peridot | lando norris

14|london|

-around 10 am the next day-

maeve pov.

lando had left with niamh a little while ago and i'd just gotten done with my work call.

i had a until after lunch to leave for the site visit so i decided to go through some more papers before grabbing lunch outside with ashton. he'd insisted on meeting today and i tried to decline but couldn't.

if he had something more to say, it had to be now because he knows i want to break up since we're not in a place to be fixed.

the doorbell rung and i got up from the sofa to go check it.

"ashton? what are you doing , here?" i asked, not letting him in immediately. he looked at me from head to toe before speaking. "you said we could have lunch together. i thought i'd drop by early to talk"

not gonna lie, ever since i spoke with lando last night, i hadn't once thought back to ashton. i didn't want to see him.

"i thought we'd speak at lunch..."i say, letting him in anyways after turning my head and rejecting his kiss. it felt unnecessary.

"you look cute today, except for that shirt" he said, taking a seat on the couch and i furrowed my brows, looking down at what i wore.

since lando slept in my room last night, i had to grab a shirt from niamh's closet and only her over sized ones were what could comfortably fit me, which unsurprisingly happened to be lando's merch. i didn't even realise.

"why do you hate him so much?" i asked blatantly. everyone thought i hated lando but i didn't. ashton did. i never had a reason to hate lando.

"because you don't. you're blind, maeve. look at what your life is and what it could've been if you hadn't had his daughter -" "excuse me?" i cut him off. what does he mean 'his' daughter. niamh was ours.

he scoffed and leaned back on the sofa whilst i stood behind the coffee table, in front of him. "think about it, if norris and you had never crossed paths, you wouldn't be in this mess in the first place"

i just stared at him in awe. i had never seen this side of ashton...so brutal and egoistic.

"i don't know what my life would've been like if i hadn't met lando but i sure as hell wouldn't have been happy with it. i thought you came here to talk about us?"

"happy? are you happy now? the knife of time held against your neck, ready to cut it off the minute you make your decision? it's me or him, for niamh like your dad said." he was trying to get into my head.

dad wanted an answer, a simple one.

a) get married to ashton and inherit whatever the wills have to offer
b) run grandma's hotels, if i have lando give up on niamh's custody
c) breakup with ashton and just continue to be by myself with niamh, declining all beneficiaries

option c was implied and not an explicitly stated choice, but that's what i was going to do since that special piece of paper had no value without my signature.

"you don't know my family, ashton." i state and he smiles. "my dear, i know your family better than you do. all these years, i was the one who was there with them...not you. you were busy doing you little sketches and watching lover boy lose his races until he gave up and left"

"he didn't leave!" i almost yelled. ashton and i,whilst i was still with lando, still spoke as friends. we'd basically grown up together and he'd seen me through everything. from the moment i fell for lando, till we split. he'd seen it all and he'd not been a fan. especially since niamh. he was just like everyone else,but had a facade that convinced me he wasn't.