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“Yeah. Well, her phone’s dead,” she explains candidly, avoiding the answer to my first question altogether. “I’m supposed to bring her her charger later tonight.”
“Where is she?” I’m starting to get worried. Why doesn’t she just come right out and say where Aly is? Where could she possibly be that she wouldn’t have her charger handy for so long?
“Why should I even bother telling you?” Lyndsey asks. “Why do you even care? Shouldn’t you be snuggling up to your little bimbo trophy wife?”
“She’s not mine. I mean she’s not a trophy-” I stammer. “Dammit, this is all a huge misunderstanding. Mainly on my account.”
All on my account.
If I hadn’t been so blinded by my pride and completely oblivious to my feelings, none of this would have ever happened. Aly isn’t some delicate flower that needs my protection. She just needs someone there for her, a partner to share the burden with and help her realize her greatest potential.
Like me.
“I’m not the best at recognizing my own feelings and knowing how to act on them,” I explain. “Aly is much better at that than I am.”
The darkness in Lyndsey’s eyes fade. She softens. A look of sympathy washes away the previous glare of murderous rage.
“Can you please just tell me where she’s at?”
Lyndsey hesitates, but eventually adds, “She’s in the hospital.”
A thud the size of a freight train plows into my chest. “Wha- Is she okay?”
Lyndsey reaches a hand out to me. “She’s fine. It’s her mother.”
Her mother? Even before Aly explained her mother’s struggle with depression, I realized the story she told during our first meeting wasn’t a hypothetical one. Aly took on more responsibility than should be necessary for a sixteen-year-old, never questioning for one second that these expectations weren’t normal.
“She took almost a whole bottle of sleeping pills Sunday morning,” Lyndsey explains. “She’s lucky to be alive.”
That same pounding in my chest returns. Though this time not for Aly’s safety. The amount of pain she must be in chips away at my heart. She needs someone to comfort her, someone to convince her it will be alright no matter the outcome. “Which hospital?”
The look on Lyndsey’s face is one of sheer panic.
“Zach, I wouldn’t go down there.”
“Why not?”
“She needs all the support and stability she can get right now,” Lyndsey shakes her head. “And that isn’t you. You’re the opposite. You’re chaos and self-serving.”
A sharp pang sears through my shoulder. The sting magnifies with the awareness that Lyndsey only feels this way through her conversations with Aly. I’ve really messed it up this time. “Wow. She really paints a great picture of me.”
“No. She thinks the world of you,” Lyndsey explains. “But I can see what’s really going on here. You’re only worried about yourself and your career, and how you look in front of all your fancy friends.”
“Lyndsey.” I steady myself with one long breath. Someone should probably know the truth. “Jackson knows about Aly and me.”
The scolding glare shifts to shock. “What? Like, knows? Or actually knows?”
“I’m not sure which of those to choose since they’re basically the same,” I grumble. “But he has a photo of all of us from the night she was drugged. Then I guess one of his friends saw us together outside your apartment.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem very threatening.”
No, not on the surface. A little bad ink is a ritual form of gossip in my old social circles. But people tend to overlook things when you can offer them parties on private islands and diamonds as favors. I’m not sure how Aly would take it, what it would do to her to see our relationship as fodder for people to feed on like blood-thirsty beasts.
“He knows how to manipulate the information to his advantage,” I explain.
“So that’s why you’ve been staying away from her?”
The lump in my throat prevents me from nodding all the way, but I give it a try all the same. “I don’t want her to get hurt. I don’t give a damn about my work anymore. Aly doesn’t even need the apprenticeship with her new business proposal. But I just… I don’t want him dragging Aly’s reputation down in the mud. She’s worked too hard to have it all ripped from her like that.”
