from Michelle, but not Ava. They wanted an answer? Fine. She was owning her choices. Raising her chin, she said, “I’m going back to Los Angeles and rejoining The Glamour Squad.” Okay, so that wasn’t a done deal yet, but she was about 87 percent sure they’d take her back.
Ava’s eyes widened but Michelle’s narrowed.
“Shut. Up.” Michelle’s tone was flat with disbelief and a tinge of anger. “You’re moving back to LA? Just like that?” Her dark eyes flicked to the small mountain of suitcases. “Today? What, are you gonna leave directly from the party?”
That was exactly what Jasmine was planning to do, but she didn’t want to say so. Luckily, Ava jumped in.
“What about your Leading Lady Plan?” Ava sounded personally hurt by Jasmine’s decision to give up.
“I ripped it up.” Jasmine gave a nonchalant shrug. “Clearly wasn’t working out that well for me.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You loved working on Carmen. And you hate LA. You’re just too much of an actress to admit it. You’re going to trash all the progress you’ve made because things didn’t work out with a man? Really?”
“It’s not just that it didn’t work out.” Jasmine’s voice held a defensive edge, but she was too tired to soften it. “I can’t keep being intimate with Ashton on-screen while pretending I’m not in love with him. And when shit got hard, he disappeared. Everything related to this show is tied up in him, and the bottom line is, he didn’t trust me. I can’t keep working with someone like that.”
“Ah.” Michelle nodded sagely. “Point four on the Jasmine Scale.”
Ava’s voice was gentle. “Sweetie, is it so unreasonable that he didn’t tell you he had a son? It sounds like he was used to keeping that secret under wraps. And you . . .”
“Are a paparazzi magnet,” Michelle finished bluntly. “Now get inside, we have flower arrangements to prep.”
Between the three of them, they dragged Jasmine’s suitcases into the venue and set to work.
“How many magenta flowers again?” Michelle asked.
“Two,” Ava replied between her teeth. “For the fifth time, it’s two ginger alpinias, one yellow rose.”
“Got it.” Michelle yanked all the delicate tropical flowers out of her vase and started over. “So he didn’t trust you with his kid. So what? You trust people too easily.”
Jasmine huffed as she lined the inside of a rectangular glass vase with large leaves. They looked crooked, so she pulled them out and did it again. “I know I do.”
“My point is, you can’t measure another person’s willingness to trust against your own. For example, you’d never have a secret baby because you can’t keep a secret. I’m kind of impressed he managed it for—how old is the kid?”
“Eight,” Jasmine replied, finally satisfied with the leaves. “Yadiel is eight.”
Wait. There was something about numbers . . .
Jasmine’s hands stilled on the leaves as her stellar memory supplied a missing piece of the puzzle. After the Latinx in the Arts Summit, Ashton had told her about the attempted home invasion. What had he said exactly?
Around seven years ago, someone tried to break into my house.
Seven years. According to Buzz Weekly, Yadiel was eight. That meant . . .
Oh, shit. Yadiel had already been born when it happened. He would have been just a baby, but god, no wonder Ashton was so overprotective about his son’s safety.
“That is impressive,” Ava agreed, referring to how long Ashton had kept Yadiel a secret. “And you’re both right. These centerpieces are too complicated.”
Michelle held up a finger threateningly. “Oh no you don’t. You designed them and insisted they would be ‘easy’ to assemble at the venue. We had our doubts, but now we have committed to these centerpieces and goddamn it, we are making these centerpieces.”
Ava sighed and kept sorting palm leaves.
Jasmine’s mind continued to turn over this new realization. Ashton had left out mention of Yadiel when he’d told her about the break-in. But still, he’d shared it with her, one of his biggest secrets. That couldn’t have been easy for him.
Michelle was right. Jasmine did trust easily, and look where it had gotten her. She could see now it was a direct response to feeling ignored and misunderstood by her parents and siblings. It was why she’d readily given her heart to every semi-attractive man who’d even shown her an ounce of attention. She sought her parents’ love by securing romantic relationships, because in her family, that was what made you a success.