The Spanish Love Deception

Chapter 25

“All good at home?”

Sighing, I nodded again.

“What does it mean?” he asked me with what might be genuine curiosity. “What you said in Spanish at the end.”

My head was still swirling with that horrible, catastrophic phone call. With what I had done and how big I had messed

up. I didn’t have time to play Google Translate with Aaron, who, on top of everything, was the last person I wanted to

chat with at the moment.

Jesus, how did he manage to do that? He showed up, and in th

e span of a few minutes just—

I shook my head.

“Why do you even care?” I snapped.

I watched him flinch. Only slightly but I was almost sure he had.

Immediately feeling like a jerk, I brought my hands to my face as I tried to calm myself.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a little … stressed. What do you want, Aaron?” I asked him, softening my voice and fixing my

eyes somewhere on my desk. Anywhere but on him. I didn’t want to face him and give him a chance to see me this …

unsettled. I hated the idea of him seeing me at my lowest. If it wouldn’t be completely inappropriate, I would drop to

the floor, crawl under my desk, and hide from him.

Given that I refused to look at him, I could only notice the difference in his tone when he said, “I printed out some

more documents you can use for one of the workshops we outlined.” His voice was almost gentle. For someone like

Aaron, that was. “I left them on your desk.”

Oh.

My gaze tracked down the wooden surface, finding them, and I felt like an even bigger jerk.

That emotion churned in my gut, turning into something way too close to helplessness for me to feel any better.

“Thanks,” I muttered, massaging my temples with my fingers and closing my eyes. “You could have just sent them by

email.” Maybe that way, all this could have been avoided.

“You highlight everything by hand.”

I did. When something required my full focus, I needed to print it on paper and then review it with a highlighter in

hand. But how … oh hell. It didn’t matter that Aaron had somehow noticed. He probably had because it was a waste

of paper or bad for the environment anyway. And that didn’t change that I was still a jerk for snapping at him like that.

“You are right, I do. That was …” I trailed off, keeping my gaze on the desk. “That was nice of you. I’ll go through them

over the weekend.”

Still not lifting my head to look at him, I reached for the thin stack and placed it in front of me.

A long moment passed where neither of us spoke.

I could tell he was still standing there, all statuesque, not moving and just looking down at me. But he didn’t say

anything, not giving me an excuse to look up. So, I kept my eyes trained on the papers he had so nicely printed out for

me.

That long moment seemed to stretch into a painfully awkward amount of time, but right before I was about to lose the

weird battle and look up, I sensed him leave. Then, I waited a full minute until I was sure he was long gone. And … I

let it all out.

My head fell on my desk with a muffled thud. No, not on the desk. My head had fallen on the stack of papers that

Aaron had come to deliver—very nicely—right before I put my foot in my mouth and somehow told my mother that the

name of my made-up boyfriend was Aaron.

A groan slipped out of me. It was ugly and miserable.

Just like I was.

I softly bumped my head against the surface of my desk.

“Estúpida.” Bang. “Idiota. Tonta. Boba. Y mentirosa.” Bang, bang, bang.

That was the worst of all. Not only was I an idiot, but I was also a lying idiot.

The realization pushed another groan out of me.

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