All night she’d sat huddled in an uncomfortable chair trying to come to grips with the fact that she’d been lied to at every turn. She’d been used and manipulated, not just by Devon, but by her own father. And all over a business deal.
She couldn’t wrap her head around it.
Why? Why had it been so important for Devon to marry her? Was her father so unconvinced of Ashley’s ability to manage her own life that he’d all but hired a man to be her husband? She winced at the thought, but it was appropriate. At the very least, she’d been used as a bargaining chip.
She rubbed at eyes that felt full of sand. She’d cried all that she was going to allow herself to cry. She be damned if she shed another single tear over her husband.
A dry laugh escaped her. Her husband. What was she going to do about her marriage? Her complete and utter farce of a marriage.
She closed her eyes against the humiliation of it all. What a fool she’d made of herself over the last month. She wanted to die from it.
Had he laughed at her the entire time? Had he joked with his friends about what a gullible idiot she was? She didn’t like to imagine he could be so cruel, but the man she’d faced down the night before and demanded the truth from had been brutally honest. At her insistence, but crushingly forthright all the same.
“It’s time you had the cold hard truth, Ashley,” she whispered. She’d been living a fantasy.
She rubbed at her temples, willing the vicious ache to go away. But the pain in her head was nothing compared to the unbearable ache in her heart.
Should she leave him? Should she ask for a divorce? They could have the shortest marriage on record. She could go back home. Chalk it up to a lesson learned the hard way. It was doubtful at this point that her father would pull the plug on the deal because Devon had lived up to his end of the bargain. It wasn’t Devon who was unhappy with the result. It was her. Everyone had evidently thought she was the very last person who should be consulted about her life.
But the idea of divorcing Devon held as little appeal as living in the cold, sterile state her marriage now existed in. She deeply loved him and love wasn’t something you could switch off at will. She was hurt beyond belief. She was angry and she felt horribly betrayed. But she still loved him and she still wished that they could go back to the way things had been before she’d found out the damnable truth.
It was true what they said about ignorance being bliss. She’d give anything at all to go back to being that innocent little girl who still believed in happily ever after with Prince Charming. For just a little while Devon had been that prince. He’d been perfect. She’d built him into something he wasn’t, and that wasn’t entirely his fault. He couldn’t be blamed for her utter stupidity.
No, she didn’t want a divorce. But neither did she want to live a life with a man who didn’t love her.
She thought back to all the things he’d said to her the night before. His criticisms had stung. They’d stunned her. She’d never imagined that he’d thought of her in such a negative way. But maybe he was right.
Maybe she was too impulsive, too flighty, too exuberant. Perhaps she should be more controlled, more guarded, show more of a knack for self-preservation.
It was evident that he didn’t want the person she was. It was evident he didn’t love flighty, impulsive, tender-hearted, animal-loving Ashley Copeland, who called him at work just to say she loved him.