the tip of his tongue, I quickly found a place to start my story. “On the night of Nate’s party, I worked out that Jocelyn was the one behind everything. All the fuckery. The hypnosis, the manipulation, the notes… Abigail’s diary . All of it.”
A tense silence followed that announcement, broken only when Max cleared his throat. “Jocelyn?” he repeated cautiously. “We are talking about?—”
“Professor Reynard? Your ex-wife and Nate’s mother?
” I finished for him. “Yes. We are. Max, she’s certifiably insane, and I say that as someone who just spent the last however many days locked up in a psychiatric hospital.
She is un-fucking-hinged . And is utterly obsessed with hurting you, Mom. I was just collateral damage.”
Mom sagged in her seat like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her complexion ashen, she pressed her hands to her mouth. “I knew it,” she whispered.
Max perched on the arm of her chair, taking one of her hands in his to interlace their fingers.
“Why don’t we let Ashley tell us everything, without interrupting?
She needs us all to listen, and we can ask questions later.
Agreed?” He cast his gaze around at the guys, who all gave grudging nods.
Even Heath, who still held me halfway in his lap with his arms wrapped around me.
“Go ahead, Ash. How did you work this out at the party?”
He was redirecting me back to the start of my story, and I appreciated the guidance, since my head was like a box of fucking frogs right now.
Wetting my lips, I closed my eyes briefly to calm myself.
“Nate and I had just…had a conversation,” I started again, choosing my words carefully.
Maybe he didn’t want the guys to know we’d fucked, but neither did I.
Admit that I had such strong feelings for him and he’d rejected me?
No thanks. “We were in the room where all his gifts were being stored. He asked me to sign the prenup shit that his lawyers wanted before he gained access to his inheritance, then he left and I stayed behind for a couple of minutes.”
Against my better judgment, my eyes found Nate’s, but I was totally unprepared for the depth of pain and regret I found in his gaze. It was too much.
Clearing my throat, I looked back down at my knees where I sat folded over Heath’s lap.
“As I was leaving the room, I bumped a stack of gift boxes and knocked one over. So obviously I picked it up to put it back, and that’s when I saw the note from Jocelyn.
There’s no mistaking that handwriting. Not after everything… ”
“Fuck,” Royce breathed, like he couldn’t hold it back. “Sorry, carry on.”
I glanced up just to give him a quick smile.
“It gets a bit…weird after that. I left the room to come and tell you all, but ran into Jocelyn in the hall. She saw the note in my hand and…I don’t even know what happened next.
I just blacked out and woke up in the hospital, being told I’d had a psychotic break and everything past Christmas was all a figment of my imagination. ”
“And you believed that?” Carter asked in a sharp voice, making me look over at him with a scowl.
“Of course not!” I snapped back. “But they were very convincing, and then I saw Dr. Fox and?—”
“Whoa, hold up. You saw who ?” Heath exclaimed, stiffening beneath me—and not in a good way.
I puffed out my cheeks, glancing briefly at Mom and Max before replying.
“Yeah. So you can imagine how that made me second-guess everything I thought I knew. It wasn’t until right before Nate got me out that I realized the man I’d seen must be a look-alike or something, because Jocelyn herself admitted he was dead. ”
The air gusted out of Heath in a long exhale, and his arms tightened around me. “Fuck. Okay. Good. I can see how that would mess with your head.”
I bit my lip, nodding as I tried to sort my thoughts. It was hard…not only because of the lingering brain fog from the sedatives, but also because I’d spent so many days questioning my own sanity or grieving for people I loved.
“What happened next, sweetheart?” Mom prompted, her voice shaking even as she tried to muster up a reassuring smile. Max still had her hand in his, and her knuckles were white as she clutched him.
What happened next? Okay. Yeah. They needed to know everything. With Heath’s warmth wrapped around me, reassuring me he was alive, I slowly started to tell them everything I could remember. All about the so-called therapy sessions, the other patients, the nurses…Abigail…
When I got to that part of my story, Royce let out a string of curses, and I took the opportunity to reach for the glass of water Carter offered.
“So she was never a victim,” Nate surmised.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It sounded a whole lot more like she was part of the experiment.
Like her and Jocelyn were actually partners.
I don’t know; it’s a bit mixed up. Right after that, Jocelyn said some shit and I—” My voice caught, but I pushed through. “I lost my head. I tried to kill her.”
Nate quirked one brow, and I ducked his gaze.
Fucking hell, now was not the time to remember what’d happened when I tried to kill him.
Eyes firmly locked on my hands, I quickly recounted everything Jocelyn had said to Abigail by the duck pond.
Everything I could remember, anyway, since a lot of it was fuzzy.
“Next thing I remembered, one of the nurses was wheeling me out to Nate’s truck,” I finished, my voice croaky.
Carter moved to hand me the glass of water once more, and I took a sip.
My stomach still churned with the lingering effects of being so heavily drugged, and my head ached.
It’d take more than water to fix that, but right now, it was important to get all the information out in the open. The more people who knew, the better.
“Ashley,” Max said, breaking the silence with his face pale, “I am so sorry. I feel…this is all my fault. Jocelyn has… Shit , Nate I didn’t want to talk about this with you but given everything?—”
“I need to know,” Nate growled, his fists clenched at his sides.
“It’s not just Ashley who’s being hurt in this.
She tried to kill Heath, Dad, and we both know she was always more fond of him than she was of me.
Not to mention how many other people have died or been hurt under the manipulations of her and Dr. Fox’s hypnosis.
If she’s willing to do all that…who knows what else she’s capable of? ”
Max stared at his son for a long, painful moment.
When he eventually nodded, it was with the kind of defeat and guilt that made my chest hurt.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “Jocelyn was always a little bit erratic, even when we first met at Nevaeh. Unpredictable. I used to think of her as spontaneous and convinced myself her rapid mood swings and somewhat questionable choices were a good thing. That they were endearing. As the years wore on, that idea wore thin. More and more, I worried for her mental health, especially where you were concerned, Nate.”
Fucking hell, this was hard for me to hear and she wasn’t even my mother.
My heart ached for Nate. He was doing his best to act strong and unaffected, but there was no hiding the pain in his eyes.
Biting the inside of my lip, I climbed out of Heath’s lap and moved over to the bar cart to grab the crystal decanter of whiskey.
Silently, I returned to the group and refilled Nate’s empty glass on the table, handed it to him, then returned to my comfy seat on Heath’s lap.
“Thanks,” Nate murmured.
“To be perfectly clear with all of you, Jocelyn and I separated long before we actually divorced. Long before I even met Carina and Stuart. There was no cheating, and that had nothing to do with our divorce, except that it gave me a reason to finalize the paperwork.” Max was firm on this point, looking my way with a worried frown.
Mom nodded her agreement, her hand still clutching his tightly in support.
“But despite that fact, Jocelyn did fixate a lot of her anger and resentment on Carina in those early days. I think she also spent a lot of time getting into your head about it too, Nate.”
Nate sipped his drink and gave a sharp nod. He seemed like he was one step away from breaking.
“We thought she’d gotten over it and moved on,” Mom said weakly. “Years ago. That was why we finally felt comfortable going public with our relationship and getting married.”
“Well…if she’s the one who’s been stalking you all these years, Carina,” Carter said gently, “and terrorizing Ashley at Nevaeh, then it’s safe to assume she has not moved on.”
Mom cast him a withering look. “Clearly, Carter. Thank you for pointing out the obvious.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Continue.”
Max exchanged a long, pained look with my mom, then blew out a heavy sigh. “I’m so sorry, kids. I should have seen the signs. This is all my fault. Heath, Ashley…I don’t even know how to begin making this up to you both.”
“This is not your fault,” Heath replied without even a moment's hesitation. “Jocelyn’s actions are her own, and you’re not responsible.”
“I agree.” I glanced from Max to Nate and frowned. “ No one here is responsible for what she’s done. It also seems like this is an experiment she’s been working on for a really long time. Max, do you remember what happened with Royce’s mom?”
Max jolted slightly. “Of course, how could I not? You think?—”
“I think Jocelyn is the one responsible for those deaths, and Katie was just as much a victim as the students who died,” I said firmly.
Royce groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Holy shit.”
“How does Abigail fit into this?” Carter asked, frowning. “You said it didn’t seem like she was a victim?”
I shook my head, trying to remember that whole interaction.
“No…it’s hazy, but I definitely got the impression Abigail was originally involved as an active researcher or something.
Like maybe she volunteered to test out something and it went wrong and left her like that?
I don’t know, but the whole diary that I found in my room was fake. It was written by Jocelyn.”
“Wow,” Royce muttered. “This is messed up.”
“I’m going to ice that cake,” Mom muttered, getting up from her seat and wiping her palms on the front of her pants. “We could all use a little sugar right now.”
I climbed out of Heath’s lap once more, getting to my feet. “I’ll help.”
Mom didn’t protest, instead just giving me a watery smile and reaching for my hand as we left the living room together. We all had a lot to think about, and now that she’d reminded me, I was pretty hungry. Lemon cake would have been better, but I supposed chocolate cake would also be great.
Nate needed it, anyway.