Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T he next morning, I was blissfully unaware for thirty seconds.
My eyes were closed, and the only thought I had was that I didn’t want to abandon my warm, soft sheets to get up for work. At least I’d have Paige to keep me company at the pool today, and our shifts didn’t start til noon. Plenty of time to hit the snooze for five extra minutes. And, at least in the pool, I could be certain I wouldn’t run into Aaron.
Almost as if his name triggered the avalanche, the night before came rushing back at me, each bullet point hitting me like actual gunshots.
Being stuck on an elevator with Aaron. Hearing Aaron’s vulnerable confession. Proposing to Aaron.
Proposing to Aaron .
Grant.
Grant .
Rescinding my proposal to Aaron five minutes later.
An easy choice, isn’t it?
I jolted upright in bed, as if I could physically wrench myself out of the memory. I smacked a palm over my mouth, breath hitched, eyes locked on the far wall.
Marry me .
Had I really said that? Just—blurted it out like an idiot? It wasn’t some throwaway offer, like letting someone take the last dinner roll at a restaurant. This was marriage. To Aaron Astor . What had possessed my brain cells to stage a mass exodus?
No, I knew why they had. The moment had cracked open something in him, a glimpse past the carefully constructed exterior he always wore. A curtain pulling back to reveal the vulnerable side Aaron kept hidden. And seeing him unravel had unlocked something inside me . I hated how, despite everything, I kept noticing the little things that didn’t align with the version of him I wanted to believe in.
And just like I’d wanted someone to save me from myself back in June, I’d wanted to save him from himself in that moment.
Marry me .
More like crawl under a rock with me because death by humiliation was a real possibility. Preferable, even.
And then—guilt. Crushing. Even if I had proposed, I shouldn’t have taken it back five minutes later. But what was I supposed to do? Marry him because I was too much of a people pleaser to say something?
Actually? It was really his fault. Aaron never should’ve been enticed in the first place. Besides, gun to his head, I bet he didn’t want to marry me, anyway. He wanted an heiress. He wanted someone sophisticated. That was why he’d targeted Margot, and now Fiona. He was probably just pouting because he could.
Ugh, ugh, ugh .
Getting ready for work was slow, because I cringed once a minute as the pathetic words echoed in my head. It was official: I’d never be able to look Aaron in the eye again.
And then Grant . It still felt surreal, like out of everything that’d happened, that had been the part I dreamed. The elevator doors parting, revealing his pajama-clad figure. He’d grabbed me so easily, smiled so naturally, as if time had never passed and things between us had never changed. I wavered between feeling vastly confused about it and completely enraged.
I had not been heartbroken upon seeing him, though. And that was interesting.
And it was also interesting that he hadn’t been the first person I thought of when I woke up. It’d been Aaron.
My mind scattered through those topics the entire drive to Alderton-Du Ponte, and as I turned onto the cobblestoned roadway, my heart rate spiked like I broke into a dead sprint. I circled back to the employee lot. Maybe the universe would be on my side, and I wouldn’t run into him. Either of them. Please, please. Mom, if you’re listening, I could use your divine intervention .
Trisha was in the employee lounge, and she didn’t even look up at me when I walked in. I glanced at the clock, noting it was five minutes until the top of the hour. “Where’s Paige?” I asked her as I unwound my scarf. “She’s supposed to start at noon, too.”
“Mr. Roberts called her to his office when she got here.”
“About what?”
Trisha gave an unconcerned shrug.
I waited around for the clock to chime, but Paige didn’t come in. She must’ve gone straight to the pool instead of seeking me out. Frowning, I started off in that direction.
I made it to the mouth of the employee wing when I heard it—crying.
The faint sound intensified the closer I got to the bathrooms, and by the time I stood outside the door, I realized it wasn’t just crying, but full-on sobbing. I pushed inside, expecting to find the tiled room empty and someone crying in a stall, but instead, I found a figure crouched on the floor near the sinks, her arms wrapped around her knees. Paige .
“Hey, hey.” I rushed over to her. “Paige, what’s wrong?”
She had her head buried atop of her folded arms, her ponytail falling over her shoulder to obscure her face further. Her whole body heaved with her cries, though, in a way that reminded me of a child.
I grabbed onto her upper arms, heart already aching even though I had no idea what was going on. “Paige, what happened?”
“They—they dismissed me .” The words came out in a half-choked croak, and when she lifted her face, I found her swollen eyes. Tears tracked down her cheeks, bleeding her mascara and smudging her foundation. “Mr. Roberts fired me .”
The words seemed to break a dam inside her, and she leaned forward to press her face into my shoulder, allowing the thin fabric of my polo to absorb her next sob. It took a moment for my arms to wrap around her, disbelieving. “He what ?”
“He said—locking the elevator without checking was too big of a mistake.” Her voice was muffled, but the words still shot through me. “He said that—that—that a guest with t-too much authority complained. Mr. Roberts said—he said his hands were tied!”
I’d been smoothing a hand down her back, but I froze. “A guest complained?”
“I thought he wasn’t mad!” Paige pulled back to peer up at me again, eyes wide and heartbroken. “I thought Aaron knew it was just an accident! Lovey, you know I’m hardly ever on the front desk, and never at night. I—I had no idea about locking it on the ground floor! I forgot!” She let out a strangled cry. “I have student loan payments due. What am I going to do ?”
Heat slowly poured through my veins, a fire igniting as the gears in my head turned. My chest almost seemed to hum as I drew in a breath. “A guest complained,” I repeated in a barely controlled voice. “An influential one .”
“Aaron didn’t seem angry, did he?” Paige asked, hiccupping on air as she sat back. “I—I didn’t think he seemed angry! He seemed more upset about the ice machine?—”
Shoving to my feet on shaking legs, I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, my expression scarily calm, red ebbing at the corners of my vision. “I’m going to kill him,” I said to my reflection. “I’m going to kill him .”
Paige sniffled, sadness bleeding into alarm. “Lovey?—”
But I didn’t wait for her to finish. I turned on my heel and shoved open the bathroom door, setting off. I felt like a shark who’d gotten a whiff of blood, moments away from frenzying. It was one thing to be mad at me for being harsh, but to complain to Mr. Roberts ? To get Paige fired over a mistake ? Aaron could be embarrassed all he wanted over what he’d confessed, but retaliating this way? Not a chance.
As I crossed from the Alderton-Du Ponte lobby into the hotel’s, I half-hoped I’d run into Fiona. Aaron could make problems where there weren’t any? Well, so could I.
But Fiona wasn’t in the hotel lobby. I bypassed Trisha at the front desk, avoiding her eyes, all but slapping the button on the elevator to open the doors. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I stood in this very elevator as my world turned from one side to the other, and now, it felt like it was coming apart at the seams again. Only this time, I had enough spark in my flame to do something about it.
The elevator doors parted on the eighth floor, and I stormed off, each breath I drew in doing nothing to calm the fury in my lungs. I stalked down the hallway, already relishing in how hard I’d get to rap my fist against his hotel door. Hopefully he was sleeping in. Hopefully I’d scare the hell out of him.
But when I was still steps away from 801, the door opened, and Aaron, wearing a dark red long-sleeved button-down and dress pants, stepped out. He was adjusting his shirt sleeve when he caught me from the corner of his eye, fully lifting his head. “Oh, fancy seeing you here,” he said, and then frowned as I got closer. “Is that snot on your shirt?”
“You prick .”
Aaron’s spine stiffened. “Hello to you too?”
Without warning, I shoved my hand into his shoulder hard. Hard enough that pain shot up my bones from the connection, and Aaron couldn’t secure his footing fast enough as he reached out to steady himself against the hotel wall. “Every time I think you might possibly have a shred of decency in you, you prove me wrong.”
Aaron looked down at me with an expression so closed off that there wasn’t even a gleam of emotion in his eyes. “Care to tell me what you’re so angry about, my dear, or are you going to make me guess?”
The flippancy of the reply had my hand shooting out again, shoving at his other bicep. This time, he sturdied his stance, and only moved an inch. “You complained to Mr. Roberts.”
“About you?”
“About Paige . About the elevator last night.” I scoffed hard. “I told you she didn’t know—it was an honest mistake, and yet you just had to be the victim in that situation, didn’t you? You had to manipulate everything again to get empathy .”
Aaron watched me with detached indifference, and it was only his clenched jaw that clued his true feelings.
“Is this your way of getting revenge? You’re so embarrassed about me turning you down that you had to run to our boss?” My heart slammed in my ears, almost as loud as my voice, which I was sure echoed off the walls. “Paige is a good person . I’m sorry you have this stupid desire to impress your family and steal someone else’s company, but other people have real problems, like whether or not they can make rent because some entitled idiot reported them!”
Aaron caught my wrist before it could connect with his shoulder again, and though the grip wasn’t tight, it was firm. Unyielding. His voice was low. “Did you ask Mr. Holland ?”
I tried to jerk my arm free, but he didn’t give in. “ What ?”
“Did you ask your ex if he talked to your boss?” he asked flatly. “Because, dear Lovisa, even though you’ve convinced yourself—and have quite effectively showcased it to me—I didn’t say a thing to this Mr. Roberts about your friend. Why would I, when she’d already apologized?”
I drew in a breath, but it got stuck. My snapping anger seemed to freeze along with me, clarity breaking in like shattering glass. There was so much darkness in Aaron’s gaze that it was almost hard to distinguish his pupil from his iris, the glare too strong.
Despite the steel in his voice, his grip on my hand softened. “But thank you for putting my entitled, idiotic life into perspective for me. I guess it only took trusting you and being honest for me to realize, hmm?”
The sarcasm that dripped from his voice was venomous, poisoning my anger. Like water on a flame, it went out, leaving nothing but heat in my cheeks in its wake. I was remarkably quieter. “You—you didn’t say anything?”
“To the bald-headed man always walking around looking like an iPad kid? No.” The shadows in his eyes spread to his voice. “But I’m glad we got that cleared up, because I’d hate for you to actually think I might just maybe have a shred of dignity. How embarrassing that would’ve been.”
Aaron dropped my arm then, as if gripping it any longer would’ve left him burned. Oh. Oh . My heart still hammered in my chest, but with a different emotion now, one that was too eerily reminiscent of the panic from last night. “I—I didn’t mean?—”
“You did. You meant every word you said, or else you wouldn’t have said it.” He cast a glare down the hallway, jaw clenching so tightly that the muscle popped. In that flash of a moment, though, something else darted across his expression. Hurt. “You’ve repeatedly told me you dislike me, Lovisa, but don’t worry. I’ll listen to you this time.”
Something splintered inside me. A strange urgency flooded my veins, a sickening rush of desperation I didn’t understand. It clawed at my ribs, buried its teeth deep in my chest as Aaron stepped forward, ready to walk past me, out of reach. I latched onto his wrist, my grip digging in, as if holding on was the only way to stop whatever this was from unraveling completely.
I opened my mouth, but it wasn’t my voice that called his name.
“Aaron!”
In the split second that passed from when the voice called out and when I turned, I was very confused. Out of anyone who’d be calling Aaron’s name like that—excitedly, happy to see him—I would’ve thought it’d be Fiona. It was a voice I knew, but it wasn’t Fiona’s.
It was Caroline’s. And when I whirled around, she stood at the mouth of the hallway, directly off the elevator, grinning. Rapid-fire, my brain took stock of her outfit. A pretty white lace dress, paired with a lightweight jacket left unbuttoned. She had her purse hooked in the crook of her elbow and a mauve lip on—prime Caroline date attire.
In an instant, Aaron changed. The muscle tensed in his jaw relaxed, lips pulling into a smile at the sight of her, and any unsuspecting viewer wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong. “Caroline, dear,” he greeted warmly, worlds different from the ice he’d used with me moments ago. “You didn’t have to come up for me.”
Dear ? Since when was Caroline dear to him?
She beamed back at him. “Oh, I don’t mind at all,” she replied, smoothing a hand down her jacket. She seemed to notice me then, as if the girl hanging off Aaron’s arm wasn’t just a shadow. “Lovey? What are you doing up here?”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, still dumbly holding onto Aaron’s wrist. “You’re—you’re meeting Aaron?”
“We’re getting lunch together,” Aaron told me, and with one swift movement, he jerked his arm away, ripping out of my locked fingers as easily as if it were a toddler’s grip. He didn’t look at me once before striding over to Caroline. “Our reservation is waiting for us. Shall we go?”
“Sounds perfect.” Caroline offered her hand out, to which Aaron obliged by lifting his arm. She wrapped hers through his, the picturesque couple. She glanced back at me with electric-wide eyes, mouthing talk later! before heading to the elevator.
They were getting lunch? When did they make that plan? Why ? Why hadn’t Caroline said anything about it? Had she told Annalise? Why hadn’t Aaron said anything about it the night before, in the elevator?
The questions were endless, but left unanswered as the elevator found its way to the eighth floor. I still hadn’t moved from outside Aaron’s door, watching. I waited, holding my breath, but Aaron didn’t look at me before he stepped on the elevator. Neither did Caroline.
And then the situation got even worse—the door to 803 swung open. “Lovey?”
I closed my eyes, not even bothering to stifle my muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Grant came out of his hotel room, the one that was right next door to Aaron’s, blinking in surprise. He wasn’t wearing the same pajamas he had the night before, but instead a black hoodie and a pair of dark wash jeans. His blond hair was combed back, exposing the soft planes of his face. “It is you. I thought I heard your voice.”
I sighed, barely able to compartmentalize. “I—I can’t talk. I’m supposed to be working?—”
“Was that Caroline I heard too?” he asked, glancing down the now-empty hallway. “I thought she said she had a lunch meeting this afternoon.”
I looked at him in a renewed light. “Do you know where she’s going?”
Grant just stared at me.
“Do you, or don’t you?”
“I do.” Grant shifted from one foot to the next, considering. “But I won’t tell you.”
“What are we, twelve?”
“I won’t tell you,” he repeated, raising his eyebrows in what turned out to be a hopeful expression. It was so Grant that the nostalgia of it unsettled me. “But I will drive you.”
A disbelieving scoff escaped me, but I should’ve expected it of him. I closed my eyes, every instinct within me rebelling, but my choices were either trusting him or going to the indoor pool. I knew what I should’ve done. But after everything, I was done doing what I should do.
When I opened my eyes, Grant must’ve seen the decision on my face, because he gave me his signature puppy-dog smile.