Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A n emotion I didn’t feel very often was embarrassment. To be embarrassed, one had to care about the thoughts of others around them, and I rarely ever did. Second-hand embarrassment was one I knew often—God only knew how many times someone had made a fool of themselves at all the parties and fundraisers and galas over the years—but feeling it firsthand was a rarity. So much so that I truly had no knowledge of how to navigate it, aside from pretending absolutely nothing happened.
I sat on the edge of my bed, listening to Sumner chatter with the housekeeping staff in the main room. My door was closed, but their muffled voices still seeped through. Sumner explained how he’d tripped, dropped the glass. I wondered if he knew how much he implicated himself; this gossip would spread like wildfire by tomorrow morning. Sumner was in the Ice Queen’s hotel room late at night. They were even drinking together. What else did they do?
If he wasn’t outcast before, he would be now.
Part of me wished my bedroom door would never open. The other part wished Sumner would stop talking to the staff and come hold my hand. Comfort , he’d called it. I wanted it now.
And then, as if he heard my thoughts, Sumner opened my bedroom door and stepped inside. Only my bedside lamps were on, and it was clear from the way he hesitated on the threshold that it took him a moment to adjust. Sumner’s eyes were soft at first until they zeroed in on my feet. Then his gaze sharpened. “Margot, you’re bleeding.”
I looked down. A cut lanced into the skin of my shin, and blood trickled from it in a dark trail. A piece of glass must’ve nicked it. It’d been bleeding long enough that it dotted the top of my white slipper. “I didn’t notice.”
Sumner muttered a curse as he ducked into my bathroom, and a moment later, the faucet was running. I had no time to worry about the state of my bathroom—if there were any of my hairs on the sink or underwear on the ground—before Sumner was already coming back into my bedroom, kneeling before me at my feet.
In his hands, he held a white washcloth, and with the gentlest touch, he began dabbing the drying blood off my leg. The warm water he’d dampened it with felt good on my skin. “Housekeeping is going to vacuum up the glass,” he told me as he wiped. “They brought up extra cups if you wanted another drink.”
I didn’t, but I wished I’d drank more wine earlier, for no other reason but to numb the sheer humiliation of it all. Sumner wiped at where my skin was sliced, and with the blood cleaned, it was clear that the cut was no bigger than the size of my pinky nail. It’d just been bleeding for a while, unnoticed.
“Don’t listen to him,” Sumner said in a falsely cheerful voice. “He was just drunk. I doubt he meant any of what he said.”
I held still during his ministrations, throat tight. “What makes you an expert on my father?”
Sumner peered up at me from his crouched position with an almost haunted shadow over his face, one that matched with the darkness of the bedroom. “Don’t… don’t take any of what he said to heart.”
“Which part?” I gave a slow blink. “That I’m spiteful? Lacking in dignity? How I’m an embarrassment to everyone around me?”
“You are none of those things.”
“You aren’t a very good liar.”
Sumner let out a small breath and broke his gaze, only for a moment. “You are.” When he spoke next, his words almost bordered on a whisper, as if he hadn’t wanted to ask the question. “Did you mean it?”
For some reason, the softness of his voice made me unreasonably annoyed. “Mean what ?”
“That you didn’t want to marry Aaron.”
I let out a slow, rattling breath, exhausted to my core. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk at all. The comfort I wanted didn’t include him asking questions. “I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it.”
“This entire time,” Sumner said, almost as if he were talking to himself. His forehead creased with his sad frown. “This entire time, I thought you wanted to marry him. You kissing me, spilling a drink on Mrs. Astor—this entire time, I thought it was just because you were impulsive. You said it was because you were impulsive. You said it wasn’t that you didn’t want to marry Aaron. But you did those things because you didn’t want to.”
I found myself unable to look away from the oddity of his expression. His unease summoned a weird feeling inside me, one that made me feel like I needed to apologize. For what, though, I wasn’t sure.
He sat back on his heels and looked at the wadded washcloth in his hands, a smear of red visible. “When I asked you if you wanted to marry him, you said yes. You said of course .”
My head swam with pressure, and it made my chest feel as though it was vibrating.
“Why would I have assumed you were lying? That you were marrying someone when you didn’t want to?” he demanded, incredulous. He did, indeed, look at me like I’d lost my mind. “No one just lets themselves be forced into marriage. Except you, apparently.”
“What did it matter? Telling you that everyone wanted me to do something that I didn’t want—what would it have done? It’s not like you have any control over it.” Looking at him, it was almost embarrassing thinking he could’ve ever been Aaron Astor. The childish thought was ridiculous now. “But come on, Sumner. No one would let themselves be forced into marriage? What, but people would marry someone they’ve never even spoken to? Really ?”
“You’re playing the martyr, then.” The distraught expression on his face morphed into something else, something that was reminiscent of the expression he wore when he stopped me from unbuttoning my shirt. “God, Margot, you—you’re like the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why are you even doing this, then?”
I stared down at where he kneeled in front of me, warmth building underneath my skin, but worlds different from the previous moment between us. This time it was hot, suffocating, a wave of irritation that washed away the numbness. “I want you to leave. I’m tired.”
“No.” Sumner didn’t even miss a beat, his stony stare matching mine. “What your dad said isn’t true—people aren’t embarrassed to be around you. You’re the one pushing me away because I’m asking a question you don’t want to answer. You want me to leave? Call security. Because if I walk out now, I’m just giving you more ammo. You aren’t pitiful, Margot, so why are you acting like you are?”
I’d never felt such potent anger before, all channeled toward one specific person. I got to my feet and towered over him, hands curling into fists at my sides. I’d never hit anyone in my life, but I wanted to hit Sumner Pennington now. If this was what Yvette felt after I shoved Ms. Jennings into her, I understood her rage. I trembled with it now. “Get. Out.”
Sumner did not rise from his kneeling position. “Make me.”
I dug my hands into his upper arms, and if I’d been able to get at skin instead of his shirtsleeves, my nails would’ve cut. Of course, though, with Sumner as unwilling, there was no moving him more than an inch.
I tugged again, straining against the grown man on the ground, before falling to my own knees beside him. “ Fine,” I gasped out, chest heaving with painful pressure. Fire flamed in my eyes, but Sumner didn’t melt with it. He remained still, solid beneath my grip. “I can’t call myself pitiful if I’m practically asking for it, right? But you heard my father. If I refused to marry Aaron, they’d disown me. They’d have no more use for me. They’d throw me out and never look back.”
As I spoke, incensed tears began to burn, and I blinked at them furiously. Sumner’s expression softened when he saw them.
“I’m crazy for marrying someone I don’t want to? As if it’s easy to just throw away everything I’ve ever known, huh? Tell me, when you moved here, did you move here broke? Not a single dollar to your name? Or did you have a savings account to fall back on?”
His voice was quiet. “I had something to fall back on.”
“Then you have no right to tell me what to do in this situation.” An angry tear slid down my cheek. “I may not want to marry Aaron, but I’d much rather avoid being homeless without a penny to my name.”
And that was the epitome of it all. I didn’t want to do it, any of it. Marry Aaron Astor, inherit the Massey Suites empire, spend the rest of my life attending the revolving events the Alderton-Du Ponte Country Club always hosted. The future of it all yawned wide before me, dark and gloomy and suffocating, but I still marched forward toward it. The paralyzing fear of turning away was far, far greater. As frightening as walking up to a precipice and jumping off with no knowledge of how far the drop was.
I’d rather not jump. I’d rather be stuck in hell than jump. I was too afraid to jump.
I was messed up beyond saving because I couldn’t be bothered to save myself.
“Why don’t you ask Nancy for help? I’m sure she’d lend you something to help get you settled?—”
“Contrary to what my father says, I do have some dignity left.” I let my hands fall from his arms, weighing like pieces of lead in my lap. “If I’m too much of a coward to leave without her help, I don’t deserve her money.” Even the idea of asking made me sick to my stomach. It made me hate myself even more for ever considering it. “And you know what, Sumner? Have you ever thought that maybe I’d be embarrassed to admit to you the truth about marrying Aaron? Embarrassed to admit that my life isn’t unfolding how I wanted it to—how I dreamed for it to.” My words ran together rapidly, chest feeling as though it was cracking apart. “And I hate it. But the only thing I can do is to throw it all away, and I can’t, I can’t?—”
Before I could get another word out, Sumner leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me, drawing me into him. Our kneeling knees pressed together as he tucked me close, one hand wrapped around my lower back while the other reached up and rubbed between my shoulder blades. “Shh,” Sumner murmured in my ear, his cheek pressing against the side of my head. “Shh, it’s all right, Margot. Take a breath.”
I trembled in Sumner’s warm embrace, unable to reign in my shaking. I knotted my fingers into the loose fabric of his shirt, my knuckles brushing the firmness of his stomach underneath. I could smell the scent of his laundry detergent and hear the pulse of his heart, and I focused on those things, allowing them to pull me back from the brink.
“I’d be alone,” I whispered into his shoulder, my lips brushing the material of his shirt. The wetness on my cheeks had to be transferring onto him, but I didn’t pull away. “If I were to back out of the agreement with Aaron, if my parents were to throw me away—I’d be truly alone. And I don’t want to be.”
Sumner continued to rub circles on my back, sealing the cracks that’d begun to form within me. I felt so small in his arms, like a child finding true comfort for the first time. This was more than holding my hand. And it was the first time someone held me like this. I’d told Sumner I wasn’t fragile, but in that moment, I felt as though the slightest breeze could’ve broken me.
Tension began unwinding within me with each cycle of Sumner’s palm. For the first time, I allowed myself to let my guard down, and let him bear more and more of my weight. He never wavered, never shifted; his arms remained steadfast around me. “What if it’s better?” Sumner murmured. “That other life.”
Could it have been? Was being disowned by my parents better? A life without my Malstoni and Gilfman suits, without my Pierre’s avocado toast, without my Chateau Miselle Sauternes wine. A life without a home, without money. Shallow things, perhaps, but would I be happy without them? Could I be? All alone?
The vacuum from the living room kicked off, which only deepened the quiet.
Earlier in the night, when we’d been this close, I’d been about to kiss him. That magical sort of moment was gone now, shattered along with the wine glass out in the living room. But this one… this moment was simultaneously painful and comforting, tightening my chest with tension while also easing it. It made no sense, but it was the first time such a feeling arose within me.
It was comforting because I felt safe, and it was painful because it wouldn’t last.
Comforting because it was Sumner. Painful because it was Sumner.
But I wanted it to. I wanted to stay in Sumner’s embrace, where I was thawing and sheltered and held tight. “Sumner,” I whispered. “I?—”
“We’ve finished cleaning up all the glass,” housekeeping spoke through the door.
The sudden voice caused us both to pull away from each other—Sumner released me first, and I forced myself to relinquish the grip on his shirt. “Thank you,” he called to them. After a beat, Sumner slid the pad of his thumb along my cheekbone, swiping away the tear that had fallen, the gentleness chasing away its path of frustration. The action caused my throat to tighten, and in spite of the horrible night, a fragment of the fluttering feeling from earlier resurfaced in my chest.
He’d been hired to be my secretary, my babysitter, but over the past few weeks, Sumner had become more important to me than I’d realized. If he hadn’t been here tonight, I’d be bearing the aftermath of my father’s anger alone. I wouldn’t have called housekeeping. I wouldn’t have cleaned up my cut. I would’ve been alone. And he didn’t leave when I told him to. He stayed, and he held me tight .
I wondered if my parents realized how much they were giving me when they hired him. How much of a risk it was.
It almost hurt how much my heart swelled with the realization. I didn’t like Sumner Pennington as my secretary. I didn’t like Sumner Pennington as my friend. I liked him in the way I never, ever should’ve.
But it was too late.
“You should go, too,” I said, though my voice was far more exhausted than it’d been a moment ago. I reached up and withdrew his hand, holding it for a moment before setting it back into his lap. I wondered if he noticed that mine shook. “It’s late.”
This time, he didn’t immediately fire back a retort, refusing to leave. Any argument he had died on his parted lips. I knew I sounded exhausted, but I must’ve looked it too—my eyes already felt near impossible to keep open.
Sumner didn’t fight me this time. With my drained order in the air, he rose to his feet, but instead of turning away, he grabbed my hands and drew me to stand, too. “Let’s get you into bed,” he said, and led me over. “If you need anything, just call me. Or bang on the wall—I’ll know it’s not the air conditioner this time.”
If I hadn’t been so drained, so overwhelmed with my realization, I might’ve smiled.
Sumner pulled back the duvet so I could crawl under the covers, and he laid them over me when I settled in. I watched as he did so with slow but deliberate movements, and when he was finished tucking me in, he curled his hands into fists at his sides.
“You’re a good secretary,” I said to him, and even just laying down, I could feel my eyelids grow heavy. My pulse thudded in my ears. “And a good friend.”
A surprised emotion flickered across his gaze. “You’re acknowledging it now, huh? That we’re friends?”
Now, I did smile. It was small, but it was there. I knew Sumner was looking at it, just as he always did. “Don’t get used to it.”
His hand coasted from the top of my head to the side, the touch barely there but comforting. The gentleness of it, despite everything, caused the breath in my lungs to quiver. I swallowed hard against the sudden pressure in my throat, shutting my eyes.
At first, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, that despite my tiredness, the night’s events would prove too horrifying to even fathom closing my eyes. But the second I closed them, the numbness from before sunk back in now, teeth sinking into my skin.
Sumner’s hand still eased the hair off my face, but darkness swept in fast. I’m in trouble , I thought, just before I fell asleep.