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“You know what I’m talking about.”
My heart drops. What is this woman going on about? Ashton and I haven’t told a soul about our relationship.
“Oh? You think you’re smart, do you? No… no… no…” She laughs maniacally. “Ashton really is some clever boy, isn’t he? Even I couldn’t have come up with a plan like that. Of course, he let me look good, because he knew all along he could use you to come out on top like the golden boy. A sweet, innocent man coming back home to his cookie-cutter small town and the love story that never ended? I know better. He’s just a scheming prick.”
Her suggesting Ashton is using me to raise his profile in the media is a knife digging into my sternum. It’s agony. But there is no way in hell I’m going to let this horror story of anex talk about him like that. She can say what she wants about me. I don’t give a shit what someone with rock-bottom morals thinks about me. But I won’t let her talk about Ashton that way.
My blood works up from a simmer, so even though I want to make my way down my front porch steps, I stay put. “He let you have everything you wanted… Ashton has more class in his pinky finger than you’ll ever have.” I want to say more, but my heart thrums hard, and it’s better we end this here. “Get the hell out of here, Chloe.” I show her my back, but rage continues to build. “Ashton isn’t here. Go back to LA.”
Her venomous words waft over my shoulder. “You two willnothumiliate me.”
I turn. I shouldn’t have. I should have walked in my home and left it. I should have gone inside, made a cup of tea, or had a shot of bourbon or something to calm down, because I am too hot-headed to deal with a conversation like this. I need to keep Ashton’s confidence and I already feel my shield slipping. Chloe knows how to get under a person’s skin. Ashton using me? It can’t be true… but it hurts like it is.
And it hurts that a small part of me questions whether in her many years as Ashton’s wife, she knows something I don’t know about him. That she got parts of him I have yet to have. Did she come all this way just to insult me? Just to exchange verbal blows with me? This woman doesn’t know I grew up with three brothers. And almost nothing was resolved withverbalblows in my house. My body tells me to settle this score with an uppercut.
But I can’t do that to Ashton. I can’t do that to myself… I have to hold it together, but facing her again was a mistake. Her snide features, her beautiful skin, and her superiority complex all dissolve my restraint.
Just when I think she can’t say anything to make this worse… she does.
“You know why you’re going to follow my instructions to leave Ashton alone,Jolie Hunter?” She says my name with utter disdain. “I know the Danes’ dirty secret. And if you two continue this farce, I’ll make sure everyone else knows it.”
My mind races for an answer. For a secret about the Danes. For anything at all that will tell me what she’s threatening me, us, with right now. I’ve known the Danes my whole life. This must be an empty ultimatum.
Her expression is smug and cruel and makes me want to scream.
“Oh? Don’t tell me Ashton doesn’t share everything with his perfectJoey? He didn’t trust you with his deepest, darkest secret, did he? Well, he trusted me. Turns out the Danes aren’t picture-perfect after all. Because Monica Dane was a little whore, and the NFLs favorite quarterback is a bastard child.”
Bile fills my throat when she insults Monica like that and… “Fletcher?”
“Oh, there is a brain in there, Scarecrow. Yes, Fletcher Dane is Fletcher… well, something, but he isn’t a Dane. He’s some immigrant worker’s child because it turns out Monica liked spending more time riding than Mr. Dane did.”
I feel like my world just tipped upside down and the contents of my life lie at my feet in a jumble. Fletcher and Ashton don’t share the same father? Monica cheated? How dare Chloe spout lies like this. How dare she… My eyes sting with anger, my body bubbles with pent-up violence, and the heat that pooled in my guts just seeing Chloe’s face on my property has grown into an all-out volcano inside.
She remains seemingly unbothered. “So Ashton didn’t trust you with his truth, hmm? Well, he trusted me. His wife. Something you’ll never be because you two are ending it today.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, you hillbilly man stealer. It matters what the media thinks, and I have every junket on speed dial.”
I speak through gritted teeth where I bite down on the big red button. “You can’t do that.” I step toward her. I want to swing. I want to lay into her gleaming veneers with the kind of punch that taught me lessons growing up.
“Stay away from Ashton,” she commands.
My chest heaves with deep breaths, trying to keep up with the blood supply heavy and aching in my limbs. How dare this woman threaten me? Threaten the Danes? How dare she think she can come into this town and tear it apart? Tear everything I care about in the world away from me with her venom and threats…
I’m spiraling out of control. The pain of this being real, of me in a world without Ashton, takes over all my senses. Something between vengeance and self-defense seizes the last thread of self-control I have within, and before I can think again, I head just inside my house to grab one of the hockey sticks Ashton left. My strides hit the ground hard enough to make craters all the way to where Chloe’s white Jeep sits. With the strongest swing I can muster, I whack the stick down hard, smashing one of her headlights.
“What the hell are you doing?” She takes a few steps back.
I go straight to the other one. It explodes under the crack of thunder. I lay into it with the stick.
“You stupid country bumpkin bitch!”
She’s grabbing both sides of her face, and she should, because the way I’m feeling, those contoured cheekbones are next.
I raise the stick toward her. “Get the fuck out of here. You hurt Ashton. You threaten to hurt his family. We’re done talking. Right now.”
Her jaw is wide and slack.
