Ryan lifted his chin. With his tousled blond hair falling over his forehead, he was even more gorgeous than she remembered, but also weary beyond his years. “What are you going to tell them, Aster? That you broke into Madison’s house and found me in her closet, taking bong hits and listening to music that reminds me of her?”
“I’ll tell them you killed her . . . that you . . .” She was totally out of ammo, and everyone knew it.
“And what kind of proof will you offer?”
He looked at them both, and in that moment, he appeared so bereft Aster wondered how she ever could’ve doubted him. His was not the face of a killer. But something inside her wouldn’t give in just yet. Maybe he hadn’t killed Madison, but he’d done other things. Things she’d been blamed for.
“I’ll tell you what I’m guilty of. I’m guilty of fucking everything up. I’m guilty of going along with Madison’s crazy plan. I’m guilty of believing her when she claimed she had it all under control. I’m guilty of so many things, but I absolutely, one hundred percent did not harm her, and I don’t know who did.”
“So what are you doing here then? What are you looking for? How’d you get in?” Aster fired the questions in rapid succession, hoping to rattle him into revealing something he didn’t intend to.
“I used a key, same as you.” Ryan nodded toward the key ring Aster held clenched in her fist. “Madison gave me mine. How’d you get yours?” He quirked a questioning brow, and Aster scowled in return. “As for what I’m doing here . . .” He lifted his shoulders and casually glanced all around. “I guess you could say I’m trying to figure out what the hell happened, how my life slipped right out from under me, who the hell I’ve been dating for the last six months, and how you ended up implicated in all this. Because I’ll tell you one thing, while I wasn’t a perfect boyfriend, not by a stretch, Madison Brooks was hardly a model girlfriend. Half of what she told me is lies, and now I’m left trying to sort it all out. All I know for sure is that girl is not at all who she pretended to be. She had us all fooled.”
When his eyes met hers, Aster averted her gaze and stole a quick glance at Layla instead, trying to determine what she made of all this. Ryan was an actor, which put everything he said under a cloud of suspicion, yet there was no mistaking the ring of truth in his words.
Ryan lifted his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Can we at least call a truce—even if it’s temporary? Will you at least consider trying to believe me?”
“I believe you,” Layla said, the simple statement enough to shock Aster speechless. “Or at least I don’t think you killed her. But I do think you know more than you’re letting on. You were closer to her than anyone else. So it’s time to fess up and tell us what you know.”
Ryan sighed and glanced between them. “Don’t believe everything you read,” he grumbled. “Truth is, our agents set us up. It was a relationship of convenience, and we played it up for the press, but we both knew the score.”
Aster remained fuming before him. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t about to let him off the hook quite so easily. He’d have to work a lot harder than that to even begin making up for everything she suspected him of doing. “While you may have succeeded in convincing my friend,” she finally said, “unlike me, Layla has no idea the level of deceit you’re capable of.”
“Fair enough.” Ryan shrugged and stared longingly at the bong as though he was actually considering sparking it up.
She was losing control of the situation. Ryan’s sudden appearance had set her off balance—both literally and figuratively—and Aster needed a moment to collect herself.
She stared at the wall reserved for displaying framed photographs of Madison, the neat rows spanning from the floor all the way to the ceiling. A mix of the magazine covers she’d graced—Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People’s “Most Beautiful” issue—along with pics of her posing beside a variety of high-profile public figures—fellow celebrities, studio heads, athletes, celebrity chefs, even the president.
In every photo, Madison’s unknowable gaze seemed to be staring right back at the viewer. The girl had secrets. It seemed so obvious now. And Aster was convinced that the key to finding her lay in discovering just what it was Madison was so determined to hide.
She returned her focus to Ryan. Despite what he claimed about the relationship being one of convenience, he’d still been closer to Madison than anyone else. She needed to know what he knew, though she couldn’t aff
ord to let him know just how desperate she’d become.
“Five minutes.” She stared pointedly at her watch. “That’s all you’ve got to convince me. So why don’t you start with where you were the night Madison went missing, since, as it turns out, you went missing too.”
Ryan froze. “I didn’t go missing.” His words were slow, halting, as though he’d carefully selected each one. “You’re the one who went missing.”
Aster fumed. It was exactly what she’d expected him to say. Deny, deny, deny. Well, not anymore, and not on her time. “Not exactly,” she snapped, staring him down until he visibly cringed. “Try again.”
Ryan looked to Layla as though she held the script that contained all his lines. Returning to Aster, he said, “You went to the bathroom and never came back. I polished off the rest of the champagne while waiting for you to return. I even sent one of the waitresses to check on you. It wasn’t until James told me he saw you leave and get into a car with some other guy that I took off with my friends.”
She was as equally outraged as she was stunned. If what he said was true, then they’d never slept together. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t slept with someone else. Possibly the nameless, faceless stranger she’d supposedly left the club with?
A wave of nausea rushed through her as everything she’d feared about that night made the leap from bad to so much worse. She felt dizzy, unsteady. Gazing longingly at the couch, she thought how nice it would be to sit for a bit until she found her footing again, but quickly ruled it out. She could not, would not, show any weakness. She’d survived a week in jail. She’d survive this too.
“You were pretty upset.” Ryan’s tone was tentative. “I figured you just needed to blow off some steam.”
His words were a blur as she turned to search Layla’s face, in desperate need of a second opinion, an ally, someone to translate and make some kind of sense of everything Ryan was saying.
Ryan ran a hand through his hair, removed the earbuds that hung from his neck, and placed them on a table next to the bong and his phone. “Truth is, the breakup was staged. Mad thought she was doing us both a favor. She knew I was seeing you, knew how much I was beginning to care for you. . . .”
Aster rolled her eyes, shook her head, and groaned in a way he couldn’t possibly miss. He might have sideswiped her a moment ago, but with that single bullshit statement, she was back in control.
“Okay, fine.” He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I was attracted to you, which isn’t exactly a crime, is it? You were always so elusive, so impossible to get, it drove me crazy and made me want you even more. When I admitted as much to Madison, she didn’t hesitate to jump on it. She said she needed to get away for a bit. She had some business to handle, something personal, though she refused to divulge any details. She claimed a public breakup would provide the perfect excuse to disappear for a while.”
“Why’d you agree to go along?”