Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
G rowing up, intense emotion came easily to me when I played the cello. I’d fall into a piece almost as easily as breathing. When I would finish, gasping from the rollercoaster the composition had taken me on, my instructor would, without fail, say, “ Passion is not a substitute for precision. Play with your heart and your head .”
Every. Single. Time.
She was right, of course. Too much emotion could ruin a piece. Intonation could waver. Phrasing could suffer. The music could lose its clarity. Great cellists knew better. They mastered technique first, and emotion followed. Controlled playing didn’t weaken a song’s feeling, but strengthened it. Instead of drowning the music, I needed to let it breathe.
I didn’t understand it back then—instead, I’d storm out of lessons at the criticism, shout back at my instructor, only to regret it all the next day.
My mom used to call me hot-headed, but if I’d asked anyone from Alderton-Du Ponte, they’d say I was the most composed person they knew. That quick fuse had been extinguished when Mom died, leaving behind a girl who moved through life numb. I hadn’t realized how quiet living could feel without that intensity, and how it could leave me feeling like something was missing.
And then came Aaron Astor. He could light that fire in me like no other, time and time again. After five years of going through the motions, he made me feel —albeit usually negative emotions. But it was a brief reminder; I wasn’t numb. I was alive .
Last night, I’d let my emotions take over, throwing words at him without control. Passion without precision. Feeling without direction. And like a song played without care, it had come out all wrong.
I couldn’t forget the way he’d looked up at me, shocked and regretful. I… say things a lot that come out wrong. Too harsh, or too rude.
Sitting on my couch now, I scrubbed my hands over my face, muffling a groan. Why did my days off coincide with my bad decisions? Instead of being able to use work as a distraction, I had nothing but free time for the situation to mentally harass me.
At least I’m not a fraud .
Oh my God. I’d said that .
I groaned into my palms again.
I’d been regretting it all day. And not because I was worried about him backing out of our deal—he had too much still riding on it, after all—but because it genuinely made me feel bad . Like I’d eaten something rotten the night before. This morning, when I woke to the sound of my neighbor’s alarm blaring through the thin walls, the argument with Aaron had been the first thing to pop into my head. Or, really, his face had been the first thing—his wide eyes, the upturned brows, the parted lips. I didn’t say it to make you angry .
Of course he hadn’t. There was no trace of arrogance or superiority in his face when he’d spoken. Nothing but a soft sort of realization, as if he’d cracked a code he’d been working on in secret.
And why did Aaron have to go and have the saddest sad face ever?
“Ugh!” The exclamation ripped out of me, and I straightened with a snap, staring at my far wall. “Why should I feel guilty?” I asked the air. “He was the one who should’ve kept his thoughts to himself.”
Great, now I was talking to myself. It was after six o’clock, and it’d finally happened—Aaron Astor had driven me crazy.
“He made it sound like I sacrificed everything for— you .” At the last moment, I decided, no , I was not talking to myself. I was talking to my mother. My dead mother. That was totally more normal. Less crazy. Totally. “Which I didn’t. It makes it sound like that’s what you would’ve wanted, your happiness at the sake of my own, but that wasn’t the case at all. I’m not sacrificing anything. I chose to put down the cello. I’m choosing this.”
Too agitated to sit still any longer, I shot to my feet and began pacing the small square footage of my apartment. “He wants to be Mr. Know-It-All in every situation. I am comfortable being myself. Who does he think he is?” I scoffed. “Just because we had one nice moment doesn’t mean he knows everything about me.”
I imagined my mother nodding along with a sympathetic expression.
“ He’s the pathetic one. If he wants to live the rest of his life without love, that’s what’s sad. Not me. I’m not sad. He’s the one tricking someone into marrying him. And he thinks I’m the pitiful one?”
My mind replayed the argument over from the top, starting with Aaron’s quiet I understand you and ending with my childlike flouncing from the room. This time, though, my brain once more hiccupped on what happened right after I’d said my piece.
“Ugh, Mom, but you should’ve seen his face.” I fell against my couch, the springs groaning in protest as I re-buried my face in my hands. “It was like I’d kicked a puppy in front of him or something. He looked so… ugh .”
I drew a harsh breath in, pressing my fingers firmer into my eyes. Why could he so easily ignite a fire in me? No one had been able to do so in years.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I remembered the irresistible pull toward the piano yesterday. The peaceful moments before everything fell apart. The overwhelming urge to play something—anything—had grabbed hold of me so completely that there’d been no escaping it, even though the instrument was foreign to me.
Then, out of nowhere, Aaron appeared—his fingers aligning with mine, giving me exactly what my heart had been aching for: the chance to feel the music again.
Which—wrong. Not allowed. And honestly, where had that urge to come from? I’d been around that piano for years, and had never felt the draw before. And the answer was simple: Aaron.
It’d woken something inside me, seeing Aaron play. Aaron had woken something inside of me. Ever since he’d returned to Addison, the pull to music was suddenly so much harder to push down.
Even now, I could almost feel the ghostly touch of my fingers along the backs of his, our shoulders touching, our thighs brushing. I grew strangely breathless. “You should hear him play, though, Mom,” I murmured, still not opening my eyes. “He played Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto. The second movement, not the full piece, but it… That Rachmaninoff piece is for piano and orchestra, and I could—I can just imagine the strings in the background, you know?”
What I didn’t admit to her, though, was that when I’d gotten home last night, too agitated to sleep, I’d grabbed my phone. I’d needed to listen to the full concerto, all the movements. Needed it on an almost incomprehensible level. The second movement was by far the most emotional, exactly as I’d remembered it. When it came to the swell, the same feeling that’d bloomed in my chest when Aaron played it the first time surfaced again.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed music,” I went on, tracing the pads of my fingers. “Even in a consumption sense. I didn’t remember how even sitting listening to someone performing could be so… intoxicating .”
The confession was weighted, but it didn’t feel like a relief to speak it aloud. The crushing feeling on top of my lungs remained. It was a dual admission, after all—one that I’d been pushing down and down, but it kept resurfacing.
There were more words, but I’d never say them. I kept imagining what it’d be like to play the crescendo with him. What we’d sound like… together. It made me want to play again.
But I’d packed that part of me away. The cello was in the past. Mom’s dream house was the future. My throat was tight.
I traced the entirety of my right palm. It’d been nothing at all, Aaron picking my hand up, laying it atop of his own, forcing me to ride out the measures with him. And yet, it’d been everything—Aaron, even in the most fraudulent way possible, getting me to create music again for the first time in five years.
“Only for a moment,” I muttered, mood turning once more. “Because then he had to go back to his stuck-up self. Hopefully, he can just woo Fiona, have a courthouse wedding before she changes her mind, and by this time next month, we’ll be in 1442 Everview.”
I liked to think that my mother would’ve patted my back. Yes , she’d say. We will .
A sharp knock at my apartment’s front door had me freezing. When it came again, I pushed to my feet. The front door didn’t have a peephole—this complex was that sketchy—so I pressed my ear to the surface. “Hello?”
“Open the door,” a soft, feminine voice came from the other side, sounding very stressed. “Lovey, open up before someone drags me into their room and you see me on an episode of Dateline .”
The familiarity of the voice had me fumbling for the deadbolt. And, sure enough, when I opened the door, I found Caroline on the other side. She rushed me as soon as the gap opened wide enough, clutching two plastic bags.
“Jeez, I forgot you live in Skeeve City.” Caroline glanced around my apartment. “Were you talking to someone? I thought I heard something.”
“Thinking out loud.” She probably wouldn’t get it if I told her I’d been talking to my dead mother. “What are you?—”
Caroline lifted the plastic bags. “Wine and Chinese takeout! You still like Chinese, right?”
And just like that, she began unloading the takeout containers on my counter, instructing me to grab glasses, and settled in. It was strange to hear another person’s voice in the apartment; Caroline had picked me up a time or two, but she’d never been inside. The only life these walls had seen had been mine, and all at once, it almost felt wrong .
But I couldn’t say no, even if Caroline imposed.
I got out two plates for us to take our meals to the couch, since I didn’t have a proper dining room table. Caroline sat on one side of the coffee table while I sat on the other, the wine bottle and crab rangoons between us. We dispersed everything quite quickly—and drank the first glass of wine equally as fast.
“Sorry for not coming back last night,” Caroline mumbled as she tipped the bottle of wine up, pouring more into her glass. The tops of her cheeks were already growing pink. “Mom needed me for something, and I figured the Staff Princess would want to go home and sleep after a long day.”
I licked the soy sauce from my fingertip. “It’s okay.”
“Did you? Go straight home?”
As opposed to staying after and practically holding Aaron Astor’s hand? “Yeah.”
She gave her head a slow bob, ripping open her crab rangoon and using her fork to rake out the insides. “Listen,” she began, dunking the meat into one of the sauces. “I’m sorry for not telling you about Grant coming home.”
Hearing his name was like a snap of a rubber band. “It’s not like I’ve been asking you to keep me updated. I know how awkward it is, talking about him.”
Even when Grant and I had still been dating, Caroline and I rarely talked about her brother. It was as if they’d been two separate entities, two people in my life who coincidentally shared a last name. She never really asked me about our relationship, either. It was as if she, too, had been pretending it’d been separate.
She had assured me, though, that when I found out he’d been cheating, she’d had no idea. That she’d been as blindsided as I’d been. And we’d never talked about it since.
Caroline munched on her food, picking up her wine glass and swirling it, and I watched her. There was no visible anxiety from this conversation with me. I’d rehearsed over and over what I wanted to say, but she seemed to hold none of that nervousness. And now, a day later and two wine glasses deep, I’d forgotten what it was I’d practiced.
“You really didn’t know?” I asked.
“What? About Grant coming home?” Caroline wrinkled her nose. “I only just found out. Like, that day. Leave it to Fiona to make me seem like the bad guy, keeping it from you?—”
“That he had been cheating.”
Caroline stopped. She raised her head inch by inch, blinking at me with wine-hazed eyes. “You have to ask again?” she asked me, but in contrast with her words, her voice was incredibly gentle. “If I’d known, as your best friend, I wouldn’t have suggested you go surprise him at college, would I?”
“Of course you wouldn’t have,” I said quickly, scrubbing a hand over my forehead. I immediately hated myself for voicing my doubt. “I’m sorry—that was a dumb question.”
“Grant was an idiot, thinking he could two-time.” She dug into another crab rangoon. “When our dad introduced them, he should’ve said no. Especially since it was clear how much you meant to him.”
I don’t want to talk about this . The thought was almost blaring in my head. “Was it clear?”
“You disagree?”
“Long-distance is… hard.”
“You seemed to take it well.” She snorted a little, focused on her food. “I had to practically force you to go out and see him, remember? You went, like, seven months without seeing him and I had to convince you to surprise your boyfriend.”
My teeth grazed the corner of my lip. She was right. When she’d first proposed the idea to surprise him a few weeks after the start of the semester, the thought had actually made me sick. It’d been more of an inconvenience than anything else. I hadn’t wanted to see him. Was that love?
“Even though my brother broke your heart, you know you can always talk about it with me, right?” Caroline went on. “I’m always down to roast him.”
I smiled, but it was only surface level. “Can you just… can you give me a heads up before he gets into town? I’d… rather not be blindsided.”
“Swear. Now I have a question for you.” Caroline readjusted her crossed legs, leaning her elbows onto the coffee table. The cheap thing wobbled beneath her sudden weight, her gaze sharp. “When did you get so close to Aaron Astor?”
“Me? I—I’m not.” I straightened my spine, giving my head a shake. I could almost feel the wine slosh inside me. “I’m definitely not.”
“I saw you two yesterday,” Caroline said, and for a brief, horrifying moment, I thought she meant she’d seen us at the piano after the party. “Him catching you on that ladder when Fiona ran into it. I saw your face, too, when he was going all hot piano player on those keys. You were totally into him.”
My skin flushed, a traitorous reaction. “I was into the music . Not him. He’s— psh .” The scoff was loud; too loud. “He’s so arrogant and egotistical and stuck-up. Me into him ?”
Distantly, I remembered how, yesterday, I’d told myself to be careful of the over-denial, knowing Caroline would latch onto it. Now, with too much wine in my system, that went out the window.
“Aaron acts like the world spins just for him, and I swear to God, it makes me want to kick him off his stupid little pedestal. He might’ve dumped the drinks on himself last time, but if I get the chance again, I’ll do it on purpose.”
“Wow, that’s too far,” Caroline said with a snort.
“And another thing!” I jerked back until my spine hit the couch. “Him using Fiona for her money? What’s he going to do once they get married—get a divorce? He’s not stupid enough to think they won’t do a prenup, right? He’s going to tie himself to her for life for an endless supply of Gilfman suits? Besides, isn’t that fraud? Marrying someone who thinks you’re rich when you’re not?”
Caroline sniffed. “Well, there is something called financial misrepresentation, but it’s kind of a gray area in most states?—”
“Morally, Caroline. That’s the thing. Morally, it’s so wrong.”
“Morally,” she echoed, tipping her wine glass back up. Before the liquid could touch her lips, though, she stopped. Pulled the glass down. “Wait. I’m sorry. What did you just say?”
I blinked, trying to remember. “Which part?”
“ Marrying someone who thinks you’re rich —are you saying Aaron isn’t?”
I blinked again, and the momentary haze of confusion only lasted a one more second before it hit me—and I slapped both of my palms over my mouth.
Caroline didn’t know. I hadn’t told Caroline that Aaron needed to marry for his inheritance. I hadn’t told her any of that yet—I wasn’t supposed to tell her any of that.
Panic gripped my throat like a fist, and I reached out and latched onto her arm that rested on the table, digging my fingers in. “You—you can’t tell.” I gasped the words out, desperation chasing away my buzz. “You can’t say anything to Fiona, or—or Aaron, or?—”
“Relax, relax,” Caroline soothed, patting my hand that clawed into her skin, unfazed. “You know me and secrets—I’m a vault. But only if you tell me everything, princess.”
The sinking feeling didn’t go away with her promise, but I didn’t have a choice. I explained about finding Aaron’s inheritance letter from his lawyer, and how Aaron targeted Fiona for her eagerness to marry, paired with her family’s winery. Intrigue danced through Caroline’s dark eyes during all of it, drinking it all up as she sipped her wine.
I did not tell her about Mom’s dream house, though. I knew it was wrong, blabbing about Aaron’s secrets while keeping 1442 Everview to myself, but I did it anyway.
Caroline gestured at me with her glass. “So Aaron’s parents cut him off?”
“I—I guess. I never asked. It felt… invasive.” After blackmailing him for a house, that felt invasive?
“ Interesting . And that’s why you and Aaron are close?”
“We’re not close. Seriously.”
“You know his darkest secret.”
“By chance . He didn’t confide in me willingly.”
Caroline picked up her fork and tapped it against her lips. “That makes even more sense, then.”
“What does?”
“Why Annalise suggested Fiona to him instead of me. He probably told Annalise everything, don’t you think? It makes sense—she thought she was protecting me from him.” Caroline lifted her glass to her already stained lips, gaze drifting faraway. “Maybe I should marry him. If I know his motives, does it matter?”
I frowned as I waited for her punchline, and several seconds of silence passed before I realized there wasn’t one. “I just told you he was only going after Fiona for her money.”
“I’m a lot nicer than Fiona.”
“Fiona isn’t the problem here.”
Caroline readjusted how she sat on the floor, tucking her long legs underneath her. “I never understood how Margot fumbled Aaron. She chose her secretary boyfriend instead. I mean, I kinda get it. He was hot, but, like… why ?”
The dots were still not connecting in my mind, and they clearly weren’t connecting in hers, either. “Because… Aaron is a gold digger.”
“A rich one.”
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” I was only half joking. “I said his parents disowned him.”
Caroline loosely pointed a finger at me. “They didn’t disown him; they cut him off . It’s different. No parent is going to toss their child out of their lives.”
What about the Masseys? I thought, but didn’t say.
“And they cut him off for now . To teach him priorities. Once he’s married, once they have a grandbaby on the way? They’ll make sure he’s comfortable again.” Her eyes gleamed. “Besides, what does it matter? They can cut him off, but his last name is still Astor.”
I sat back as she continued, the wine all at once making my head feel as though it’d been stuffed with cotton. When we were one-on-one, it wasn’t often that the divide between us was that noticeable. Yes, she had more expensive things than me, clothing and jewelry wise. Yes, she had more importance at the club. But for the most part, our viewpoints over the years never felt too vastly dissimilar.
Until right now, and I was reminded how wide the gap between us truly was.
“You don’t want to marry for love?” I asked softly.
“I haven’t been in love in twenty-six years.” She gave a dramatic sigh. “Even Derek, he was… ugh . I’m too independent for love. I’d rather have a partner who lets me live my life. I’m not a hopeless romantic like you are, Lovey.” She swirled her wine in her glass, and before she took another drink, a few blended words slipped out. “Maybe it’s a Holland thing. Maybe we can’t love. My parents are the same way.”
“You can try. But not with Aaron.” I pictured her hanging off his arm, him giving her his soft smile. The image was just wrong, wrong, wrong . “You need to find someone else willing to try.”
“We’re from the same world, he and I. We could make it work.”
Until that moment, I’d been able to convince myself that it was the wine talking, tipsy rambling that she wouldn’t even remember in the morning. She held the rope of the conversation too tightly, though. In the haze behind her eyes, there was the steely determination of her stubbornness. Normally, I only saw it in the context of her fighting for the latest pair of Claire Hautes when the shop dropped online pre-orders. To see it now, over something like this, caused a stone to roll over my chest.
We’re from the same world, he and I , were the words she said. You’re not one of us , were the words she didn’t say, but meant all the same.
“You don’t want to marry him,” I said finally. “You only want him because Fiona wants him.”
Caroline pulled back an inch as my words hit her, and for a moment, I thought I’d finally done it. I’d cracked the surface. “That’s not true,” she said, but her tone lacked the conviction they’d held before.
“Care, he’s not even your type . You like buff body-builder guys.”
She looked away from me. “Aaron has muscles.”
“Last time, you said he was too scrawny.”
“I mean, he’s not that scrawny?—”
“And no facial hair. Didn’t you say that men with no facial hair always look too young to you?” I tried to sound stern and sympathetic while also enunciating my words through the wine fog. “You don’t want to be with Aaron Astor. You want to be with someone .”
She arched an eyebrow. “Do you want to be with him or something?”
“No!”
“Why are you pushing back so much, then?” Caroline turned to stare at the wall. She looked like a pouting toddler. “You have to admit I’m a better match for him than her.”
“Aaron doesn’t want to date.” My voice was low. “He wants to marry.”
“So do I!”
“Since when?”
“People are allowed to change their mind, Lovey.” Her lip curled in what looked like distaste. “You, of all people, know that.”
I drew in a slow breath through my nose, using the air like a shield to brace against her words. I wanted to dig my fingernails back into her, to shake her and make her see reason, but it felt pointless. “You’re right. What do I know? My boyfriend of four years cheated on me.” I threw the last dregs from my wine glass back, wincing at the overload. “Do whatever you want.”
An awkward silence stretched between us. My words were harsh, but nowhere near as harsh as I’d been last night with Aaron. I stretched forward and picked up the wine bottle, the glass slipping a little in my fingers. Imagining her draped over his arm instead of Fiona—Caroline beside him at the end of an aisle—was an ugly image in my head.
“Gosh, you’re so intense,” Caroline said, but her voice was light. Flippant. She shot me a grin as she held her wineglass out to me. “I was joking around, Lovey. And like you said, he’s got his sights set on Fiona. Lord help him.”
For the first time in our friendship, she caved first. I stared at her for a moment, stunned. Maybe it was because she realized she shouldn’t have said what she did, or maybe she felt bad about the topic of Grant as a whole, but for the first time ever, she was the first to let the argument go.
Before refilling my own glass, I poured more wine into hers. Too much. By the time I pulled the bottle up, I realized too late I hadn’t left any for myself. “Yeah,” I muttered, laying my head back on my couch cushion, staring up at the ceiling. I felt as though the water stains could’ve swallowed me whole. “Hopefully he gets exactly what he deserves.”