Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I thought I heard him wrong. That there was no way the man before me said any of the words that came from his mouth. I’m Aaron Astor. Your fiancé .
“Or, well, not fiancé yet,” the man—Aaron Astor—fumbled in his recovery, cheeks flushing as he dropped his untouched hand. “That—that was a slip of the tongue, forgive me.”
I blinked at him as if he spoke another language, the words registering, but distantly. Instead, reality took more importance. I could’ve laughed, because this obviously wasn’t a random impromptu event, like my mother had made it sound. No wonder there weren’t many people in attendance—she’d no doubt culled the guest list, keeping it to the professional ones in her friend group. It was planned, all for Aaron Astor’s arrival.
Our meeting wasn’t supposed to happen yet. It wasn’t supposed to be until next week, the day before the wedding. I hadn’t prepared for it yet. But that was why my mother laid out a dress for me. A white dress. She’d laid the trap, such a painfully obvious one, and I all but waltzed into it. Her gushing over my appearance hadn’t been because her friends would see me, but because Aaron Astor would.
My mother made that even clearer when she joined our bubble. “Oh, good, you’ve found Margot!” she said with an exuberant voice I hadn’t heard her use in a while. “Doesn’t she look absolutely stunning, Aaron?”
“Indeed,” he returned, beaming that pearly smile now at my mother. “I was told she had an affinity for suits.”
“Oh, well, here and there, I suppose,” my mother tried to cover. “But she knows when to dress up.”
They were speaking about me as if I wasn’t standing two feet from them, eyeing me like a painting that hung in a museum. It only heightened the urge to laugh, and the one thing keeping me from doing so was how sick to my stomach I felt.
“I will say, Margot,” Aaron said, returning his attention to me. His eyes roamed me in a polite way, but I was suddenly all too aware of how much of my skin was on display in this dress. “You’re much more beautiful up close than you were from afar.”
If I hadn’t been fully knocked off-kilter, I might’ve had a comeback for his words. Here or California, there was no escaping the flowery, empty compliments that came with the rich. But I stood there staring at the man who’d been an ominous figure in my head for the past few months, feeling as though I’d woken from a dream.
Aaron’s eyes slid from me, who struggled to find her words, to the equally silent man at my side. “Hopefully you aren’t her date,” Aaron said to Sumner in greeting, his voice a forced sort of light; I could hear it immediately. Aaron stepped closer, offering his hand out once more. “That would make things very awkward. Good to meet you.”
It seemed to take a whole beat for Sumner to draw his hand from his side and take Aaron’s—enough of a hesitation that I caught it. Sumner didn’t look him in the eye, but inclined his head. “Sumner Pennington.”
The sound of his voice caused something in me to tighten. Sumner… There was no way he hadn’t known, right? Thinking back, it was obvious. My mother gifted him a suitcase of ties. Told him to get a suit tailored. Asked him to keep me on my best behavior for tonight. He’d known, and he’d let me walk into the ambush.
My mother looked between the two of them, clearly wondering if Sumner’s presence was preventing the sparks from flying. Everyone in our group—in the room—seemed to await my move. Would she lash out with her impulsivity and ruin everything? my mother’s eyes seemed to question as she watched me. Or will she step into the role I’ve lured her into?
Looking at Aaron now caused something in me to flatline. It was that what if bubble—it had burst apart the second he’d spoken his name, and all the barest hints of hope withered with those pieces.
I gave one more humorless chuckle before lifting my chin. “Go fetch me a drink, would you?” I told Sumner while barely turning my head toward him. My voice was bitter, the way it would’ve been if I’d spoken to any other staff member. I focused on Aaron, my full attention on his ordinary face. “You asked to dance?”
Aaron resumed his beam, offering his hand once more to me. This time, with no hesitation, I took it.
He, thankfully, led us away from my mother and Sumner, toward the middle of the dancefloor instead of the outskirts. As I left them behind, I built a wall around me, lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders. This was no different than any of the other times I went to a gala or a dinner. Aaron Astor was just another person in the realm I wanted nothing to do with. I can do this .
He halted us just underneath the grand chandelier light, picking my body into his arms much like Sumner had, with his hand at my back and his other grasping mine.
“You truly are more stunning in person,” he gushed. Close to him like this, I could smell his spiced cologne, a scent that didn’t seem to mix well with his body’s natural odor. At least, it didn’t interest me. Not in the way— stop . “The first time I saw you, it was only a glimpse, but to see you now—the glimpse didn’t do you justice, darling.”
Darling . The endearment made him sound old. Seeing Aaron in real life, putting a face to the elusive creature who’d been ruling my mind, somewhat took away the fear of it all. He certainly wasn’t ugly. Certainly, wasn’t anything like how I imagined him. He at least had hair. He was shorter, maybe an inch shorter than me, but nothing about him was horrifying enough to warrant removing all traces of himself from the internet. “I do look better under chandelier light,” I said graciously.
“Indeed.” His eyes did a slow cast back to where we’d walked over from, though I refused to follow. “I really do hope that man wasn’t your date.”
“And why’s that? ”
“He’s quite handsome.” He hadn’t managed to keep the worry from his voice.
It was interesting to see a man as rich and affluential as Aaron Astor, with pockets as deep as the Pacific Ocean, be intimated by someone like Sumner, who bought his shirts from the local supermarket. “He’s my secretary.”
“Interesting,” he mused instead, seeming to absorb the words and mull them over in his head. “So, are you close with him?”
“Why?”
“Just trying to see how I should go about this, that’s all. If I have any competition.”
I readjusted my fingers and how they laid on his stiff suit jacket. The embrace alone was far different than it’d been with Sumner. We stood close, but no magnetic energy lured me in nearer. “You think you have to compete with my staff ?”
“Only him.” Aaron gave a small, almost boyish smile. “Though if all your staff is as handsome as he is, I’m in trouble.”
A corner of my lips rose, and instead of fighting it back, I allowed the small smile to remain. “A little competition is healthy now and again, isn’t it?”
Aaron’s dark eyes dipped to my mouth. “And here I heard it was difficult to make you smile.”
“Who told you that? My mother?” It didn’t quite seem like an endearing quality for her to brag about.
Aaron gave his head a small shake. “I have little birds everywhere.”
He’d said it in a playful tone, but it left me irritatingly curious over who had been telling him things about me. What sort of gossip chain reached him all the way into California? And then I realized. “Annalise?”
“You’re a quick one,” he said with affection. “Yes, I know her through her fiancé. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, but he and I have been friends since childhood. I’m his best man. I may have asked her a thing or two about you. I hope that doesn’t bother you too much.”
I didn’t blame him for trying to dig up information on me, but what did bother me were the unknowns of what Annalise could’ve told him. She didn’t know me well, but her judgment of me was like everyone else at Alderton-Du Ponte: nearsighted. They only saw what they wanted, never bothering to look further.
I didn’t want to care about what Aaron Astor thought about me, but the curiosity needled me anyway.
“I’d love to get lunch with you,” Aaron said as he dipped his head closer to me, his words tickling the skin of my throat. “Learn more about each other, talk about… our future. I hope I didn’t scare you off by calling myself your fiancé prematurely. I guess I was just hoping… we’d end up there.”
Straightforward. I almost said as much when a flute of champagne appeared at my side, and I traced the bubbling glass up to find Sumner holding it out to me. His blue eyes focused solely on me, almost as if I wasn’t in Aaron’s arms at all. “Your champagne.”
I dropped Aaron’s hand mid-sway, extracting myself from his loose grip. “Would you excuse me?” I asked him as I took the champagne flute. “I’m going to get a bit of air.”
“I could come with you?—”
I gave him a smile. “Let my mother talk your ear off. I won’t be long.”
When I glanced over, Sumner was looking at my lips and the way they tipped up, his own expression complicated and hard to read in the chandelier light. I didn’t examine it too closely.
When I headed toward the ballroom’s doors, I was relieved to hear Sumner’s footfalls following behind me. We both got out into the hallway, and without a word, I grabbed Sumner by the lapel and dragged him down the hall. As I walked, I tipped my champagne flute to my lips and drained the alcohol in three drinks, the bubbles burning the back of my throat.
“Margot,” he said as he stumbled along. “Where are you?—”
A girl in her late twenties manned the coat check counter and blinked at me when I approached the desk. “Miss Margot, can I?—”
I shoved my empty champagne flute into her hand, and she fumbled to catch it before it slipped from her grip. “Excuse us.”
“No one’s supposed to go back there—” the girl didn’t reach out to stop me, but cut herself off when I took no care in brushing past her, dragging Sumner into the large closet, where coat hangers lined the walls. Most hung empty—the burgeoning summer heat didn’t leave one needing a coat—and gave the room an empty feel.
I let go of Sumner’s lapel and turned on him, leveling him with a stare. “Did you know?” I demanded in a low voice, the words a tremble. “Did you know Aaron Astor would be here? ”
Sumner slowly shook his head, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that? That my parents didn’t warn you?” The frustration I’d shoved down earlier began fighting its way back to the surface. “You and my mother knew that if you told me, I’d—I’d sabotage it. I’d run away, I’d do something?—”
“No. You would’ve wanted to, but you wouldn’t have.” Sumner’s chest gave a shaky rise and fall. “You said so yourself you never wanted to find out what a life outside of your parents’ wishes was like. You wouldn’t have wanted to come down here and meet him, but you would’ve anyway.”
My fingers curled into a fist at my side at how factually he spoke, and my resentment brewing only grew because he was most likely right. But he didn’t need to point it out. “You knew,” I repeated. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know, Margot. If I had—” He stopped.
“If you had?”
In a sort of resigned way, Sumner lifted his gaze from the floor to mine. “I would’ve told you.”
I wanted to latch onto anger, since it was a safer emotion to feel, but the way he stared at me with his sad puppy-dog eyes, I couldn’t hold on to it. It hadn’t been that long since our last argument, but Sumner was vastly different now than he’d been then, kneeling on my floor with eyes snapping his own fire. He looked uncomfortable, as if being in this closet—at Alderton-Du Ponte—was the last place he wanted to be.
I stood still, trying to pinpoint and lock down the emotion in my chest. The pressure was suffocating, like how it felt when I wore a vest tailored too tightly, but the chiffon fabric of my dress wasn’t restricting now.
“You weren’t Aaron,” I said.
I didn’t want to look at Sumner to perceive his reaction, but I couldn’t turn away. Confusion swamped his already tense expression. “What do you mean?” Then the realization struck, because shock flooded in. “I—I told you I wasn’t. This whole time—this entire time, you thought I was Aaron?”
“No.” And it was honest for the most part. The errant thought had popped up now and then, like a mosquito buzzing around me, but my rationale had always been quick to chase it off. I looked into Sumner’s eyes, the next words slipping out. “But I was hoping you were.”
Sumner’s lips parted as he drew in a silent breath. The country club’s air conditioning was on, but not high enough—my skin seemed warm, too warm, as if I was growing feverish. I felt feverish. My thoughts weren’t clear in the slightest. Sumner’s expression was far too guarded for me to tell if the confession made him uncomfortable. His eyes, though, were still very wide. “Margot?—”
“It’s just me, right?” I asked, my soft words threatening to get lost in the space between us. I thought about it all in a sort of clinical way, with no emotions attached other than curiosity. My stomach felt tight, as if someone reached into me and squeezed, but that was it. Just curiosity. “That feels this way?”
After meeting with Aaron, it felt important to clarify. The newfound festering collection of emotions that bloomed each time Sumner smiled at me, the ones that’d been ever-present in the seconds before Aaron came up to us. The look of fascination that always seemed to grace his expression whenever I laughed. The charged energy that ran in a gentle current underneath my skin, a TV turned on but muted. No sound, just feeling.
Sumner didn’t answer, but he closed his eyes. It gave me another selfish moment to study him, the slight curve to his shoulders as his head ducked down. He’d been all smiles moments before, on the dancefloor, almost awestruck in the way he looked at me.
Was this change because of Aaron’s sudden appearance?
By some chance, was it not just me who felt this way?
With his eyes closed, Sumner didn’t see me take a step toward him. “I liked dancing with you more.”
He let out a slow breath. “Margot.”
I took another step. “I like the way you smell more.”
“ Margot .”
“I like your hands more.”
Sumner’s eyes popped open, and he found me standing before him. He didn’t react at first, nothing beyond repeating my name in quiet desperation. “Margot.”
Much like I’d grappled to hang onto my anger to not entertain the sort of helpless feeling, Sumner saying my name sounded like he, too, was wrestling with an emotion. A warning, whether to me or himself.
“I need to know.” I scanned his face as if the answer would be there. My eyes traced the freckles underneath his right eye, the curve of his cheek, down to the rosy bow of his upper lip. “I thought I didn’t need to—I’ve thought it for a while—but in there, I realized… I can’t not know.”
With Sumner, I’d never been nervous. Even from the beginning. It was almost as if Sumner was a long-lost friend, and we fell into a routine. In the weeks we’d spent nearly every day together, his presence had become somewhat of a haven to me, a vacation house, a place I could go when I wanted to feel like myself. I’d smiled more in the past few weeks than I had in years. He proved to me, time and time again, that there was no reason to worry about how I seemed or how I acted around him. There’s nothing wrong with you . That sort of acceptance was new for me, and it’d undone all the hard strides I’d made over the years of hardening my heart. I couldn’t tell if it meant more.
I needed to know.
A pained sort of wariness filled Sumner’s eyes and stormed the blue further. “Know what ?”
Without an ounce of warning or hesitation, I reached up and laid my hands on either side of Sumner’s neck, using the touch to draw his mouth to mine.
Since it’d happened, I’d thought about my first kiss with Sumner plenty, though my mind could never truly provide a satisfying memory of it. I’d been too preoccupied, too busy gloating over the shock of it all, to really put it to memory. I made sure not to make the same mistake now.
My lips took Sumner’s without hesitation, and the second they connected, something burst through me. I’d thought my skin was warm, but Sumner’s throat was blazing with heat, warming my fingers as I held him to me. I felt girlish for the first time in my life as I rose to my tiptoes, kissing him in the increasingly stuffy air of the closet. With my eyes closed, I relished in the moment.
Sumner’s hands reached up and grasped my wrists, but hesitated there, not pulling me closer nor pushing me away. His lips were soft against mine, yielding, and through the blood pounding in my head and in my heart, I finally realized—Sumner was not kissing me back.
I jerked my head away, an almost painful pins-and-needles feeling crawling along the back of my neck. I waited for a moment, as if expecting him to chase the distance I created and initiate the kiss himself this time, but he didn’t. Instead, Sumner just swallowed hard and continued to hold my wrists, not quite looking at me. “You—you don’t like me, Margot,” he whispered, breathless. “I don’t belong in your world.”
“I like that you don’t belong in my world.” My voice was softer than I meant for it to be. “I don’t belong in it either.”
“But you—you do .” Sumner pinched his eyes shut as he took a step back from me, releasing my hands. He shook his head a little, as if attempting to clear it. “You’re engaged —or about to be. Aaron—he’s going to propose.”
“What if I didn’t accept?”
“Margot, what—” He cut himself off to run a hand across his features, at a total loss. “What are you talking about? You said yourself that refusing Aaron meant your parents would throw you out. I don’t—I don’t understand you right now.” When he lowered his hands, he looked so stressed, regarding me. “Was it that bad? In there, with Aaron? Did he say something? Do something? ”
“No,” I answered immediately. “I could settle for Aaron Astor. It would be easy. Settling for him would mean my parents’ approval, the approval from everyone in the club; it would mean an easy rest of my life. I’d never have to give up my Malstoni or my Gilfman or my wine. I’d be comfortable… but you wouldn’t be there.”
I might not have fought for my choices before, never considered my happiness before. I’d sat back, allowed the world to make the decisions for me, and complained about them each time. Sumner was right; I couldn’t be a martyr about my life when I allowed others to direct it for me. I’d take decisions into my own hands now, and wait for whatever consequences that came with it. I wouldn’t roll over anymore. If I got bit, so be it.
“You said so yourself,” I murmured, “that choosing happiness is better.”
“Your parents,” Sumner began, picking another angle. “The reason they chose me to watch you was to keep this from happening. They?—”
“This isn’t about my parents.” I could deal with Sumner not liking me romantically, but I couldn’t take it if this was yet another thing that my parents could ruin. Their claws sunk deep into every single aspect of my life, it seemed.
“It is , though,” he said in a small, exasperated, a crease deep between his eyebrows. “They hired me to keep you out of trouble. They trusted me. I can’t just—I can’t . I may not belong in your world, but Aaron does. He’s a better fit for you.”
“I don’t want Aaron,” I said simply. “I want you.”
The words stunned him for a moment, and in that moment, the warmth that crossed over his eyes came in a fleeting flash. If I hadn’t been watching, I would’ve missed it entirely. I’d think about that warmth later and convince myself that I’d imagined it, misinterpreted it, but for that brief moment, I thought he was about to say what I wanted to hear.
“Margot.” Sumner let out a breath, and when he spoke again, there was no budging in his voice. “You don’t like me. You just like the way I make you feel.”
“Isn’t… isn’t that why you like someone?” I blinked, not understanding. “Because you like how they make you feel?”
“You’re forgetting.” He looked at me with a flat expression, wiping away the wariness and the confusion, giving me a poker face that would’ve made anyone in the ballroom jealous. “I was only hired to make you feel that way.”
I let out a soft breath, as if he’d knocked it out of me. My fingers instinctively went to my torso, as if to fiddle with my vest’s buttons, but it found nothing but the chiffon material of the cocktail dress. I’d walked up to that precipice of the unknown, just nearly about to jump off, but his words yanked me back. It was such an obvious truth that it almost felt like a slap to the face when Sumner said it.
But he wasn’t finished. “Your parents hired me to keep you from doing anything impulsive. I was paid to be at your side. I wouldn’t be here… if not for that.”
Sumner’s tone wasn’t harsh, but it left no room for misunderstanding. My parents had hired him to be my secretary; that was why Sumner stuck around. Not because he liked me, not because he craved my company, but because he was getting paid.
“You wanted to be my friend instead of just my secretary,” I pointed out slowly, my voice small. “I thought?—”
“I thought it’d make it easier on the both of us. Not because… Not because I had feelings for you.”
Having to follow around a rich girl because she can’t keep herself from causing trouble isn’t really ideal.
I couldn’t even be angry. Sumner was right; I’d just forgotten. It was just that, somewhere along the way, I thought it’d changed for him just as it’d changed for me. That him holding my hand, calling me pretty, and giving awestruck expression at my smiles were more than a hired reaction. That him holding me while I cried, while I let my guard down, had been more than just simple empathy.
I felt like an idiot. Margot Massey wasn’t the sweet and bubbly woman men fell for—there was no ounce of bubbliness in me. I was bitter and cruel and had more baggage than any one person would bother dealing with. It wasn’t that Aaron was a better fit for me, but rather that I wasn’t a good fit for Sumner . I knew it, and he knew it. I couldn’t blame him at all.
Along with embarrassment, something ickier worked its way up my throat, something darker. I took a step back from him. “Well, this is awkward, then.”
Sumner inhaled like he was about to speak, but stopped short. I wondered if he thought I’d fight him more on it, to challenge him and his nonexistent feelings. I didn’t look at his expression anymore; he became faceless as I focused on the walls, just as he’d been the first day I met him.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t hang off my arm for the rest of the night,” I said stiffly, stepping back into the role I’d allowed myself to forget the second I stepped into the closet. “Be like the rest of the staff—seen and not heard. I have my soon to be fiancé to focus on, after all.”
I didn’t wait for Sumner to respond, but turned on my heel and left the coat closet. Olivia still held my champagne flute, not even trying to hide the fact that she’d been eavesdropping. I couldn’t have cared less about her. Later, I might be embarrassed—maybe more so at the fact that I’d experienced my first rejected confession—but right now, my heart hardened back to how it’d been, closing down and returning to its normal Ice Queen state.
Once more, I was on my own, and I remembered that life was a lot simpler that way.