Her words were like a kick in the gut, because she was right. Nothing between them had been “just” anything. But he couldn’t tell her that now.

He shoved a hand through his hair, ruining forty-five minutes of the stylist’s work in half a second. “I wasn’t just hiding it from you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Her voice was high with outrage and disbelief, and something else. Coño, he’d hurt her. “Ashton, I’ve dated enough guys who didn’t care about me to know that you do. And honestly? That only makes it worse.”

On that, she spun on her heel and left, but not before he heard the crack in her voice, or saw the tears in her eyes.

All of his instincts screamed at him to go after her, to beg her to come back and let him explain. Her pain cut him to the core, made worse by knowing he’d caused it, however inadvertently.

This was so much worse than dumping a coffee on her. And it couldn’t be fixed with a simple apology and a few cups of Café Bustelo either.

But what was there to say? She was right. He’d had his chance to tell her about Yadiel on his own terms, and he hadn’t taken it.

Whatever hope they’d had as a couple was gone now. And it was all his fault.

WHEN THE DAY from hell finally ended, Jasmine called Riley on the ride to the hotel. Her agent said all the right things about how all press is good press, but Jasmine could barely take it in.

Tanya sent a slew of texts to schedule interviews to capitalize on the media attention and do damage control, but Jasmine couldn’t focus on them.

Michelle and Ava waited for her in the hotel lobby when she arrived, with bottles of wine and fancy chocolate and a giant margarine tub full of their grandmother’s arroz con pollo. They took her upstairs to her room, hid her phone, and said all the right things about how he should have told her, but as soon as they left, Jasmine crawled into bed with her phone and kept searching for what people were saying about them.

It wasn’t healthy, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop. Sure, she got that celebrity gossip could be fun and intriguing, but god, did people have to be so mean?

Even after Jasmine shoved the phone under a pillow, the headlines and quotes plagued her.

When sleep eluded her, she went back to scrolling social media for commentary about Ashton. Both their names were trending, but she already knew her own baggage. Ashton, on the other hand . . .

After so many years of secrecy, everyone wanted to know about his son, and by extension, who the boy’s mother was. Apparently it was the best-kept secret in the world of telenovelas, and everyone was dying to know.

Jasmine cared less about who the woman was and more about why Ashton had kept it from her.

He couldn’t fucking tell her he had a child?

She was tempted to text him and ask for the real story. But he would have told her if he’d wanted her to know.

If she were being honest with herself, that was the part that hurt the most. She’d shared so much of herself with him, and he hadn’t trusted her enough to do the same.

And after the way they’d left things, she didn’t think he’d want to hear from her right now anyway.

According to the Buzz Weekly exposé, his son—Yadiel, that was his name—lived in Puerto Rico, which explained why Ashton had flown down there a few times during production on Carmen. But one of the photos revealed that Ashton’s son had been in New York City that very weekend, at a Yankees game in the Bronx.

Ashton had slept in her suite the night before, which meant he had left her bed and gone to the game. Which meant his family had been, and maybe still was, in New York City.

And he hadn’t told her. Angry tears burned her eyes but Jasmine refused to let them fall. Instead, she turned her phone off and finally fell asleep.

Chapter 32

ScreenFlix security was pretty good about keeping photographers away from the gates of the studio, but being located in Queens, with one-way streets, there were only so many routes off the lot.

The crowd down the street from ScreenFlix Studios had grown. There’d always been a small but loyal group of guys sitting on camp chairs inside a pen of metal police barricades, but after the Latinx in the Arts Summit, their crew had tripled in size. Now, in the wake of Ashton’s “scandal,” that number had doubled over the course of the day.

The paparazzi yelled and jeered, their gigantic cameras snapping and flashing as Ashton’s car rolled through the gates. They shouted questions at him about Yadiel, about Yadiel’s mother, about Jasmine, about the ridiculous rumor of a love triangle, even about Puerto Rican politics. That last one he did have a lot of thoughts on, but he wasn’t falling for the bait.

Inside the SUV, Ashton slumped in the back seat and attempted to ignore them, immeasurably grateful for the vehicle’s dark windows. He’d tried to close his eyes to block them out, but that only made it worse. He felt more in control with his eyes open. If something was going to get him, at least he’d see it coming.

Rationally, he knew they couldn’t hurt him. Probably. Most likely. Okay, he didn’t really believe that. All the media attention had ratcheted up the paranoia he kept tamped down, and every time he tried to talk himself out of it, his brain reminded him that someone had already tried. So no, he couldn’t convince himself he was safe, because when the police had finally found the would-be intruder, the man had a hunting knife in his possession.

Aside from the police, Ignacio was the only other person who knew this detail. Ashton prayed it remained that way.

He finally closed his eyes when they got on the highway. And didn’t open them again until the SUV rolled up in front of the apartment where Ashton’s family was staying.

Ashton waited inside the vehicle while Drew—his new bodyguard friend, courtesy of Tanya—checked the sidewalk and vestibule. Ashton guessed the coast was clear, because Drew headed back over to the car. Ashton climbed out and they went inside. And although he felt weird about the whole thing, he asked Drew to wait in the lobby and make sure no one snuck up on the building.

Drew didn’t seem to think any of this was weird, because he just said, “Sure thing,” and took up a post by the door.

In his line of work, Drew had probably seen some shit Ashton didn’t even want to know about—his nightmares were bad enough already.

Upstairs, Ashton assembled his father and grandparents for a family meeting while Yadiel, up past his bedtime and riding high on his second wind, climbed on every piece of furniture in the living room.

“No veo cuál es la gran cosa,” his father said for at least the tenth time.

Ashton gritted his teeth and tried, once again, to explain why the entertainment news media dragging his name through the mud was a very big deal.

“I want Yadiel to have a normal life,” he began in Spanish, but Abuelito Gus cut him off.

“What’s normal, anyway?” The older man shrugged and gestured at the energetic boy. “He’s fine. Kids are growing up with all sorts of new concerns that we didn’t have. This is just one more.”

The memory of glass breaking echoed in Ashton’s ears. “I’m not talking about something like too much screen time. Most children don’t have photographers stalking them and printing pictures of them in magazines.”