xoxo... sneak peek! ( @notnatnut )
chapter thirty or thirty one (i started writing this one first, but i feel like i ought to put the rini dinner date first since that’s what everyone’s been waiting for...)
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Elijah had known Valerie to be reliable company. He supposed she'd had to be, but she was also just delicate enough for everyone to admire her the way a young woman in her position should wish to be. And all the ways they shouldn't admire her too.
The pretty blonde heiress he'd watched be escorted by the much taller Quinn Rosen at her debut was everything a crowd would want to watch, because she had only pretty tears in her eyes as she couldn't be greeted by her father like the others were when she finally sat down. She was still smiling. And her makeup didn't budge an inch.
He can't cry like that. Hasn't been taught to be allowed to cry at all, and when he does it certainly doesn't inspire a love that truly just means pity.
They feel sorry for her and he knows she knows it. Elijah also knows some man somewhere is going to be thrilled to have her fortune joined to his one day. She's her father's sole heir and he comes from old money. Her male cousin would take on the management of the larger Campbell family fortune.
All Valerie would ever have to do is be pretty.
Maybe she's the beautiful little fool Daisy hoped her daughter would be in The Great Gatsby.
But no. No Valerie Campbell has had too much grief in her life for that.
After his night with Lily, he needs to remember how much of a person all the people in his life were. How much bigger than him everything was. Bigger than Nina too.
His world was small, in a very real sense. Even when his father took him along on some international business trip, things existed within a very small realm of places and people. The people outside of his circle didn't tend to get very far into his psyche, and while Valerie definitely had status at Chapman Hillside, she didn't work so hard to use and maintain that the way their friend group did. She was friends with them, Elijah's pretty sure he's danced with her a song or two at a few functions before, but she wasn't one of them.
But she wasn't a fool. He could know that much. She'd be allowed to be one, was more his initial thought than that she actually was.
He has to be smart and put together and never anything less than a strong, cunning man who keeps his cool.
