Page 82 of Scoring Grey

She shakes her head, not pleased with my choice, but she doesn’t argue. She knows it would be useless. Turning to the valet, his eyes widen as he knows he has just witnessed a private conversation.

“Miss Grey…” he stutters out nervously. “When I saw you coming, I tried to get the car, but there are too many vehicles parked around it?—”

She holds up her hand. “Whose car is this?”

He looks at the other valet for an answer. “This is Miss Wyndham’s car.”

“Perfect. I’ll take it. She can take my car when she leaves. It’s nicer anyway.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know?—”

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars to hand me the keys.”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but he doesn’t object. Instead, he wordlessly hands me the keys. I open the passenger side door, but Eloise doesn’t move.

“Get in the car, Eloise,” I say firmly.

I know why she paused. She was giving me another chance to stay, but I won’t be swayed. My mother’s legacy means the world to me, but Eloise is my world. She rolls her eyes, annoyed that I’ve taken it upon myself to join her rather than stay, but I couldn’t care less. She doesn’t get to walk away from me.

When I climb into the driver’s seat, I don’t ask her to tell me why she’s upset. Instead, I give her my story. “Our mothers were best friends. I’m assuming Sherry mentioned that tonight.” Pulling out of the roundabout, I glance over to gauge her reaction. She rolls her lips, and I know that detail came up, and it’s at least part of why she’s upset. “You were wrong before when you said I knew all along. I didn’t. The day I met you, I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know you were Eloise Grey or that our mothers were best friends. Those details didn’t reveal themselves to me until after I had already fallen for you.

“I can prove I’m telling you the truth. I was always going to tell you.” Damn it, this isn’t how I wanted to do things, but I need to give her a reason, one that’s big enough that she’ll understand. I check the pocket inside my sports coat to confirm my insurance is still there. “Eloise, I was going?—”

“Just stop, Cal. Please, this already hurts enough. Don’t make it worse.”

“Why can’t you see I’m trying to make it stop hurting?”

“Because you can’t!” she yells.

I hit the steering wheel. “I don’t accept that, Eloise. What we have is worth fighting for.” My hands twist around the wheel. “Do you love me?”

Her lip trembles. “You know I do.”

“Then you fight. We fight for the things we love. We fight together.”

“You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter if I love you, not anymore. You’ll never be able to love me the same way I do you.”

“That’s my choice, Eloise!” I attempt to rein in my mounting frustration. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel. What makes you think I’d choose any future that doesn’t include you?” My eyes flick between her and the road.

“Because truths can’t be undone.”

“What does that even mean?” I angrily run a hand through my hair.

“You have a trust, one your father never told you about and one that my mother is the successor executor on.”

“Okay…” My grandfather owned one of the biggest hockey franchises in Canada before he passed. It makes sense that he would have left his fortune to my mother, given she was an only child, but I’m not following the rest. I told her I didn’t care about the money. What I haven’t figured out is why she cares so much. She doesn’t need it either. “How does having a trust change things between us?”

“Your father and my mother both knew a trust existed, yet neither of them has told us about it.”

“So you think they’re working together to take it without my knowledge?”

“Maybe, but that’s not what this is about. We’ve always known your father is greedy, but it’s his words, Cal. Remember what I told you he said to me the night I found out I was pregnant.”

I narrow my eyes on the tree-lined road that winds off the estate, trying to recall the words that have her running away from me now.

“We all have skeletons, and I know where yours are buried.”

My eyes widen as my heart skips a beat, and my mind quickly follows the direction of her thoughts. I turn to her, and when I do, her eyes are full of sorrow and hurt.

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