Behind the Curtain - Page 70

“No,” he stated flatly. “Eric had made an appointment to see Dad this afternoon, but he hadn’t actually broken the news yet. So the joke was on me, in the end. I ended up telling my father before I was ready to. And on the phone instead of in person.”

“The conversation went that bad?”

He gave a dry bark of laughter. “Bad is an understatement. He was so shocked . . . and then so pissed off, he was having trouble putting more than three words together at a time.”

So disappointed. He hadn’t said the two words, but somehow she’d heard his thoughts.

“Asher, you have to go to see your parents.”

“I only have a few more nights here. I only have a handful of days left with you. Why should I waste them on a lost cause? They aren’t going to understand.”

She squeezed her eyelids tight, hearing his desperation beneath the cracks of his calm voice. “But it’s your family. Your mom and dad love you. Underneath their anger, they’re probably hurt.” She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I don’t want to miss any time with you either. I hate the idea. But you should go and try to explain to them why you want to work at the Times and why you don’t want to work at GGM . . . tell them why you want to follow your own path.”

“My dad accused me of being a traitor on the phone. They’ll never accept it, Laila.”

“But you have to try. If they don’t understand today or tomorrow or next year, maybe they will someday. There has to be a beginning to healing sometime. You have to be honest about who you are in front of them, no matter how hard it is.”

She heard his soft laugh.

“What?” she asked.

“You give that advice so convincingly, but you won’t take it from me.”

“It’s not the same situation, Asher.”

He exhaled heavily. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“Are you going?”

“Yeah. I’ll leave as soon as I can,” he said.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“How can driving away from you be right?”

His bitter, solemn voice echoed in her head. A tear splashed down her cheek. He made a good point. Nothing about being separated from him at that place and time felt right.

“It’ll only be for a night or two. We’ll see each other soon,” she managed to say after she’d gotten hold of herself.

Neither of them said anything further about it. Somehow, Laila thought Asher was thinking the same thing she was at that moment, however. Maybe they’d see each other again in a day or two. But both of them knew a longer, farther separation loomed close. They still hadn’t come up with anything to solve that horrible reality.

She was hanging up her phone, her heart feeling like a heavy stone in her chest, when the stairwell door opened.

“There you are,” Tahi said. “Mamma Sophia wants to see you.”

“She does? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. She just wants to see her little kibdi,” Tahi said, grinning at the familiar Moroccan endearment. “We’ll tell Zara about Eric after you finish with Mamma Sophia?”

Laila’s small smile vanished at the reminder of Zara.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess the sooner we get it over with, the better.”

• • •

Zara’s reaction to the news that Eric had left Crescent Bay wasn’t at all what Tahi and Laila had expected it to be.

“So what if he left for a little b

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