Chapter 116

• "Surely, you can't be serious, Ash. Please tell me this is a joke right now." I say, clinging desperately to the phone. I need her to laugh and say it is another deflecting joke. I wait for it but it doesn't come.
• "You know I am not. You are not here, you don't know what it is like. Even his closest friends haven't heard from him. They don't know what to think. Some even went as far as going to check at his mother's house even though they knew that they weren't close, she wasn't around, hasn't been for weeks now. I think since Linc took her to New York, she didn't come back. I get terribly nervous when I get asked about him. They look at me like I should have answers and I am always so close to just spewing something I probably shouldn't. It would be easier than this complicated feelings of guilt and worry that I feel." Ashley says. She doesn't sound mad or vindictive about the situation, just tired. I wonder how she managed to heal her physical wounds without having to tell her people how she got them. I miss her. I feel horribly responsible for the untoward stress I have put on her. I think I will always feel guilty about what happened to her. I will always feel bad about it. He treated her like dispensable trash. That must have done a number on her.
• "I get you, Ash. I get you and I am sorry. But even if you don't trust Linc, you can trust me. And I am telling you that Tyler is either very good at hiding or whatever fate he met, had nothing to do with us. That is just the truth and nothing more." I say, there is a slight doubt in my head that she has successfully planted but I shake it off. I trust Linc. He didn't do it. And he definitely doesn't have him in hiding somewhere. I will not succumb to the hysteria.