21. Winter

The sorority housewas quiet that morning when I woke up. I was alone in bed. I didn't need to look to know. The warmth that Asher emanated was missing. He had to go to practice before the sun came up most days, like all serious athletes in college. I lay there way too long, staring at the ceiling, last night replaying in my mind. I'd had sex, with my bully no less. Oh, and he also happened to be my fake boyfriend. I had a talent for complicating things, clearly.

I turned over to reach for my phone and was met with the sound of crinkling paper.

A sketch.

I was familiar with Asher's simple, striking style. I was sleeping in the picture. Peaceful, sated. There was something suggestive about the line drawing. The woman in the picture looked like she'd just been fucked. The crude, unexpected thought made me hot and bothered all over. I needed a shower. I smelled like Asher. I didn't hate it.

First, I opened my phone and scrolled through the HHH hashtag, dragging out the dreamlike feeling of being in bed, relaxed and calm for the first time in weeks.

My hockey jersey picture was up near the top, collecting a ton of likes and comments. Only a little further down, I stopped scrolling, arrested by the sight of a blurred-out picture of a naked person tied to a statue. The comments were mean and awful. No one seemed to know who it was, and I couldn't make anything out from the distorted photo.

My phone rang while I was looking at it. I answered quickly.

"Mom?"

"Winter, darling. I'm in town and we never had our shopping trip. Do you have time to indulge me and spend a few hours with your mother?"

We went to the one shopping area in Hade Harbor that my mom could tolerate. For such a small town, it had a decent selection of luxury boutiques, but Angela DeLaurie wasn't an amateur shopper, she was a professional, and a handful of high-end stores didn't usually cut it. I imagined that because spending this time together constituted my birthday present, she'd decided to forgive Hade Harbor and its inadequate shopping experience this time.

We went into a few little stores, my mother charging around, ordering sales assistants around with an ease that only came with decades of practice. I trailed after her, trying on the things she instructed me to, turning and posing, smiling on cue. It was our MO. My mom got to dress up her daughter and I got to see her. I couldn't complain. Doing so would only get me less time with her.

"So, your father was telling me about your boyfriend… Asher, isn't that his name? Asher Martino. Is he foreign?"

"His mother's Colombian."

"Oh, how exotic. And his father?"

I shrugged. "We haven't gotten there yet," I evaded her question.

Mom nodded. "Well, Latino men know how to value family."

"Mom! What are you talking about?"

She was sipping champagne, waiting for the assistants she'd commandeered to bring her ten shoe options.

"I mean, they like kids, often they want big families. Are you ready for that, honey?"

"I'm nineteen years old, so no, of course not," I blustered. For some reason, imagining Asher as a father was doing something weird to my insides. "You're stereotyping a huge, diverse group, and I just think we should change the subject," I added.

She sighed. "You kids and your PC language. Very well. I'm happy for you, how's that?"

I stared at her, genuinely surprised by her enthusiasm. My mom could be aloof; I'd learned from the best, after all. She was snotty sometimes and entitled in a way that had taken years to develop. I knew she hadn't come from money, but she certainly owned her lifestyle now.

She raised an eyebrow at me. "What? Does it surprise you?"

I shrugged. "Kind of."

"I know. Broken family, single-mother household, grew up south of River Drive…an athlete, no less. I know there's nothing about this boy on paper that I should like." She leaned in and smiled at me. "Except for one thing."

"What?"

"You chose him. That means I like him," she finished.

I had no idea what to say. It might have been the sweetest thing my mother had ever said to me.

"Don't underestimate the privilege of having a choice, Winter. Take it from me. Choice is everything."

I tried to process her words and stumbled. "You had a choice. You chose Daddy."

My mother stared at her fizzy flute of champagne for so long I thought she might not answer. "Sometimes life can take your choices away or change them. When you make the same choice again and again, regardless of circumstance, that's how you know a choice is real."

I had no idea how to react to this version of my mother. I usually got a different version every time she came home. Hippie Angela, off to an ashram in Goa, or fashion maven Angela, freshly back from Paris. Cryptically honest Angela? It was a new one.

"I don't understand," I admitted.

"When I met your father, I was halfway through school on about a million loans I couldn't afford. You know your grandparents were never wealthy. I found a way to supplement my budget, but I was one missed paycheck from dropping out of school."

My mother had graduated from HHU, as well. I often forgot, seeing as she'd never worked after graduation, just settled down to play housewife to my dad, and eventually, have me. I'd always thought she'd been satisfied with the twists and turns her life had taken, but now, sitting there across from her, I wasn't so sure. She seemed full of regrets.

"Your father — he saved me. He saved me, but in that saving, some of those choices went away…maybe I'd never really had them in the first place."

I mulled over her words. "So, would you make the same choice? To be saved by Daddy?" She'd said that true choices were the ones you made over and over again.

She avoided my eyes, staring instead at a brightly jeweled clutch on the table between us. She finally met my eyes, but instead of stopping, her gaze drifted over my shoulder toward the front of the store. Her melancholy expression disappeared in an instant. My mother was donning the mask she'd carefully cultivated for years. The one that hid all the real parts of her away.

"Oh, my guest is here," she said and shot me a smirk.

"Guest? Who?" I wondered, standing up and turning around to follow her gaze.

My heart froze. What the fuck?

Asher strode through the expensive boutique, his black, beaten-up leather jacket and worn black jeans at odds with the gold and velvet furnishings all around us. He had his motorcycle helmet in his tattooed hand, and his dark hair fell over his dangerously magnetic eyes. I couldn't look away. He had trouble written all over him, and it was delicious.

Clearly, I wasn't the only one who thought so.

"My, my, honey, you do have good taste," Mom muttered to me before stepping forward to greet her guest.

"Mr. Martino, how nice of you to join us. I'm so glad my secretary got through to you." Mom smiled, pouring elegant grace like honey over the scene.

Asher looked at me. "She said it was an emergency." His gaze traced me from head to toe.

I belatedly realized I was wearing a new tennis outfit Mom had wanted me to try. The super-short white pleated skirt should really have shorts underneath, and the fitted top hadn't worked with a bra, so I'd taken it off. That fact was obvious, if the way Asher's eyes briefly zeroed in on my nipples was any indication.

"Well, it is an emergency! I hear you're having dinner with Charles this week, and I'll bet you wanted something new to wear, to make a good first impression. Not only that, but my favorite colorist has managed to slip me in, and I can't leave Winter shopping alone. So, emergency…" She pointed to Asher. "…solution. Two birds with one stone. I'm Angela, Winter's mother, as I'm sure you could surmise."

Asher extended a hand to my mother. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. DeLaurie, I'm Asher."

"Oh, dear boy, I know that. Like anyone else in this room could be mistaken for you," Mom tittered. How much champagne had she had?

I nudged her subtly. "Mom, when's your appointment? Do you need to get going?"

She glanced at her watch. "I have time to see Asher in a suit first. I took the liberty of picking one out for you, if you'd indulge me." She smiled hopefully at Asher.

I could read the bemusement coming off him in waves. He hadn't been prepared for this, and to be fair, who would be?

My mother clapped her hands together. "Silly me, you haven't even greeted each other yet…go ahead, I know how young love is." She half turned and flapped a hand between us.

Asher's mouth twisted in a smirk, and he approached me.

"So, your mother's insane," he murmured, and leaned down to press a chaste kiss to my cheek, for my mother's benefit, clearly; she was definitely watching us.

"When you're rich, it's called eccentric," I murmured back and patted his arm lamely in greeting.

"Sure. I'm going to leave. Shopping isn't my thing," he said quietly.

Mom turned around and directed the sales assistants to get the suit she'd picked out earlier.

I gripped his arm desperately. "No. Don't leave. Please…I never get to see her like this," I said in a rush.

Asher narrowed his eyes. "I never signed up for a makeover or being paraded around for your mother's inspection. I'm not a rebel Ken doll to fix up."

"She never said you were. She wants to do something nice. She thinks you actually care about my dad liking you…please," I murmured, beseeching him with my eyes.

He stared down at me for a long moment and then sighed, and I knew I'd won.

"Fine, get those Puss in Boots eyes away from me. I'll try one outfit," he warned.

The relief loosened the breath I was holding.

"Sure. Just the one." I grinned at him. "Don't forget…you're my boyfriend now," I reminded him in a whisper.

He sighed, but there was a smirk playing around his lips. "Like I could forget it. Fine, I'll let your mom dress me up…but I want something in return."

The dark, hot look in his eyes made me weak in the knees. "What?"

"I'll tell you…when we're alone."

I couldn't wait.