She Signed Up to Win Her Ex, Then Was Paired With Her First Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Grovel

Mara overhears Ashton's manager plan her humiliation, records it, then tells Ashton yes. He adds that she will live with Vera's husband: Keith Danner, her first love.

I got to the studio forty minutes early, because I wanted to see how he looked when he thought nobody was watching.

A production assistant walked me down a hallway and left me outside a door that stood open an inch.

I heard Ashton's manager before I saw him.

"You're divorced, but you're still a top-tier actor," he was saying. "And her? She's nobody. She's a woman waiting to be a joke."

I didn't move.

My hand went into my bag on its own.

I thumbed my phone to the voice memo app and pressed the red button.

"She won't take this lying down," the manager went on.

"So you trick her. You tell her you want to do a divorce show together."

"Let her think she still has a shot at getting you back. Let her grovel."

"Then in the edit we make her look desperate and exhausting, and you come out as the loyal guy who got left with a broken heart."

There was a pause, and the click of a game on a phone.

"Are you even listening?" the manager asked.

"Yeah," Ashton said. I could hear him grinning.

He had his feet up. I knew without seeing it.

"I'm telling you," the manager said. "Snap your fingers and she comes crawling back."

I stopped the recording and saved it, and I named the file with the date.

Then I fixed my hair in the dark glass of a trophy case and walked around the corner.

The producer led me into a meeting room with a long white table.

Ashton was already sitting at the head of it with his legs stretched out.

He turned his phone over in one hand.

The manager sat beside him with a legal pad.

Nobody stood up.

"Thanks for coming," Ashton said.

"You said it was about the show."

"It is." He folded his hands. "It's called Switch Houses. Couples on the edge of divorce live apart for six weeks and see what's wrong with their marriage."

"We're already divorced," I said.

"Right. But nobody knows that." He leaned back. "I want to keep it that way until the finale. If the fans learn I cheated, we lose the audience."

I looked at the manager.

He gave me a patient, sorry smile.

"What do you get?" I asked.

"You get to be on TV." Ashton shrugged. "And you get to be near me."

He let that sit.

Then he studied my face, looking for where I would break.

"I'll do the show," I said.

He sat up a little.

"Are you really that desperate for me?"

I lowered my eyes.

I let my lashes shake and made my voice smaller than I had ever made it.

"Yes."

Across the table, the manager wrote something down.

"Ashton," I whispered. "Is there still a chance for us?"

Ashton looked away, toward the window.

"We'll see how you perform," he said.

He made me wait before he spoke again.

"But the premise isn't what you think."

I waited.

"Switch Houses is a swap. You don't live with your husband. You live with someone else's."

I went cold.

"Vera joins the show," he said. "She'll live with me, in our old house."

"And me?"

"Vera's husband will be in a room with you."

The manager had stopped writing.

Ashton's smile was warm and wide, and I knew then he had been saving this part for last.

"You remember him," he said. "Everybody does."

I did.

At nineteen he had stepped out of a small-town shoot and into every living room in America, and he had won every award there was.

At twenty-seven he had retired to marry Vera.

Eleven years ago I had held his hand under a diner counter in Bellmore, Ohio.

The public never knew, and only one person in this room did.

Ashton was looking right at me.

"Keith Danner," Ashton said, and watched my face.

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