shoulder and gently led her to the weight bench to sit. Then he retrieved her water bottle and brought it to her. He sat next to her while she took a long drink.
When she finally lowered the bottle, her expression was bleak.
“Can I tell you the worst part?” she whispered.
He would have given her anything she asked for in that moment. “Dime. I mean, tell me.”
She swallowed hard and hunched her shoulders. “I don’t even think I liked him that much. I just . . . wanted to be liked. And I thought he did.”
Ashton’s heart broke for her. What could he say to that? More than anything, he wanted to take her in his arms, to comfort her. But they weren’t close like that. Victor and Carmen were, but Ashton and Jasmine weren’t.
Still, she’d just revealed something big, and he needed to respond. I like you was on the tip of his tongue, but instead, he took her hand and just held it. When her fingers tightened, he stroked her knuckles with his thumb.
She gave herself a little shake. “My cousins want me to move back to New York. Because of all . . . that.” She gestured at the blank TV screen with her free hand.
“You grew up here, right?”
She nodded. “Most of my immediate family is here. My grandparents on my mother’s side live in San Diego, but the Rodriguez side? They’re here. New York is home.”
“But you live in Los Angeles now.”
“It’s where the soaps film, but I dread going back.” She gave a sad little shrug. “The traffic, the stress, the fake friends . . . I don’t even know which of my so-called friends took money in exchange for giving anonymous statements to the tabloids—multiple people, I suspect, probably even some of my castmates on The Glamour Squad. How do you know who to trust after something like that?”
“No sé,” he said. “Yo sólo confío en mi familia.”
Her forehead scrunched, like she was trying to translate in her head. “I only . . . something . . . in my family. Sorry, I don’t know that word. Confío.”
He gave her hand a squeeze, then let go. “Trust,” he said. “Confiar means to trust.”
She nodded, and the hand he’d just released clenched into a fist.
“I hate LA,” Ashton said, trying to lighten the mood. He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Do I want to work in Hollywood? Absolutely. But I don’t think I could ever live there full time.”
He didn’t mention that he didn’t want his son growing up there. Or that California was too far from Puerto Rico.
He didn’t say any of that, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that he wanted to. He wanted to open up and confide in Jasmine. He suspected she’d be a good listener. But then she’d look at him with compassion in those stunning eyes of hers, and he’d be lost. And he couldn’t afford to lose himself when his whole family relied on him to stay strong.
Instead, he just said, “Let’s rehearse. And you can show all of them how wrong they are about you.”
“Thank you.” Her smile was sweet, but sad. “I mean that.”
As they returned to the treadmills and picked up their scripts, Ashton wondered what it would be like if they were two different people in a different situation. If he were just a single dad who didn’t have to worry about keeping his son’s existence a secret, and if Jasmine were just a woman who didn’t have national media attention focused on her.
What would she think if she knew about Yadiel?
But she couldn’t know. And that was that.
Chapter 17
After a few days, Jasmine worked up the nerve to ask Ashton to help her practice Spanish. She’d worked on it a little with Miriam and Peter, but asking Ashton for help seemed like a bigger deal. Not that she thought he’d say no—their rapport had improved substantially, especially after their talk at the gym—but because she still felt self-conscious about her command of the language.
She thought they’d practice in one of their dressing rooms, so she was surprised when he suggested they go to the grocery store near the hotel one evening after filming.
It was one of those Manhattan supermarkets with high shelves, narrow aisles, and fancy food. Ashton claimed he actually needed to buy groceries, but Jasmine didn’t fully believe he needed the ginger ale and peanut butter in his basket.
They were incognito, Ashton in another guayabera