Page 51 of I Love You, I Hate You
“That’s because your actual mother is an academic who gets lost in her work, which is not a criticism, just an observation. You and I also grew up together, which means I have a unique perspective on you.”
“Would you stop bringing that up? It’s creepy,” he whined.
She crossed her arms. “Is it that girl?”
“Victoria?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I was talking about the other one; the internet one. Was there something with Victoria?”
Owen shoved his hand through his hair in annoyance. Ashley had a way of weaseling everything out of him one way or another. “Sort of. It’s complicated.”
“And we have at least five more minutes before the game starts and I return to superfan mode, so spill.”
“So Victoria and I were sort of seeing each other.”
“You were fucking, got it.”
“Don’t be crass.”
“Don’t be such a prude.”
He sighed. “Anyway, itwascomplicated. She was opposing counsel on my Smorgasbord case, and—”
“She was? As in, isn’t anymore?”
He shook his head. He’d gotten word she was off the case a week after he’d gotten Nora’s Dear John: Fuck You message, and he didn’t know if it was Victoria’s decision or if a higher-up was upset with her. He hoped it was the former but feared it was the latter, and even though things were fifteen different kinds of screwed up between them, he didn’t want her job to be in jeopardy.
So much about Victoria had fallen into place now that he knew she was Nora. Nora had grown up poor and was fiercely, fiercely committed to making sure she was never in a place where she or her mother wanted for anything ever again. Owen didn’t understand what that was like, not really, but he admired Nora’s dedication and now saw it in Victoria’s uncompromising position. She worked for Smorgasbord because they paid better than most, and her position wasn’t just prestigious—it was safe. It meant enough money to pay off what were probably enormous student loans, and if she was supporting her mother, even partially, it would be a stable, steady income to rival even the biggest white-shoe firms in the area. It also meant that unlike what he’d assumed, she didn’t get it because of who she knew. She’d gotten her in-house position on raw talent. And if he’d put her job in even the slightest bit of doubt, he felt bad about it, even if he didn’t regret it. His clients deserved justice and Smorgasbord was standing in the way of that, Victoria alongside it. Fifteen different kinds of screwed up, indeed.
“She’s off the case for now, at least. And I did what was right by my client to get the case pushed into litigation, but in the process I may have been a little . . . showboaty.”
“You? Never,” Ashley said drily. She spared a glance for Lily, who was playing with another little girl just off to the side of the bleachers, and then turned back to Owen.
“Yeah, well, she was pissed. Rightly so, for some of it, but then she jumped to some conclusions about my motives, and I got pissed, and it was bad.”
“So she dumped your ass.”
“More or less, yeah.”
“And now you’re moping about it, instead of apologizing and trying to fix it.”
“There’s more, and it makes apologizing a hell of a lot harder,” he said, and spilled the rest of the story. The coffee shop, the realization that she was Nora, his own cowardice, the ice skating, the karaoke, and finally his inability to kiss her because it felt like a lie—which it would have been—leading to Nora’s epic goodbye message.
Ashley let out a long breath and shook her head. “Wow, you really blew it,” she said, patting his knee sympathetically. “But also, there’s a pretty obvious solution here. You have Victoria’s phone number. Text her or slide into her DMs or whatever, but tell her the truth. She deserves that.”
“Except she doesn’t want Luke to have anything to do with her. Shouldn’t I honor that request?”
“You can be honest with her without expecting her to engage with you. This is a pretty big thing for you to know and for her to be in the dark on, so no, I think you’ve got a duty to come clean no matter what.”
“She’ll hate me.”
“She already hates you. You’ll live. Besides, it sounds like you really like her, so if there’s even the slightest chance of you guys working this out, you can’t do it under a cloud of lies. And it’s the right thing to do, so just nut up and do it,” Ashley said. Out in front of them, the game resumed and Ashley turned her attention back to the team, leaving him with a lot to think about.
Chapter Twenty
Victoria’s phone was a lot quieter these days. Without her messages from Luke she was spending way less time on Twitter, which also meant far fewer notifications popping up on her phone during work. The group chat was constantly checking in on her, but she was being vague and not really answering their questions. They knew things had gone poorly with Luke, but she wasn’t up to explaining everything quite yet. It made her feel like too much of a failure. And throwing herself into work wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially given how much shit she was in for letting the case slip from arbitration to litigation, but it did make the workday drag. A notification popped onto her screen from her personal email account and she glanced at it, barely registering it before her brain caught up.
[email protected] RE: In-House Counsel Position