Chapter 21
Eve turned away from the bar with drinks for her and Aspen and nearly spilled them both when she saw Nolan standing too closely behind her with a smile that was nice enough on the surface but didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. Father has been teaching him well, she thought wryly. When he made no effort to move out of her way, she arched a brow and, in a long-suffering tone that conveyed exactly how little she wished to speak with him, asked, “Can I help you?”
He looked around to see if anyone was watching before he leaned in close and demanded, “What are you doing with her, Eve? You’re not gay.”
“Jumping straight to the insecurities, I see,” Eve muttered. She rolled her eyes at the way he visibly bristled at the comment, and shook her head. “I’m not going to justify that entirely inappropriate question with an answer. It is none of your business who I see.”
“You can’t be serious,” he scoffed. When she just gave him a look that said she was being quite serious, he hissed, “Your mother has been on my ass about her ever since I got here.”
Eve pursed her lips. She wasn’t surprised her mother had vented her prejudices to Nolan. He was her father’s golden boy, after all. And while she didn’t particularly care that his life was being affected in the slightest, the last thing she wanted was for their bullshit to get back to Aspen. “What are you talking about?”
“Yes, what are you talking about?” a new voice chimed in.
Eve bit her lip to keep from smirking at the way Nolan jumped to attention at her mother’s droll greeting, and arched a brow at him that said she, too, was interested in his answer.
“Nothing important, Elizabeth,” he replied with a tight smile.
“Good.” Elizabeth flicked her hand as if shooing away a bug. “Then if you’ll excuse us, I need to speak with my daughter.”
And the hits just keep coming . Eve took a long pull from her wine glass as she watched Nolan slink off like a kicked puppy.
The fact that she’d made it through dinner before her mother cornered her was a miracle, and it would honestly be a relief to just get this over with so she could stop worrying about it and focus on how she was going to broach the topic of possibly exploring this unexpectedly wonderful connection she’d found with Aspen.
At the thought of Aspen, she stole a quick glance across the ballroom to where she’d left her talking hockey with Lydia and Senator Gerald Mahoney while the string quartet took a break from the mealtime set to prepare for the dancing part of the evening. Aspen’s back was to her, but Lydia saw her looking their way, and she shook her head at the do you need backup ? look Lydia gave her before turning her attention back to her mother.
Before this weekend, the taut look of disappointment on her mother’s face would have twisted her stomach into knots, but it didn’t hit quite as hard now. It was still enough to put her instantly on guard, but her pulse didn’t spike and the usual impending storm of doom she was used to feeling was reduced to just a few threatening clouds. That, more than anything, was what unsettled her the most, but before she could think about it too much, her mother directed her toward the side of the room with a sharp tilt of her head.
Eve stole one last glance at Aspen, torn between wanting her to see what was happening so she’d come to her rescue and hoping she didn’t notice so she’d be spared the worst of her mother’s cruelty. She briefly considered throwing back both glasses of wine to numb herself for what was coming before deciding against it. There were too many eyes and ears around for her mother’s reprimand to be anything other than short and vicious, so the alcohol wouldn’t have time to kick in before it was over, and she didn’t particularly want to deal with the headache she’d get from it.
As expected, her mother got straight into it the moment they were mostly sheltered from prying ears. “How dare you blow us off with a text!”
“Mother—”
But her mother wasn’t quite finished. “No!” she hissed. “Your father and I are willing to humor your dalliance with Aspen because she at least comes with an Academy pedigree that we can capitalize on, but I’ll be damned if you disrespect us by blowing off your responsibilities for that woman!”
That woman? Eve blinked. “ Humor ?”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “When are you going to get it through your head that those kinds of relationships aren’t for people like you?”
“People like me?” Eve echoed. She’d expected her mother’s rebuke to be directed at her absence from dinner the night before, and her brain was having trouble recalibrating to defend her sexuality instead. Which was stupid, because she should have seen this coming. Why wouldn’t her homophobic mother blame her choosing to do something for herself on Aspen?
“Oh, do grow up, Eve,” her mother snapped.
Eve was so focused on the sudden appearance of Aspen behind her mother that she barely registered the rebuke. Her stomach tightened at the concern in Aspen’s expression as she stopped a few feet away, and she shook her head imperceptibly to assure her she was fine. This fight had been years in the making, and she was finally in a place where she felt confident enough to take it on.
God, her therapist would be so fucking proud.
Aspen, thankfully, understood, and crossed her arms over her chest as she stayed where she was.
“It’s one thing for riffraff like Aspen to be gay,” her mother continued scathingly, “but we are not like that.”
Even though Eve knew that repeating what her mother said was pissing her off, she couldn’t stifle the disbelieving “Riffraff?” that spilled from her lips. It was all she could do to not laugh at the way Aspen rolled her eyes as mouthed the word as well, and she forced herself to focus on her mother’s scowling face as she said, “I’m afraid you’ve wildly underestimated her, Mother.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” her mother scoffed. “What’s there to underestimate about a pilot ? Honestly, Eve.” She tsked disapprovingly.
“She’s so much more than a pilot,” Eve defended, pointedly not looking at Aspen who was pulling a comically offended face and grasping the front of her shirt as if mortally wounded by her mother’s assessment.
Her mother waved her off with a thoroughly dismissive hand. “When are you going to wake up and realize that she’s using you for your money?”
“For my…” Eve frowned as Aspen flashed a pair of middle fingers at the back of her mother’s head.
“If anything,” her mother steamrolled on before Eve could begin to point out all the ways she was wrong, “she should be using the connections we’re providing to try and build her business, but instead she’s tempting you into gallivanting off around the mountain and ignoring your obligations.”
“Tempting me into gallivanting around the…?” Eve repeated dryly. “Wow. Glad to know you think so highly of me, Mother.”
“Well, what else are we to think? You’ve never failed to honor your responsibilities before.”
Eve shook her head. “It was my choice to skip dinner last night. Aspen supported me in the decision, but I was the one who made it.”
Her mother looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “What could have possibly been more important than dinner with our guests?”
“ Your guests,” Eve corrected without hesitation. “And spending time with Aspen will always be more important than anything— especially the so-called ‘responsibilities’ that you’ve assigned to me that I quite literally could not care less about.”
“How dare you.”
Eve had always thought she’d feel happy when she finally lost her shit and went off on her parents, but she didn’t. She just felt relieved. And a little sad. And so very done with all of it. “And Aspen doesn’t need your connections; she has more than enough of her own.”
“Nobody has connections like these,” her mother retorted snobbishly. “There are four Senators and two-dozen Fortune-500 CEOs or their heirs in this room. There’s no way a pilot ,” she sneered the word like it was something nasty stuck on the bottom of her shoe, “should ever find themself in company like this.”
“You know…” Eve sighed and shook her head. “I’ve always hoped that, one day, you would choose my happiness over your precious connections and bald-faced power grabs, but I see now that it’ll never happen.” Eve looked at Aspen, and answered the please let me jump in that was clear in her expression with a short nod even as she continued, “Rest assured, Mother, that I will not be disrespecting you and Father next year by blowing off your events, because I won’t be attending.”
“You won’t—” Elizabeth glared at Aspen as she joined them. “This is all your doing. I knew you were trouble.”
“With all due respect, ma’am,” Aspen said, her tone conveying that she felt the amount due was less than zero, “you brought this on yourself.”
Warmth spread through Eve as Aspen wrapped an arm around her waist. “She’s right,” she told her mother as she leaned into Aspen’s side.
“And, for the record,” Aspen said as she squeezed her lightly, “Eve wasn’t exaggerating. I don’t need anything from your pitiful menagerie of so-called ‘connections’.”
Eve didn’t bother to hide her smirk at her mother’s sharp gasp of affront. “If you hadn’t been so busy being outraged, again, at the reminder that I’m bi, you might have thought a bit more about the fact that she’s Aspen Collier- West .”
Elizabeth huffed indignantly. “West. East. I fail to see your point.”
“My point, Mother, is that you should have done your due diligence. If you had, you’d have realized that, while she is a pilot, she’s also an heir to West Enterprises.” Eve leaned her head on Aspen’s shoulder and added, “And, luckily, she knows that I’m not after her money.”
She laughed at the way her mother’s eyes widened as it all sank in. Never in her life had she seen her struck so completely dumb.
It was fucking fantastic.
And with nothing left to say to her mother, she smiled up at Aspen, feeling more energized than she ever had after a conversation with either of her parents. “Darling, what do you say we get back to our friends?”
Aspen grinned and winked at her before dropping a quick, chaste kiss that Eve didn’t doubt for a second was a silent middle finger to her mother, who was staring at them in shock as she no doubt tried to process what had just happened. “I think that sounds like a great idea.”