Chapter 10
Ten
By the time Aspen made it out of her massage, she’d determined that it was a luxury worth tweaking her monthly budget to accommodate. She felt loose and relaxed and very Zen. The masseuse had even managed to do away with the aches she’d still felt from her ice skating lesson. Blissful.
Because she still had another fifteen or twenty minutes until she was meant to meet Brooks at the grub shack for some lunch, she decided it was a good time to check in on everything back home.
Her dad and Tricia were due back from their honeymoon soon, and she hadn’t actually even looked at Linnea’s texts in days because she’d been so focused on Brooks.
Not that she thought her friend would have a problem with that, but…
well, Aspen hadn’t actually told her about Brooks, because that was complicated and chances were, Linnea would ask the hard questions she didn’t yet have answers for.
Hitting the lakeside trail, she checked her phone. There were blessedly few notifications that had to be dealt with, but a voicemail from a number she didn’t know caught her attention.
“Miss Fairchild. This is the Breast Health Clinic. We have an opening for a biopsy available next week and thought you’d like to move it up from your originally scheduled procedure. Please call our office to discuss at your earliest convenience.”
Next week? That was more than a week sooner than she’d originally been told.
Anxious, Aspen checked the date of the voicemail. Yesterday.
“Please God, don’t let them have filled the spot already.”
She called the office back and worked her way through to the appointment desk. “Yes, this is Aspen Fairchild. I had a voicemail from yesterday about potentially being able to move up my biopsy.”
“We have an opening for Monday afternoon at two.”
That was literally the day after her camp session was over.
She’d intended to go on and do a few other things on her list at that point, but that had all been BB—Before Brooks.
Monday meant she could get answers faster.
If something truly was wrong, she could get treatment faster—if there was even anything to be done.
And if there was nothing actually wrong…
she’d be free and clear to see if Brooks was interested in something more than this week.
The lure of that potential future was too much to resist.
“I’ll be there.”
She took down all the information about time, place, and what she was expected to do. She’d need to change her flight home, but that could wait a little bit. There were other messages waiting, including one from Linnea.
“Girl, call me. Immediately.”
Alarmed by the urgency in her friend’s tone, she hit Linnea’s contact. The phone rang only twice before she picked up.
“Aspen! Oh my God!”
Worry shot through her like lightning. “What? What happened? Did something happen to the shop? Are you okay?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
Her brain struggled to keep up. “What do you mean I didn’t tell you? About what?”
“You and Brooks Hennessy! How the hell did that happen?”
The breath clogged in her throat. “How… how do you even know about it?”
“Girl, it’s all over the internet.”
She sank down onto the nearest bench. “What?”
“Yeah. People are talking about you and speculating about the two of you. It’s a whole big thing. You’re engaged?”
“No, not exactly. It’s complicated.” Okay, maybe this wasn’t much more than was already out there. She’d known there were photos. Linnea would have recognized her.
“But you’re with Brooks Hennessy?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“That’s gonna be a story for the ages, I feel sure. But did you not know that the press has, like, your name and everything?”
The lovely relaxation from her massage evaporated, and dread took up residence in her belly. “Oh God. No. I knew they had my photo, but I didn’t know they knew who I was. Not really.” Wasn’t Brooks’ publicist supposed to be handling all this?
“Oh yeah, they know who you are. They know where you’re from. They even know about how your mom died so suddenly.”
“What? Why would they even be talking about that? It was years ago.” Not that it made Aspen feel any less ill at the idea.
“Well, there’s a lot of speculation that the two of you connected over grief, given how his mom died. It’s a whole big thing. Everybody’s trying to figure out how y’all met and how long you’ve been together since you came out of left field.”
Aspen dropped her head into her hands. “Shit.” Obviously, they had connected over grief, but that wasn’t anyone’s business but their own.
“I was afraid of this. That you didn’t know. I felt certain I would’ve heard from you if you did.”
It was one thing to have her face out there when nobody knew who she was.
She hadn’t minded being the mystery woman in his life, hadn’t cared what kind of speculation might be out there.
This had all begun as something temporary.
But it had turned into so much more. And now the public knew who she was, knew where she was from, and clearly they were digging into her private life.
Them publicly discussing her mother’s death made her feel utterly violated.
“Hang on a minute.”
Toggling over to a browser, she searched for her name. There’d never been much in the past on the rare occasions she’d thought to look, but she was on the front page of results now. Every single article and post connected her to Brooks. She opened a few and skimmed.
Aspen Fairchild, of Cooper’s Bend, Georgia, is the mystery woman who’s captured the heart of one of hockey’s favorite sons…
Hockey fans are baffled how the two met…
Fairchild, who lost her mother to an aggressive form of cancer ten years ago, just might be the perfect person to help Hennessy through his own recent loss…
None of it was ugly or disrespectful, but it was private.
They knew where she was from and had obviously talked to someone back home, or where would they have gotten the information about her mother?
That was the thing that bothered her most. Maybe they’d mined her social media.
It was a long time ago. She couldn’t remember what she’d posted.
But either way, they’d dug into her life.
Would no doubt keep digging because they’d decided she was worthy of their attention due only to her association with Brooks.
All of this was wrong on so many levels.
“I’ve gotta go. I need to go talk to Brooks.”
“Of course. And honey, when you can, will you please tell me how all of this came about?”
“I’ll tell you everything as soon as I get home on Sunday.”
“I thought you were going to be gone for longer.”
“My procedure got moved up.”
“Need me to pick you up at the airport?”
“That would be great. I’ll text you my flight details as soon as I have them.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Thanks. See you in a few days.”
She hung up the phone, head reeling.
How had they figured out who she was? She hadn’t posted a thing on social media since she got up here.
Neither had Brooks. That had been part of their staying on the down-low plan.
Had someone at the camp outed them? Certainly, a lot of the staff knew who she was, at least in conjunction with Brooks.
Worse… could there be reporters hiding out among the guests?
Feeling suddenly paranoid, she looked around at the other campers wandering the grounds, wondering if any of them were watching her.
Aspen shoved the phone back into her pocket. Brooks was due to meet her back at the cabin any minute now. They’d just have to figure this out together.
Somehow.
Brooks was still trying to figure out what to say by the time he made it back to the cabin.
How did you tell your… whatever the hell Aspen was to him…
that her whole life was now up for dissection by total strangers?
That these vultures had dug up the details of her mother’s death and trotted them out for all to see.
And fuck, reading that had hurt him. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for her to live it.
He knew her well enough by now to understand that she was an intensely private person.
There was no question she’d be upset about all of this.
The real issue was how much, and whether she would blame him for all of it.
Because it was his fault. Not directly. He hadn’t put the information out there.
But no one would have gone looking if she hadn’t been involved with him.
If he hadn’t talked her into this lunatic fake engagement because he’d just wanted to spend more time with her.
But he’d truly believed they’d have more time before anyone got curious enough to go searching this much.
Aspen turned from the window when he stepped inside. One look at her face and he knew. He knew she’d somehow found out. The skin around her eyes and mouth was drawn, and both arms were wrapped around her middle in a self-protective gesture.
His immediate instinct was to comfort and apologize. But on the remote chance he was wrong, he had to ask. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“They know who I am. They know everything. Or maybe not everything, but enough. My name. Where I’m from. That I lost my mother. They’re digging into my private life, Brooks.”
So, their blissful little bubble had well and truly burst.
Time to face the music, Hennessy.
He closed the distance between them, cupping her elbows and drawing her into his arms. “I know. I’m sorry. So fucking sorry. I knew this was a possibility, but I didn’t think they would figure it out this fast. And I had no idea they’d go into such intimate detail about your mom.”
She blinked luminous green eyes at him, her face blanking. “How much detail? The article I saw only mentioned that she’d died of cancer. They were hypothesizing that was how we connected.”
Oh, it was so much more than that. If she hadn’t seen it yet, he sure as hell didn’t want to be responsible for putting her through that.
Her hands curled into his shirt. “How much detail, Brooks?”
Knowing he couldn’t lie to her, he swallowed. “Everything. Or a damned big portion of it.”
“Show me.”
She might as well be asking him to stab her through the heart himself. “Aspen, you don’t need to see—”
“Show me,” she insisted.
Reluctantly, he dropped his hold on her and found the article again on his phone, handing it over to her.
She began to read. After the first few lines, she wilted down onto the bed, her hair falling forward to curtain her face as she continued. One hand lifted to cover her mouth.
Brooks could do nothing but stand and wait, every inch of his skin itching with the need to do something to fix the unfixable. To find a way to put the genie back in the bottle. To protect her from a threat that had already gotten past his guard.
Aspen’s shoulders shook by the end, and when she lifted her head, her face was a mask of devastation, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“They didn’t just dig this up on social media.
They talked to people at home about me. About my family.
Probably the only reason I haven’t heard from my dad is that he and Tricia are still out of the country.
He probably hasn’t seen. But someone will tell him. Because it’s his life, too.”
Miserable, Brooks didn’t know if he should try to touch her or not. Maybe she wouldn’t want his comfort now. “I’m sorry. I know that’s nothing in the face of all this, but I don’t know what else to say.”
“What gives them the right to think they can do this?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand these people any more than you do. I can’t justify anything that they’ve done or said.”
“How can you stand it?”
“How…?” He didn’t know how to answer that.
“How is it that they think they have any right to parade anyone’s personal information out there for public consumption?
” She shoved to her feet and began to pace.
“No wonder things have been so bad for you since your mom died. They keep throwing it in your face. As if you’re a story for the public’s entertainment, not a person in your own right.
If they did this to me, they must have done as much or worse to you. ”
Wait… what?
Aspen stopped in front of him, lifting a hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that you have to deal with this. That they think that they have some claim to you.” Her arms slid around him in a hug, and somehow… she was the one comforting him.
How the hell had that happened? This was all his fault. She’d been put in the crosshairs because of him, and she was still thinking of him. This woman was so kind. And that made what the press had done that much worse.
Brooks pulled her in, wiping her lingering tears with his thumb.
“Is there anything we can do to stop this?”
“Stop it?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve learned over the years that the media is very much a juggernaut in that sense.
All we can do is to try to control the narrative.
I can contact my publicist, Rebekah, to see if she has any suggestions.
Maybe we can get her to make some sort of public statement requesting that everybody respect our right to privacy.
But I don’t know that it’s going to do any good. ”
“It’s something.” On a sigh, she settled her head against his chest. “You know, it’s ironic.”
“What is?”
“The only thing they didn’t seem to uncover is the lie. No one is questioning that we’re really engaged. Wondering where and how we met? Yeah. How long we’ve been together? Yes. But nobody is suggesting that it isn’t real.”
For a long minute he was struck speechless. Not that the media hadn’t uncovered their deception, but because his immediate instinct had been that it was real. That she was his and this thing between them was more than the lie.
As he held her in the middle of their shared cabin, Brooks wondered if there was a chance in hell of getting his wish in the face of reality.