"Alright, I’ll wait for you." Maddox Allenson interrupted her before she finished speaking, "Come tomorrow, and we can practice acting together again. I felt something wasn’t right today, so when you come tomorrow, we can study it together."
Joanna Lawrence had just stepped out of the hospital room when she received a call from Ashton Heath.
From the other end of the phone, the man’s deep and magnetic voice came through: "What are you doing? Have you eaten yet?"
Joanna turned her head and glanced back at the hospital room, hesitated for a few seconds, and then said, "I’m at the hospital, I haven’t eaten yet, I’m about to go out for dinner."
"In the hospital? What happened to you?"
"Nothing, I..." Joanna was about to say something, but thought better of it and changed her words, "I’m fine, it’s a male actor from the same film crew who got injured, I’m here at the hospital to visit him."
"I’m about to head back now."
Ashton was always good at focusing on the key points.
Knowing his personality and not intending to hide anything from him, Joanna thought for a moment and told him everything that had happened on the shooting scene.
"If he hadn’t blocked that for me, I might have..." Joanna took a deep breath, paused for a few seconds, and continued, "So I’m very grateful to him. During his stay in the hospital, I’ll probably come to visit him for a while."
"Ashton, I know you mind him. But the situation is special now, and I can’t just ignore him. I owe him a huge favor, and I don’t know how to repay him. If I treat him as indifferently as I did before, I... I can’t do it."
"But my feelings for him are only gratitude, nothing more. You... you understand, right?"
She asked cautiously.
Even though she knew he would mind, she still chose to tell him everything.
She didn’t want to hide it from him, and she couldn’t.
Even if she didn’t say anything, he would learn about it sooner or later.
Deliberately concealing it would only make him more uncomfortable, and it wouldn’t help.
After she finished speaking, Ashton remained silent for a while on the phone.
It was only after almost a minute of silence that he finally spoke, his voice remained low and gentle, with no hint of any other emotions: "Why didn’t you tell me as soon as something happened?"
"If I hadn’t called you, were you not planning to tell me at all?"
"Joanna, do you know, I’ve been waiting for your call. I thought you would call me very soon, I thought you would tell me how scared you were, that you would ask me to be by your side immediately, that you would want to see me very much."
"I’ve been waiting since this morning, but you haven’t called, and you haven’t sent any messages. And then you tell me now that you’ve been with Maddox Allenson the whole day? Joanna, in your heart, am I still your husband? Have you ever really regarded me as your other half?"
"Even if you’re not able to make a call, you don’t even have time to send me a message? Such a big thing happened, and you didn’t say a word. Are you holding a grudge against me for not being there when you were in danger?"
Joanna was dazed for a while by his string of rebukes.
"No, Ashton, I didn’t..." After regaining her composure, she quickly explained, "I didn’t mean to blame you."