I met you.”
She sucked in a shocked breath, and the hurt that crossed her features made him feel like absolute shit. It had been another low blow, and he opened his mouth to apologize, but the hotel phone interrupted him. They both stared at it, startled by the ringing of an actual telephone.
“Don’t say another word,” she ground out, her voice hoarse and brittle. She moved to the desk to answer it.
“Hello?” She listened for a moment, then sent Ashton a worried look. “Sí, él está aquí.”
Ashton’s surprise at hearing her speak Spanish meant he wasn’t thinking about who was on the phone. When he lifted the receiver to his ear, he was shocked to hear his father’s voice on the other end. He listened to Ignacio with growing horror, guilt and fear roiling in his gut. With frantic movements, he grabbed the pen and paper on the side of the desk and scribbled down the information.
“Ya salgo para allá.” Ashton replaced the phone in the cradle and stalked over to the sofa. Digging around in the cushions, he retrieved his cell phone and checked the screen. Five missed calls from his father, and a series of texts, telling him what he now already knew.
“Yadiel fell,” he said harshly.
Behind him, Jasmine gasped. “Oh my god. Is he okay?”
The concern in her voice was genuine, but Ashton was too fired up to be kind. “He broke his collarbone. They’re in the ER and my father has been trying to reach me.”
“Oh no. I hope—”
“Jasmine, don’t you see?” Ashton didn’t want her trying to make him feel better. His child was hurt, and he hadn’t been there. Never mind that Yadiel was always climbing and falling and hurting himself. Ashton had years’ worth of guilt stored up, and for the first time, he had somewhere to direct the pain.
Even if, in the back of his mind, he knew she didn’t deserve it.
When she didn’t respond, he whirled on her, ignoring the hurt look on her pretty face.
“I don’t have time for this.” He waved a hand, vaguely gesturing at them and everything between them. “Any of it. I should have been with my family. If I had—” Guilt stabbed at him. “My family and my career are the most important things in my life, and now you’ve managed to sabotage both.”
He ignored her sharp gasp and headed for the door. When he got there, he paused, and gave her his most painful truth. “I’m sorry, Jasmine. I just don’t have room for you.”
He left without looking back and caught a taxi to the emergency room where his family waited. The whole time, he replayed the horrible things he’d said. The guilt of hurting her mixed with the guilt of not being there for his son, until he felt like he was going to vomit. Or maybe it was the cab driver’s heavy foot on the brake. Either way, by the time he got to the ER, he was sick with worry.
He found Yadiel sitting in a hospital bed playing with Star Wars LEGOs. A sling kept his left arm mostly still. Ignacio sat on a chair next to the bed reading a murder mystery in Spanish.
“Mijo, are you okay?” Ashton rushed over, checking his son for any other signs of injury or distress.
But Yadiel simply received him with a sunny, gap-toothed smile. “Hi, Papi. Can we go home now? To the apartment, I mean.”
Ignacio closed the book and stood. “We’re all done here,” he said in Spanish. “They patched him up sooner than expected. We would have met you back at the rental, but you were already on your way, so we figured we’d wait. Your grandparents already went back in a taxi.”
Ashton felt like the floor had rocked under his feet. Yadiel was . . . fine. Everyone was fine. Without him. He’d built up all this anxiety and fear—for nothing. And now the emotions had nowhere to go.
Ignacio gathered the LEGOs and his book into Yadiel’s Spider-Man backpack and hoisted it over his own shoulder. “Vámonos, Yadi.”
“Okay, ’Buelo.”
Ashton moved to help, but Yadiel slid off the bed on his own and skipped out of the room.
Feeling useless, Ashton walked beside his father. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
Ignacio shrugged. “No es nada. You know this happens to Yadiel all the time. Since we were in the same city, I figured you could come deal with the insurance and everything. But I handled it. No big deal.”
As Ashton followed his father