Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
F riday night crept up on me in a blur of linen tablecloths and string lights and aching feet. It’d been all hands on deck all week at Alderton-Du Ponte as the country club geared up for the Spring Has Sprung fundraiser on Saturday. With both the music hall and the ballroom to prepare, it’d been a busy frenzy of making sure each space was as glamorous as the country club’s usual standards. They had Rhythms of Hope to impress, after all.
Or, really, one last shot to convince them to sell.
The past four days had been back-breaking work of unloading food delivery trucks for the catering, pulling the round tables out of storage, and setting up both rooms—the ballroom and the Du Ponte Music Hall. It was cleaned, decluttered, and ready for the performance Rhythms of Hope had lined up.
I rarely worked in the same department as Paige, but I could feel her absence throughout my days. It had me thinking about what I would do long term. Was Alderton-Du Ponte a part of this new phase of life I’d decided to start? It wasn’t like I needed the big paychecks to afford a house renovation anymore.
But it was familiar, and the idea of abandoning everything entirely was terrifying.
So I’d decided not to think about it until after the fundraiser. I’d put my all into the event, stay faithful to my Princess of Alderton-Du Ponte title, and then reevaluate when the chaos died down.
But since I wasn’t thinking about that , my mind was free to wander to other things.
Like the piano perched on the stage, which ultimately led me back, once more, to Aaron Astor.
“Lovey?” I lifted my head to the call on the other side of the music hall. Brett stood near the stage, a cardboard box in his hand. “I finished putting all the bows on the seats.”
I stood at the back of the room, finalizing the centerpieces on the banquet tables set up behind the row-style seating. “I think we’re about finished in here. If you want to go check and see how the others are doing in the ballroom?—”
“Really?” he asked, and the fatigue in his voice was punctuated by a wide yawn. “It’s way past my clock out time.”
“We all came in together,” I reminded him, wiping my fingertips, but the glitter from the centerpiece didn’t flick off. “Let’s leave together, yeah? Remember how Mr. Roberts said we should be a team?”
I could see Brett’s scowl from here. “I’m not staying past ten-thirty. Even Mr. Roberts went home.”
“Do what you want,” I said with a sigh. I wasn’t going to fight him on it.
And my flippancy was all Brett needed, because, with the box underneath his arm, he walked out of the music hall.
There were no windows in the hall, which made it hard to really gauge what time it was. It didn’t feel like ten o’clock—it felt like midnight. I leaned my palms on the table, letting my head droop. I shouldn’t have, but just like every other moment my brain quieted, I thought of Aaron.
The last time I’d seen Aaron had been when we toured the house Sunday. I’d been thinking and wondering about what would come the next time we saw each other—if things would change between us, or if he would finally broach the topic we’d avoided. But the next time never came.
I’d been stuck in the Du Ponte Music Hall all week, scrambling to right mishap after mishap. The flower arrangements had started wilting way too early, the programs were printed with the wrong date, and the tablecloth company had accidentally sent us 10 ivory ones when we needed white. There was always something that needed to be fixed, and as the Princess, I was always the one volunteered to fix it. I’d been too busy to go looking for Aaron, but not too busy to have him fill up nearly every thought.
“ Ridiculous ,” I found myself muttering under my breath.
At first, I’d told myself I needed to get a grip. The house tour was just that—a tour. He’d been helping me see sense, pulling me away from a dream that wasn’t mine. I should’ve been grateful. But instead, I couldn’t stop thinking it’d felt like something more. Something real.
Maybe I’d wanted it to mean more than it did. Maybe he’d only been trying to make a point.
Monica came in through the music hall’s doorway then, with a crate of flowers in her arms. “What’s that?” I asked, straightening from the last table I’d adjusted. “We’re all set on flowers in here.”
Monica stopped. “Mr. Roberts called and said to bring these in here.”
“Apparently they’re doing some kind of big surprise tomorrow,” Trisha said, coming in behind Monica with another crate of flowers in her arms. “Last-minute thing. These just got dropped off.”
“At this hour?”
“ After hours doesn’t mean crap to these people.”
Normally, I would’ve glanced around for an elite, worrying if they’d overheard the dig. I didn’t this time. “Did he say where to put them?”
“On the stage,” Monica said, dropping the crate on its surface at the same time. “He said Mr. Astor would move them in the morning.”
My fingers stilled on the vase. “Mr. Astor?”
Trisha dropped her crate down, too. “Yep.”
She didn’t go on, so I looked to Monica. “Mr. Roberts just said it’s for a surprise Aaron organized. He didn’t say anything else.”
My chest tightened, but I forced a smile and nodded. “Oh.”
The girls didn’t notice my hesitation, already heading back out of the music hall. I swallowed back the knot in my throat and turned back to my own work, trying to shake off the unease that crept through me. A surprise Aaron was planning—like a proposal? Would he really propose to Fiona at the event? What else would he order rushed delivery flowers for?
I needed to tell him. I hadn’t fully made up my mind, but I couldn’t let him marry Fiona.
If I proposed to you, would you say yes?
I would.
Those two words took over, and on their own accord, my feet started carrying me to the music hall’s doors. I strode down the hallways, the determination propelling me forward, not letting me think twice about my decision.
When I made it out into the country club’s lobby, I found my coworkers. They were all putting their jackets on and carrying their bags, and then froze when they saw me. “We’re heading out,” Trisha said, zipping her coat to her throat. “Everything’s practically finished. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so we’re not killing ourselves tonight.”
Under normal circumstances, I might’ve double-checked if everything on our checklist was done, and might’ve even done a walkthrough the ballroom to double check it myself. Now, though, the determination still had me in its grasp. “Have a good night.” Instead of following them to the employee parking lot, I took a right, heading toward the walkway that led to the hotel.
“Oh, and your phone was ringing nonstop in your cubby,” Trisha called to me. “I don’t know if it was your mom or something.”
My steps slowed. They were already walking away, toward the back exit, and I watched them with a strange realization. None of them had been here as long as I had, but I’ve worked with Trisha for the last three years, at least. And none of them knew about my mother. It was my fault, of course, for keeping to myself and never trying to make friends, but it was a strange, startling realization.
I switched directions and started toward the employee lounge, because while it might not have been my mother calling me nonstop, it was someone .
When I pushed open the lounge’s door, I could hear my phone vibrating in my coat pocket even before I got my cubby open. I fished it out, finding Annalise’s picture on the screen. I didn’t have a chance to answer it before it kicked to voicemail, and I found that she’d called me fifteen times.
My stomach sank, and I quickly redialed.
“Lovey.” She gasped when she answered, letting out a sigh of relief.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you still at the club?”
“Yeah, I’m just?—”
“Can you go to the hotel and check on Aaron?”
“Why?” My feet were already moving, once more pushing me forward before I could think twice. I shoved out the employee lounge door. “What’s going on?”
“Michael and I are in New York—we took the train to have a little date day—and we’ve been calling him, but he’s not answering.”
“I mean, what’s going on that you need me to check on him?”
Annalise hesitated, and in that split second of suspended silence, I held my breath.
“Fiona called me. Crying. Aaron—he dumped her. ”
I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the glass walkway, and since it was dark out, my reflection was clear in the windows. I almost looked like a ghost. “ What ?”
“I couldn’t really tell what she was saying, but apparently it was something like he told her that it wasn’t going to work between them. She said—she said that he said there was someone else.”
Someone else . He’d told Fiona there was someone other than her—someone he wanted more. My phone suddenly became slick in my grip. I looked over at my reflection in the dark window. My blonde hair was up in a ponytail, and a few pieces had slipped out over the workday and fell to frame my face. My cheeks were pink from the long day, but my eyes were wide, almost like a deer in headlights.
“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” I heard Michael say on Annalise’s end of the call. Alarm raised his voice an octave. “He needs to be married in a week .”
Someone else . Warmth bloomed behind my ribs, something almost like hope. “I’ll see if I can find him,” I told them, picking up my pace. “I’ll call you.”
I came into the hotel lobby with my heart beating impossibly fast, phone clutched in my shaking grip. I hurried to the front desk. “Jennifer, can you call Aaron Astor’s room?”
“He’s not in his room,” Jennifer said. Upon my frown, she added, “He came down about an hour ago.”
“He left?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t go out to the valet. He went out the back.”
The back? There was just the self-parking lot in the back of the hotel. Had he just gone out to walk around? Did he?—
“Thank you,” I told Jennifer, because all at once, it hit me. I tapped my palm to the desk’s surface, all but jumping backward. “Thank you!”
Once I started down the hallway that led to the back of the hotel, I broke into a little jog, shoes slapping against the carpeted floor with dull thuds. It was strange, running toward a situation I knew would change everything, but I wouldn’t hide from it anymore. I didn’t want to.
I shoved out the hotel’s back door, and if I took the pathway left, I’d make it to the parking lot. Instead, I took it to the right, to where the smoker’s lounge.
And I found him.
Aaron sat in the same seat he’d occupied back in June. If he lifted his head, he’d stare directly at me, but his focus was too locked on the gas flame of the firepit. It was the perfect spring night for him to be out here, with warmer temperatures and no wind, but something about the sight was wrong. Maybe it was the fact that he had no jacket on, and his shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows.
Or maybe it was his expression, which looked so lost .
Discreetly, I shot a quick text to Annalise that I’d found him. With each step closer, the trembling underneath my skin intensified. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say other than, “Hey.”
Aaron lifted his head, the flames of the fire illuminating his surprise. “Hey.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but this version of Aaron was not it. He didn’t greet me with a smile, and he didn’t relax at the sight of me. His gaze was remote, expression unreadable beyond the shock of my appearance. He didn’t move.
“Waiting to bum a cigarette off someone?” I asked him.
At first, I thought he wouldn’t remember the joke. The barest smile touched his lips, almost appearing ghostly in the shadows the fire created. “Not a cigarette, no.”
“So you were waiting for someone?” I raised my eyebrows. “You have a romantic rendezvous planned? Should I leave?”
“I’d be very disappointed if you left me, Lovisa.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek to fight off a smile. Clutching my phone tighter, I rounded a chair in front of the fire, sinking into it. The same chair I’d sat in back in June. “ Lovisa ,” I echoed to him. “You’re the only one who calls me that, you know. What’s so bad about Lovey?”
“If I were to call you Lovey ,” he murmured, gaze dropping to the fire, “I’m afraid it would quickly turn into me calling you love .”
What’s so bad about love? The adrenaline of running through the hotel to find him was wearing off, and since anticipation accompanied it, there was no hope of calming my trembling. “What are you doing out here?”
“Thinking.” Aaron leaned back in his chair, quiet for a long moment. “About a lot of things.”
It was strange seeing him like this, especially since the last time had been so… different. Serious, but not like this. Not uneasy. The atmosphere was drastically different, in a way that made me hesitate.
“You heard, I’m assuming.” Aaron blinked at the fire. “About Fiona.”
Knowing Aaron never beat around the bush, I should’ve guessed he would’ve brought it up first. It was the distant way he spoke, though, that unsettled me further. The uneasy feeling intensified. I wanted to peer into his mind without forcing him to talk about it, to read what weighed on him without forcing him to draw it out. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t immediately answer. I waited without fidgeting, giving him as long as he needed. “Back in June—do you know why I was out here at one in the morning?”
“You said it was because you couldn’t sleep.”
“I was going to propose to Margot the next day.” Aaron let out a little breath. “Not at Annalise’s wedding. I’m not a monster. But afterward—I planned to give her the ring afterward.”
He had a faraway look in his eyes as he stared into the fire.
“I knew she didn’t want to marry me. It’s an odd thing, knowing someone doesn’t want to do something, but watching them do it anyway.”
“Except she didn’t. Marry you, I mean.”
He nodded. “But she would’ve. She told me she would’ve married me had I come to her earlier.”
“So why didn’t you?” I asked. “You knew of her since Christmas, right? Why did you wait to meet her until June?”
“I didn’t want to marry her either. I mean, in a way, I did,” he quickly amended, still focused on the fire. “I kept telling myself I did—I had to. But every time I’d pictured it—the wedding, the life that came after—it was like I couldn’t breathe. It’s the same with Fiona. I need to marry her, but I don’t want to.” Aaron dragged his hands down his face, his voice rough and raw. “God, I know that sounds ridiculous. I can’t—I can’t make it make sense.”
“You thought it was what you needed to impress your family,” I murmured gently, recalling our conversation from the elevator. “You thought marrying someone like Fiona or Margot would make them respect you.”
His hands dropped, and he looked at me with something raw and desperate in his eyes. “My brothers demoted me, my grandmother wouldn’t stop talking about seeing me married, and I knew my parents were just waiting for me to prove I could do something right. Margot Massey was supposed to be the solution. If marriage was the answer, she was perfect.”
But then it all fell apart. Margot ran off into the sunset with someone else, and his parents found out about his deception, withdrawing from him like he was nothing more than a stain on the family name. What Aaron thought he needed had only pushed him further from what he truly wanted.
“I never thought my parents would’ve cut me off,” Aaron whispered. “Never thought they would’ve… discarded me the way they did.”
I hadn’t been in the courtyard for the entire conversation he’d had with his parents that night, but the coldness in Mrs. Astor’s words still rang in my ears. You’ve done this to yourself .
Cruel. Unforgiving. As if she’d been speaking to a business associate, not her son.
“I thought they would’ve seen my earnestness,” he went on, still softly. “I thought they would’ve seen that all I wanted was to impress them. But I’m not my brothers.”
I wanted to reach for him, to pick up his hand, to wrap my arms around his frame. But he was too far from my reach. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, words so totally inadequate.
Aaron didn’t seem to hear me, anyway. He gaze was trapped on the flames, but I had a feeling his attention was trapped in his thoughts. He wore a look I was sure he’d been wearing that night in the elevator, when the darkness had stolen my view of him. Hurt. Dejected. Heartbroken .
“I lied to you,” he said suddenly. “You asked me before if someone told me I wasn’t made for love. I said no.”
I held my breath. “And that was a lie?”
“That night.” He seemed transported, reliving that night in June, watching it all play out all over again in his mind. “After everything fell apart with Margot. It was the first time outright. My mother—my mother said ‘ We should’ve known. As if you would’ve fallen in love .’”
My breath caught. As if you would’ve fallen in love. The words echoed through me like a chill. I could see it—Aaron kneeling before her, fingers curled in her sandal straps, the words hitting him as hard as if she’d kicked at him. It wasn’t just cruel. It was gutting. And the way he said it, it was like he still believed it, as if part of him had swallowed that lie whole and never spit it back out. And I hated it.
My own heart ached for him—for the Aaron Astor who didn’t understand that chasing approval wouldn’t fill the emptiness inside him. And God, it hurt to see him like that—to see all the cracks he tried so hard to keep hidden.
“Screw her,” I said suddenly.
Aaron jolted in his seat, eyes jerking to mine as if I’d said the last thing he expected. “ What ?”
“Screw her and the rest of your family.” My voice was strong, firm, no room for negotiation. “To hell with anyone who would say anything like that to you.”
He seemed to recognize the words he’d once spoken to me, the shock ebbing from his vision and settling back into something I couldn’t name. “I admire your fire, my dear. I wish I had some of it.”
His tone reminded me of another part of our conversation before, back in June, in front of this very firepit.
Do you ever feel like you wake up one day and realize that this isn’t the life you thought you’d have? I’d asked him. That you just… resent it all?
All the time.
And what do you do about it?
Absolutely nothing .
Except this time, Aaron jumped.
Calling things off with Fiona was like me walking away from Mom’s dream house—a big step, one that I knew would change the trajectory of things. Not marrying Fiona meant no business to inherit, no money to back him. Aaron ending things with Fiona meant he had to give up the part of him that so badly wanted to impress his family. His family, who had nothing but harsh words for him, love dependent on achievements.
Parents who would disown him, make him believe he wasn’t made for love. Back then, he’d allowed those poisonous words to seep in, to suffocate him. But tonight, he jumped. And just like it’d been a painful choice for me, I was sure it’d been an impossible choice for him.
But he made it.
I wanted to hug him. Much like he’d embraced me during my hardest moments, reaffirmed he was there for me, I wanted to do the same for him. In that moment, looking at Aaron from across the fire, with the stars out and shining down on us, there was no mistaking it. Before, back in June, there’d been a similar feeling in the air, but I was sure of it now.
I got to my feet and turned off the gas firepit. Aaron watched wordlessly, and his eyes followed me as I rounded to stand directly in front of him. I held my hands out. “Come with me,” I told him.
His expression was wary. “Where?”
“Trust me?”
Aaron’s gaze lowered to my outstretched hands. There wasn’t a second that I thought he wouldn’t take them, but I waited for it to be his choice. And then, much as I had been magnetized to him before, his hands lifted, magnetized to mine now. “Without a doubt.”