Chapter 41
I sat up at once, groggy but refreshed, feeling worn out but reborn. Waking up in his bed felt vastly different from my own, even though it was just down the hall. Like I’d come into his room last night one way, and would leave it a changed woman.
A woman who loved cuddling, apparently. One who fell asleep in Elliot’s arms and had woken up at the same time as him multiple times during the night to kiss and whisper things into each other’s ears, sometimes filthy, mostly sweet.
This just seems right, doesn’t it?
Like we should’ve done it a long time ago, actually. I hadn’t said it, but I thought it so hard at him, he might’ve heard anyway. Rubbing my eyes, I’d been ready to let myself fall back into his sheets, but—
Someone was yelling. Yes, that was that faint noise coming from outside.
The sun peered through the dirty glass of Elliot’s room.
There was a steaming cup of coffee on the bedside table, a note that read Yes, this is for you beside it, with a small smiley face doodled in the corner.
The birds were chirping in the tree in front of his window, and someone was yelling.
Loudly. Female.
I’d barely managed to throw on a rogue shirt from the foot of the bed—definitely not mine because I’d come in here with nothing but a towel on, I remembered—when the door slammed against the wall.
Allegra. Closely followed by Elliot, who’d clearly been trying to keep her from storming into a room I’d been naked in less than ten seconds ago.
“Un-fucking-believable.” She barely graced me with a look before her eyes skipped back to him. “You’re sleeping with the intern!”
“I am the intern,” he reminded, nothing friendly about it.
Allegra snorted. “Yeah, right. You really are just like your father. Fucking the intern behind—”
“We broke up a year ago, Allegra. I’m not fucking anyone behind anyone’s back. You need to leave,” he added, with a finality in his tone only insignificant for someone with as much power and money as he had. An equal in every sense.
“And four months ago, you still had the ring you picked out for me in your pocket.”
Just over a month before we’d met, I noted for no reason at all whatsoever.
It felt wrong, witnessing this. But I couldn’t will myself to look away either. Not when Allegra was pointing accusatory fingers, and Elliot was rolling his head back in annoyance. They’d brought this thing to me, so it wasn’t my fault.
There was no quick comeback from Elliot. Her last words still hung in the air between them, us, and threatened to suffocate every person in here.
Allegra’s voice was quieter but still not level when she spoke again. “You’re hopeless, Elli. Rebounding with a girl who calls paparazzi on you.” I stilled, didn’t even let myself breathe. With a look at me, short and sweet, she added, “Without even using a fake number.”
And Elliot, bless his heart, had to physically restrain himself from following her gaze. I knew he wanted to look at me, search for confirmation. Maybe he was trying to find signs that Allegra was lying, in which case he shouldn’t ever look my way again.
He swallowed thickly, took a deep breath to contain himself.
“Talk about rebounding—you were fucking Nick when we were still together, Allegra.” Even I flinched, so I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to her.
“And still, you broke up with me. Still, I welcome you with open arms when he breaks your heart. Still, fucking still, you come in here and throw a temper tantrum like a child who’s denied her favorite toy. ”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t.” With a finality even she couldn’t ignore this time, Elliot shook his head a single time. “Kai told me months ago.”
“You didn’t—” say anything, I assumed she wanted to argue, but changed course. “You guys don’t even get along.”
“He’s still my brother.”
Something in her expression shifted. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but God knows if they were there out of frustration or regret or anger. If she was about to cry because she missed him or felt humiliated.
“You know what?” Her throat worked. “Fuck you, Elliot. I couldn’t care less who you have your fun with.
I thought I should just let you know you’re on the cover of People with a girl who set you up.
A girl who wanted to lure you in, live with you, and leech off of you like every other woman who tried before, during, and after me. She just so happened to succeed.”
Elliot was well on his way to kicking her out, it reverberated off of every muscle in his taut body.
Allegra spared him; turned on her heels and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard, its hinges rattled for ten full seconds.
I didn’t know what else to do with myself but count them.
The sound still hummed through the apartment when Elliot turned toward me. When his eyes met mine, there were a million questions in the way his brows pulled together, and the crease between them moved.
I wished I could shake my head, laugh her words off, and tell him how ridiculous they sounded.
“Maeve,” he said, testing the way my name felt on his tongue.
It must’ve been such a stark contrast, going from moaning it against my skin to whatever the hell this was.
Anxiously whispering it into the room, maybe.
In a show of optimism I couldn’t take, he started apologizing. “Ignore what she said. I’m sorry—”
And it simply burst out of me. “She’s right.”
He blinked at me, took a step back.
“I mean, not really. I didn’t try to lure you in, and I didn’t even want to live with you. I shot myself in the foot with that one.” Nervous laugh, southern accent slipping. “I didn’t expect your grandfather to kick you out over some stupid headlines. And I just did it because—”
“Did what?” He took another step back, maybe at the way he’d raised his voice. “Sorry,” he said, breaking me all over again. Calmer, more guarded, he repeated, “Did what?”
“Tip off The New York Goss. About you and Allegra going out. I thought it would—”
But he wouldn’t let me justify it, cutting me off again. Maybe it was better that way. Nothing really justified invading someone’s privacy that way. Now that I knew how much he hated crowds, the attention, press, it was worse.
“You called them.” Realization, not a question.
“Texted.”
His head fell back in a soundless laugh, shaking in disbelief. “Do you know how much shit I had to go through because of that?” Kind of. “The board was ready to feed me to the sharks! Cut the lifeline that this fucking internship is, and leave me stranded. You almost cost me the foundation, Maeve.”
I hated that back then, two months ago, I’d wanted it to cost him whatever he held near and dear to his heart. Whether that was his billion-dollar inheritance, the foundation, or that internship. The plan had been to get him kicked out of the program, securing the full-time position for myself.
Back then, Elliot was just rich. Handsome.
Perfect. That’s all he’d been, without insecurities and anxiety.
Without goals and dreams and ambitions. I didn’t know he was spending his time raising funds to fight for real issues.
He wasn’t going to old diners with middle-aged ladies who loved him, and he certainly wasn’t taking me there.
The lump of guilt in my throat threatened to suffocate me. Of course he’d already been that exact guy. I just hadn’t known him yet.
“Jesus Christ. You kept going on and on about how I wanted to sabotage you, meanwhile you were the one that—” He took a deep breath, braced himself against the drawer. “Is that what this was, then? You, weaseling your way into my life to sabotage it from the inside out?”
It slipped out defensively. “Well, it didn’t work, did it?”
I knew it wasn’t the point he was trying to make, but it was all I had left. I’d done all that, and he still won. Hunter Ashwood still chose his grandson.
Elliot laughed. Loud, boisterous. Almost the way he would at a bad joke, but with spite and disbelief mixed in the sound.
“How often do I have to tell you that I. Don’t.
Care. About. This. Job?” He swallowed thickly.
“I care about the foundation and the work we do and that, at the very least, I can keep doing things that matter with it. When you win, I would’ve convinced Hunter to let me keep that—and because it’s not a good look for a charity to disappear overnight, he would’ve let me.
“I thought maybe losing my inheritance to have a more normal life could’ve been worth it.
The press’s interest in me would fade, and I’d run the foundation on a normal salary.
I’d get an apartment in Brooklyn or Queens, and I’d no longer be part of the problem.
Live a relatively ethical life. Or as ethical as possible when you’re related to a bunch of spoiled billionaires. ”
That was denial shaking my head. He couldn’t possibly have had a plan for the small chance of my winning.
“You—”
“Never once intended to steal your job. Never once schemed against you or lied to your face. I don’t think the same can be said about you.”
Fuck.
My mouth opened and closed. Opened again, trying to figure out what to say and coming up short. “That’s not fair,” I settled on. “We weren’t friends when I . . . It’s different now. We’re—”
“So much more than friends.” He sighed. “It’s a little insulting, just calling me a friend.”
Guilt nagged at the very fabric of my being.
I’d questioned his intentions for so long, and assumed they couldn’t be anything other than my worst fear.
I’d jumped to conclusions based on all these new feelings in the pit of my stomach: Worry.
Anxiety. The fear of losing something I’d never had before.
The fear of having someone in a way I’d never had before.
“Elliot—”
“You know how much I despise them,” he muttered, fight blown out of his voice. Exhausted was all he looked. Tired and disappointed and sad. Embarrassed. “The press, paparazzi. They’re the reason I—”
Have anxiety. Get anxious in crowds. Don’t like too many people and need your presence to ground me.
I’m sorry, I wanted to say—but not really. It wasn’t fair. I needed that job, and I should do whatever the fuck I had to do to get it. To treat Mimi and Pops on a vacation every once in a while, pay for his hip replacement, and finally have that hole in the shed fixed.
“I didn’t know any of that back then,” I said, calmer than I’d expected. “I didn’t know you at all, Elliot. Nothing but your star sign and the hospital you were born at, and that I needed to be better than you.”
The corner of his lip twitched, sad and pitiful. “Congrats, I guess.”