He looks up. He sees me. The doors are closing…
And at the last minute, his hand slaps up, fitting right between the doors just before they snap shut. They reverse the motion and slide apart, and I fly into the elevator with him, my momentum carrying me forward so fast I almost bowl him over.
“Ash,” he says. “Your father…”
I shake my head at him. “I’m coming home with you,” I say because it’s the only thing that feels right.
It’s the only thing I have enough breath to say.
But when he scoops me up in his arms and lowers his face to kiss me, I feel life flooding through my veins, real and strong and restorative, and I know that I’m exactly where I need to be.
“I love you, Ash,” he says, breaking away only to say those words, his arms tight around me as the elevator whisks us up.
“I love you, too,” I tell him, and close my eyes for another kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fernando
It’s early in the morning when the phone rings. I open my eyes and remember first that I’m in the States, in a hotel that was randomly recommended to me by my taxi driver – and second that Ashley is beside me.
I smile for a moment, then the noise of the phone snaps me into action. I reach over and grab it, but the confusion reigns when I realize my phone isn’t ringing at all.
It must be Ashley’s.
“Hello?”
I roll back over to see her already sitting up and talking into her phone, one hand pushing her blonde hair back from her forehead.
“No, Dad…” Ashley says, sighing. I can’t hear Joe, but I can guess what kind of things he might be saying. “Listen to me, please. I’m not coming home. I’m going back with Fernando. I’ve already made my decision.”
There’s a long pause, then more of the same, Ashley repeats herself four or five times before she tells him goodbye and hangs up the phone, shaking her head.
“He won’t accept it,” I say softly.
“No,” she says, sighing. “He won’t. We’d better get ready to go.”
“Right,” I say, opening up a browser on my phone. “I’ll find us some new tickets home for later today.”
We’re still packing up, getting ready to leave the hotel room before checkout, when there’s a hammering on the door. We exchange a look, but I go to answer it – and through the peephole, I see exactly who I somewhat suspected it would be.
Joe.
“How did you find us?” I ask, opening the door and stepping back to let him in.
“I told them you’d abducted my underage daughter,” he says, his face pale. “It was the only thing I could think of that would be urgent enough.”
I’m reassured a little by the fact that his voice is steady and quiet, and that he hasn’t tried to separate us by calling the police or something like that. Such a claim would undoubtedly be taken even more seriously in that case. But all he’s done is come to speak to us, which gives me hope.
“You can’t stop me,” Ashley says, instantly on the defensive. “I’m going, Dad.”
“He’s not taking you back with him,” Joe says. “Can’t you see that? I’m here to bring you home when he abandons you here and leaves you alone!”
“Joe,” I say, my voice reflecting the hurt his accusation causes me. He’s known me for a long time. He should know me better than that. “I’m not lying about this.” I open up my phone and show him the screen the confirmation of the order of two plane tickets for this afternoon, one for me and one in Ashley’s name.
I’m taking a risk, even showing him this. He could use this information to keep us here, to delay us somehow. But it won’t matter. No matter what he does, we’ll find a way out of it, and then we’ll just book the next flight or the next.
I’m not leaving here without her.
Joe looks desperately at the screen, then at Ashley. “It’s not serious,” he says. “It’s a fling. By the time you realize what you’ve left behind, he’ll have moved on. Then what are you going to do? What about school?”
“I can enroll in Barcelona,” Ashley says, lifting her chin. “Get a European degree. But I haven’t even decided what kind of work I would like to do, Dad. I really don’t know. I just want to have a family, not a career. I know that’s not supposed to be what a young woman like me wants, but it is. I can do everything I can at home, in Barcelona – so why stay?”
Joe shakes his head sadly. “He’ll leave you.”
“No, I won’t,” I cut in. I thought about this last night, and I know what I can do to make Joe see. I came here prepared because I hoped that we might share a happy occasion together before flying back to Spain. But now that it’s come to this, he’s forced my hand. I have to show him how serious I am about Ashley, how much I love her.