She Signed Up to Win Her Ex, Then Was Paired With Her First Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Paid With His Card
In first class, Vera whispers that she paid for her flight with Ashton's card. Mara packs and leaves in half an hour, signs, and a month later Ashton calls: the show still has to air.
Vera Maddock took the seat beside mine in first class and smiled like we were old friends.
"Mara Crewe," she said. "I can't believe it's you."
I had flown home from my mother's house with a carry-on and a sore back.
I knew Vera from billboards.
She was my husband's co-star, and for six months she had been the name he said when he was too tired to explain his day.
She didn't wait for me to answer.
She lifted my bag into the overhead bin herself, then asked the flight attendant for a blanket for me.
"You look cold," she said. "Ashton always says you run cold."
I thanked her.
My phone buzzed in my lap.
It was Ashton, from the set across town.
"Still stuck in reshoots. Home Friday, I promise. Trust me, okay? Love you."
I had sent him four messages that week, and he had answered one.
I put the phone face down.
Vera's phone sat on her tray table in a clear case.
It had a little black star sticker on the back.
I had stuck that sticker on Ashton's case myself, the day he booked his first lead.
I looked at it for a while.
I decided she'd bought the same sticker. Fans did that.
The plane pushed back, and the man across the aisle raised his phone to film her.
Vera turned her face to him and waved, and he got his video.
Then she leaned close to my ear, still smiling for him.
"I bought this flight with his card," she whispered. "I thought you should know whose money it was."
She sat back and offered me a mint.
I didn't take it.
I watched her peel the wrapper off and put the mint in her own mouth.
The man across the aisle was still filming, and the flight attendant was pouring Vera a glass of champagne.
Nobody in that cabin could have told you what had just happened.
I knew exactly what it meant.
She wasn't asking me to understand.
She was telling me to leave.
So I would.
When we landed I took the first car I could find and went straight home.
I pulled my two big suitcases out of the closet and packed them in thirty minutes.
I took my clothes, my mother's quilt and my passport, and nothing anyone else had ever touched.
Ashton's car pulled in while I was zipping the second bag.
He came upstairs without hurrying and leaned in the bedroom doorway.
He looked at the suitcases and then at me.
"Vera told me she talked to you," he said.
He didn't say it was a lie.
He didn't say he was sorry either.
"What else do you want?" he asked.
I held out my hand.
"Your phone."
He frowned, but he gave it to me.
For five years I had been the first name at the top of his screen, pinned above every producer and agent he knew.
I opened his contacts.
My name was at the bottom now, and he had changed it.
It said Do Not Disturb.
I handed the phone back to him.
"I'll sign whatever you send," I said.
He sent the papers two days later.
His lawyer had written in the settlement that I would keep the house, the savings, the cars and the royalties from his last three seasons.
Ashton had added a note by hand.
It said he wanted this finished quickly and quietly, please.
There was a nondisclosure agreement stapled to the back.
I signed every page in the lawyer's office, and Ashton did not come.
He had started in this business as an assistant, back when his whole job was holding other people's phones and answering for them.
Now his signature sat on the last page beside mine, and I felt almost nothing.
Then I walked out onto the street, and for the first time in five years nobody was waiting for me to come home.
I told myself it was over.
I stayed in a rented apartment in Silver Lake and learned how to cook for one.
A month later, on a Tuesday, my phone rang with a number I had deleted.
"Mara," Ashton said.
His voice was careful and low.
"We need to meet."
I stood in my new kitchen with a wooden spoon in my hand and said nothing.
"The fans can't find out I cheated," he said. "And the show still has to air."
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