23. Selma

twenty-three

Selma

I felt numb.

Desensitized.

I know it was terrible timing, given the gravity of the present situation, but after hours of wallowing in self-pity and anger, there wasn't really much else to feel.

It would be hard to recover from this. Months of hard work and sweat had gone down the drain. I was a ball of spiraling emotions and a vortex of madness, boxed within the crumbling walls of defeat. Maria's comforting hand made my calm demeanor possible. Her presence, and the fact that I was in Ashton's apartment, brought soothing relief.

In other words, I wasn't alone, unlike last time when I'd had to deal with something like this.

Maria eventually came to my aid, but by the time she arrived, I had already lost so much that I believed couldn't be recovered. But this…right now…was infuriating and tiring.

I didn't know what I did to Alex to deserve this. That my body was dormant didn't mean my mind was. Try as I might to understand it, his motive deserted me. So many crazy possibilities swirled through my mind, making me dream of hurting someone who some time ago meant the world to me.

Now, he was nothing more than air, intangible and, after today, fucking invisible.

The price of trust. How expensive it is, I mused.

I'd never been vindictive, but every bone in my body called out for revenge. I wanted to get him where it hurt the most, and because we'd been together for two years, I could actually say that I knew the exact place to hit; his ego.

I tried sifting my emotions, but I was failing epically.

Anger clung to me, and the hands of despair caressed me. I could voice out how mad I was, but what difference would it make? I could lash out and cry, but what good would it do? I'd always been pragmatic, and my senses told me that the last thing I wanted to do was put my despair out there for everyone to see because then everyone would know that the blogs were telling the truth. I really was the pathetic, scorned designer who slept with her photographer and got pregnant.

While that was not too much of a burden to bear, my designs leaking was almost killing me. Who would have done such a thing? Those designs were closely guarded and on my work computer. Could Ashton have been right about the culprit being someone working close to me?

But no one had access to my computer, and the only people who had copies of the designs were the dressmakers and the patternmakers. I'd been working with them for years now without any issues. Was it possible that they turned on me?

I couldn't make a move right now if there was even one to make. Not until I had a bit of clarity to deal with the pressing issues, and not with this mind of mine clouded with emotions. I thought about my mother and how she must have seen the news by now. Was she worried? Did she believe the blogs that I was a whore?

Sighing, I curled my legs into me as I leaned against the plush sofa, wrapping the thick blanket around me. It smelled like Ashton, woody and spicy, and I inhaled the comforting scent, feeling my bones lax beneath my flesh. Yet my mind raged. I wanted to let loose and release all the pent-up anger inside me. I wanted to rein in madness. I wanted to pummel my frustration and drown my despair. But there was no way to do that without drowning further into depression. If I let all these raging emotions loose, I was scared I would never be able to go back to normal.

For someone who barely knew how to hide her emotions, I was doing my best to conceal the darkness inside me, one that threatened to unravel.

I'd been in this industry long enough to know that people never bounced back from this kind of knockdown. Instead, the media would do everything in their power, if someone was willing to listen, to keep their victim down. Whether or not the rumors were true didn't matter. What mattered was that someone was going down, and it wasn't them. So they would milk it for all it was worth.

Why? That was the very word I wanted to ask Alex. Why? I had never made a move against him, not even after the first stunt he pulled on me with my cousin. Family.

The word laughed at me.

People always said blood was thicker than water. Bullshit. That phrase had been terribly misquoted by fuckheads who wanted to satisfy their familial guilt. The correct phrase is that the "blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," meaning that the relationships one chooses to make are far more important than those they do not choose.

I did not choose Iris as my family. While we had never been close despite our mothers being sisters, at least there was never any animosity between us—or so I thought.

It was why her betrayal had hurt way more than Alex's. She had been my family, and I expected better.

Not anymore. They can both fuck off to the ends of the earth and die there for all I care.

For the most part, my breathing had stilled, but my joints were weak. I wanted to close my eyes and let Morpheus take over, but Ashton had left a while ago, and he looked furious. I didn't want to sleep without him around, and I also didn't want to think about why I wanted him around while I slept.

Though I was fast losing the battle. I could see a hazy picture of Maria sitting opposite me, her eyes glued to her phone as she typed away furiously at the screen, no doubt trying to do damage control. However, I doubted there was anything she could do to revive my publicly murdered image.

Unlike three years ago, when all the beating it had taken was just enough to knock me face flat to the ground, this blow was harder. Or perhaps I took it harder—probably harder than the first.

At least if these were rumors, there would have been a way to spin them around. I had people for that. But the accuracy of these reports painted me out to the public like a criminal, with the journals passing my sentence. No hearing. Just hard, cold butchery and condemnation.

Maria's phone began to beep with incoming messages, and so did mine. It was madness. My phone was the last thing I wanted to look at right now. I would literally lose my shit if I saw any more "Selma Volkov is a whore" headlines.

Reaching for my device, Maria silenced both of ours by pressing a side button. Then she returned mine to the table with its screen down, which was most likely a good thing.

But it didn't help that much. I was still burning up inside. She went back to typing and scrolling.

"I'm sorry," Maria said worriedly as she lifted her head up to look at me.

"It's like last time repeating itself all over again," I muttered with a shake of my head. "We've put so much into this for this to happen, Maria. The time, the sacrifice, working late hours, and everything in place to make sure it didn't blow up in disaster. And now, to have it all unravel as though it wasn't worth anything…"

Maria pushed up from the sofa and crossed over to me to rub her hand down my back. "We knew what we were getting into when we decided to enter into this world. It'll be fine, alright? I'll make some calls, and the blog post will be down before you wake up."

"Doesn't help much when the entire world has seen it, does it?"

"You leave that to me to figure out. Try not to let that bother you."

The doorknob turned, and the door opened, causing us both to look in its direction. My lower stomach fluttered as Ashton came into view, and at that moment, all I wanted was for him to hold me and tell me that it would be okay. I wouldn't believe him, but I wanted to hear it from him regardless.

"Alright, I'm going to go. I haven't showered all day, and I smell like shit." Maria grabbed her small purse and tucked her phone into it, hanging the strap on her shoulder. Her eyes locked on mine, and she smiled. "I'll call you in the morning. In the meantime, try not to sulk too much. Worse things have happened."

I returned her smile, though I knew she could tell it wasn't heartfelt. She didn't comment, and after whispering something to Ashton, she saw herself out.

"What did she say to you?" I asked, noticing the worried lines of his mouth and the crinkling of his eyes.

Where did he go?

Upon nearing me, he gathered me in his arms and lifted me, the blanket falling to the floor. I let out a squeal of surprise, clinging to his neck.

"That you smell like shit too," he said, "and need a shower."

"I do not," I mumbled, and his lips tilted. Though Maria was probably right. I didn't shower in the morning, and it was already evening. His apartment wasn't that different from mine. In structure, that was. When he walked down a hallway, I knew he was headed for the master bedroom.

Unlike his minimalistic and monochrome decor, my apartment was more colorful. It felt a little more lived-in, which made sense because I'd been living here much longer than him.

He opened the door to his bedroom, heading straight for the bathroom without giving me time to take it in. Setting me down on the toilet seat, he started to run a bath. I sighed, wondering how he knew a bath would make me feel better than a shower right now.

I watched as he turned on the tap, playing with the temperature of the water with his fingers until he felt it was good enough before switching it off. Then he walked over to where I sat on the toilet and knelt before me.

"Take these off." He gestured to my flip-flops. I removed my feet from them, watching, transfixed, as he arranged them to one side of the door. Then he pushed forward off his heels to throw my shirt over my head.

"Trying to get me naked, are you?" The shirt came off, but my joke was the one that went over his head. I bit my lower lip, watching his hardened face. When he instructed me to lift my hips, I did, and he pulled my shorts down my legs, leaving me completely naked.

Unlike the many other times Ashton had seen me naked, his eyes didn't devilishly rake over my body. As a matter of fact, his jaw was clenched so tightly I was surprised he still had teeth. My heart sank into my stomach as dread filled me. Had he finally come to his senses and realized he didn't have to deal with my baggage? That he could be with someone more agreeable and who didn't carry trouble with her wherever she went? I wouldn't be surprised. My father had left when the responsibility had gotten to be too much, and Alex, the bastard, had been the one who had created the problem before taking off.

My point was that they all left eventually, and I didn't expect Ashton to be any different. He had an image to protect, after all.

"Whatever is going on in that pretty head of yours, peaches, I suggest you stop," he said.

I met his eyes, swallowing a thick ball of saliva. It unsettled me how attuned he was to my emotions. Almost as if he could read me with a single look. I didn't like it.

"I wasn't thinking anything," I argued.

"You're not fooling me; I'm not going anywhere."

I tensed. Could he actually read me? If that was the case, then I was screwed.