“I can’t be the reason someone I love pays for being with me.”
Her mother drew a slow breath and sat forward, fingers laced.
“All right,” she said quietly. “Then let’s stop pretending this is only about the law or the press.”
“You love him,” her mother said, as simply as if she were stating the weather. “Or you’re well on your way. I don’t need a deposition to see it.”
Heat crawled up Eleanor’s neck. “That’s not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
Her mother leaned in a little. “If you love this man, then to hell with what people think and what the media does. You cannot spend the rest of your life running every time someone aims a microphone at you. You cannot give Lila Grant—or any other woman with a podcast—the power to decide whether you get to be happy.
“If you don’t love him,” she went on, “then that’s another matter. End it. Walk away. Do it clean and honest and on your own terms.”
“But if you do love him—and I would bet my best pearls you do—then what you are doing right now isn’t protection. It’s surrender. To strangers. To headlines. To a woman who has made a career out of turning you into a story.”
Her father made a low sound that might have been agreement.
“You have built a good life in Sylva,” her mother said. “You laugh there. You have people who care about you. And that man—Reid—he is head over heels. Anyone with eyes can see it.”
Emotion rose, sharp and unwelcome, in Eleanor’s chest.
“So,” her mother said, “you need to decide whose life this is.”She sat back slightly, giving Eleanor that familiar, infuriating space to think.
“Running saved you once,” her mother finished softly. “That does not mean it has to run the rest of your life.”
Eleanor pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes.
Her father spoke next.
“You do not get to make that choice for him,” he said.
Eleanor lowered her hand slowly. “What?”
He leaned back in his chair, calm and immovable.
“You do not get to decide what risk is acceptable for a grown man who knows his own mind.”
“That is easy to say when it isn’t your career being dragged through online mud.”
His brows lifted. “You think I don’t understand public fallout?”
He almost never invoked his own experience to make a point. The fact that he did now made her go still.
“I understand exactly what it costs,” he said. “And so does he. Men in his position do not wander blindly into consequences. They see them. They decide anyway.”
Her mother’s voice softened.
“You are trying to protect him,” she said. “But part of that is because you are terrified of being hurt again.”
Eleanor looked down at her hands.
“Maybe.”
“No,” her mother said gently. “Definitely.”
That one hurt because it was precise.
