Chapter 25


    “All good at home?”


    Sighing, I nodded again.


    “What does it mean?” he asked me with what might be genuine curiosity. “What you said in Spanish at the end.”


    My head was still swirling with that horrible, catastrophic phone call. With what I had done and how big I had messed


    up. I didn’t have time to y Google Trante with Aaron, who, on top of everything, was thest person I wanted to


    chat with at the moment.


    Jesus, how did he manage to do that? He showed up, and in th


    e span of a few minutes just—


    I shook my head.


    “Why do you even care?” I snapped.


    I watched him flinch. Only slightly but I was almost sure he had.


    Immediately feeling like a jerk, I brought my hands to my face as I tried to calm myself.


    “Sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a little … stressed. What do you want, Aaron?” I asked him, softening my voice and fixing my


    eyes somewhere on my desk. Anywhere but on him. I didn’t want to face him and give him a chance to see me this …


    unsettled. I hated the idea of him seeing me at my lowest. If it wouldn’t bepletely inappropriate, I would drop to


    the floor, crawl under my desk, and hide from him.


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Given that I refused to look at him, I could only notice the difference in his tone when he said, “I printed out some


    more documents you can use for one of the workshops we outlined.” His voice was almost gentle. For someone like


    Aaron, that was. “I left them on your desk.”


    Oh.


    My gaze tracked down the wooden surface, finding them, and I felt like an even bigger jerk.


    That emotion churned in my gut, turning into something way too close to helplessness for me to feel any better.


    “Thanks,” I muttered, massaging my temples with my fingers and closing my eyes. “You could have just sent them by


    email.” Maybe that way, all this could have been avoided.


    “You highlight everything by hand.”


    I did. When something required my full focus, I needed to print it on paper and then review it with a highlighter in


    hand. But how … oh hell. It didn’t matter that Aaron had somehow noticed. He probably had because it was a waste


    of paper or bad for the environment anyway. And that didn’t change that I was still a jerk for snapping at him like that.


    “You are right, I do. That was …” I trailed off, keeping my gaze on the desk. “That was nice of you. I’ll go through them


    over the weekend.”


    Still not lifting my head to look at him, I reached for the thin stack and ced it in front of me.


    A long moment passed where neither of us spoke.


    I could tell he was still standing there, all statuesque, not moving and just looking down at me. But he didn’t say


    anything, not giving me an excuse to look up. So, I kept my eyes trained on the papers he had so nicely printed out for


    me.


    That long moment seemed to stretch into a painfully awkward amount of time, but right before I was about to lose the


    weird battle and look up, I sensed him leave. Then, I waited a full minute until I was sure he was long gone. And … I


    let it all out.


    My head fell on my desk with a muffled thud. No, not on the desk. My head had fallen on the stack of papers that


    Aaron hade to deliver—very nicely—right before I put my foot in my mouth and somehow told my mother that the


    name of my made-up boyfriend was Aaron.


    A groan slipped out of me. It was ugly and miserable.


    Just like I was.


    I softly bumped my head against the surface of my desk.


    “Estúpida.” Bang. “Idiota. Tonta. Boba. Y mentirosa.” Bang, bang, bang.


    That was the worst of all. Not only was I an idiot, but I was also a lying idiot.


    The realization pushed another groan out of me.


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