Chapter 9 #4
“No.” Aspen kept her eyes ahead. “I had just completed my doctorate at San Diego State, and was living in an apartment near campus. I was actually…” She hesitated, seeming to choose her words carefully.
“Accepted into a sports residency program and was preparing to move away for eighteen months, but when Chloe called…and then decided to keep the baby…”
She was clearly skipping some parts, but Maddy could fill in the blanks.
Aspen lifted one shoulder. “I knew I couldn’t leave her, so I rescinded my acceptance in the residency and moved back in with her and my dad through her pregnancy and the first six months after Maisie was born.”
“Where was the residency?” She didn’t even know why she asked, or why it mattered. She blamed it on her incessant need to have all the facts.
Aspen glanced at her with a wry smile. “USC.”
Maddy stopped walking and stared at her incredulously. “You’re shitting me.”
Aspen stopped too and turned towards her as she laughed. “I shit you not. USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy.”
Maddy's brows shot up. “Aspen. That’s a big fucking deal. I should know, I went there. I had a friend who tried to get a residency in that program and got rejected like eight times, with a perfect GPA and glowing recommendations. How the hell did you pull that off?”
Aspen half-laughed, half-scoffed, and turned away with a hand over her heart. “Ouch.” She resumed her slow walk down the corridor, away from Maddy.
Maddy cringed at herself. “Shit.” She said under her breath. She took a couple of quick steps to catch up to Aspen. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that.”
Aspen chuckled. “It’s fine, Maddy. It doesn’t really matter anyway because I didn’t go. Obviously. But I made my peace with that a long time ago and have no regrets.”
Maddy kept her mouth shut. She couldn’t believe Aspen had been weeks away from a doctoral residency at USC.
As in, LA. Aspen would have been living in the same city as Maddy.
Maddy ran a quick mental calculation of the timeline.
Maddy would have been twenty-five, still a PA, and would have just wrapped her third season on the show—the season she met Emma, and a whole new world had opened up to her in her dating life.
She wondered—very briefly—what would have happened if Aspen had ended up in LA. Would they have reconnected? Hung out? Become friends?
She looked at Aspen. Things were starting to feel way too intimate now.
Maddy cleared her throat and looked for the exit out of dangerous territory.
“Well. Since you have no regrets about turning down one of the most prestigious programs in the country, I assume that means you’ve also made your peace with losing the Cup this year. ”
Aspen let out a loud, sharp laugh. A grin took over her face. “Big talk from a woman who hasn’t competed in fifteen years.” Then her grin slowly morphed into the familiar smirk. “You really think you still got it?”
“I don’t think anything.” Maddy held her gaze and let her old cockiness dial all the way up. “I know.”
Aspen laughed. “Okay, you know what, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?” She raised her brows at Maddy in a challenge.
Maddy narrowed her eyes.
“St. Claire game night,” Aspen said. “We do it every Wednesday. Bunny usually comes when she’s in commission.
But I’m warning you, it can get pretty vicious.
My dad and Maisie annihilate at charades and show no remorse.
” She tipped her head. “You should come. This Wednesday. Bring Bunny. Back up that trash talk in the privacy of my father’s home before you humiliate us all on a public beach.
Think of it as a little pre-Cup warm-up.
” She shrugged playfully. “You know, dust off the cobwebs and all that.”
Maddy opened her mouth to return something dismissive. Then clamped it shut. Game night did sound kind of fun. And it had been a very long time since she had competed for anything that wasn’t a promotion.
Plus, dusting off the cobwebs, so to speak, before the Cup probably wasn’t such a bad idea.
The logic was sound.
Then another thought struck her. A game night at the St. Claire house meant every St. Claire would be in attendance.
Including the one who owned a grooming salon and had no idea that Jake had spent the past year couriering half the island’s dogs to her salon as an act of his undying devotion. Maddy perked up. “Can I invite Jake?”
Something crossed Aspen’s face—her smirk faltered, eyes cut somewhere off past Maddy’s shoulder—but it was gone before Maddy could properly read it.
Aspen offered a close-lipped smile. “Of course.”
Maddy cocked her head and studied her again.
All morning, Maddy had been turning over rocks, looking for the one that didn’t sit right—the crack in Aspen’s facade. The game. The lie. The deceit. She had come up empty. The story about Chloe’s pregnancy, USC, claiming to have no regrets—all of it frustratingly, suspiciously clean.
This was not.
Whatever her game was—whatever Aspen wanted out of the daily kitchen visits and the texts and the aquarium invitation—it ran through Jake somehow. Maddy couldn’t see the whole picture yet. But after four hours of nothing, she finally had a thread to pull.
And game night would hand her the rest of the spool. She was going to completely unravel Aspen St. Claire.