Chapter 2 #2
It makes me hate her more. Not because she was the only person who did something wrong.
Not because Grant was less guilty. He was monumentally guilty.
A whole skyscraper of guilt in an expensive watch.
But Elise’s sorry forces me to acknowledge that what I saw happening was real.
People don’t apologize for misunderstandings while they sit in their boss’s office with their shirts buttoned wrong.
“Halston,” Grant says again. It’s softer this time. He’s negotiating. “Let me explain.”
I look down at the coffee spreading across the floor. One of the cups had landed upside down near his desk. The order sticker faced up.
GRANT— ICED AMERICANO, LIGHT ICE.
I remembered he prefers light ice because he hates when drinks get watered down.
I’ve always known that. I know his preferences well.
Light ice, blue ties for investor meetings, no garlic before dinner with clients, he sleeps on the left side of the bed because he hates being far from the door, he loathes when I leave wet towels on chairs, and he likes my lemon scones but not my vanilla ones because a client pointed out a speck of vanilla bean between his teeth once.
He thinks my laugh is beautiful in private, but far too loud in restaurants.
I know him, and yet somehow, I hadn’t known this.
“There’s nothing to explain,” I say.
Grant inhales. “That’s not fair.”
My head tilts. “Fair?”
Elise flinches, and Grant seems to realize far too late that he chose the wrong word.
He lifts his hands, palms out as men do when they want credit for not being physically threatening while emotionally setting fire to your entire life.
“I didn’t mean—”
“What did you mean?” I ask calmly.
His eyes flicker to Elise, then back to me.
Another move I’m far too familiar with. A calculation.
The awareness that we aren’t alone, and the irritation that the scene includes a witness he can’t control.
The realization that he can’t say exactly what he wants to, so he has to rearrange his words into a less damaging order.
I’ve seen Grant do it many times. In meetings and at dinners and with vendors.
And with me.
“I mean,” he says carefully, “you walked in at a bad moment.”
My lungs forget how to work.
A bad moment. Like this is traffic. Like it’s rain at an outdoor wedding or I overbaked the brownies.
I look at Elise. She looks at the floor.
“A bad moment,” I repeat, tasting the words on my tongue.
Grant’s mouth tightens. “Yes.”
“How long has this moment been happening?”
His face changes, and in that instant, I know.
My stomach drops through the floor, down twenty-two stories, and into the lobby. “How long?” I ask, making him say it.
“Halston, this isn’t the place to have this conversation.”
“Oh,” I nod slowly. “Where is the place? Should I make a reservation? Is there a conference room for fiancé betrayal, or do you usually use your desk?”
Elise starts crying.
Grant, on the other hand, looks angry. It’s always subtle, like it’s simmering just under the surface. Always controlled. Always mature. Sometimes framed as concern. But if you look close enough, you can see the muscle in his jaw jump.
“Don’t be cruel.”
The coldness hits me. I’m not angry. Not yet. I’m just… cold. A clean, white freeze that moves through me, turning everything sharp and bright.
“Cruel,” I repeat again.
He closes his eyes briefly. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do.” My arms feel numb at my sides.
“You’re upset.”
I laugh once, and his expression hardens.
“You’re upset,” he says again, as if I’m the unreasonable person in this room, “and you have every right to be. But escalating this won’t help anything.”
“Escalating.” It’s like I have to really savor every word as he says them, committing them to memory.
“Halston.”
“You had your hand in your secretary’s hair while standing between her legs, but I’m escalating.”
Elise lets out another cry as Grant’s face flushes.
“This was a mistake,” he says.
“A mistake.”
“Yes.”
I nod. “Did you trip?”
His brows furrow. “What?”
“Did you trip and land there?”
“Don’t do this.”
“Was there a wet floor sign missing?”
“Halston.”
“Because from where I’m standing, Grant, it looks like several decisions happened in a row.”
His nostrils flare.
There was a time when the look on his face would have made me back down. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I hated disappointing people. I hated making rooms uncomfortable and I really hated being the reason someone became closed off.
My mom used to say I came into the world wanting applause and stayed because I liked the lighting. She meant it fondly, I think.
Grant used to call me vivid. At first, I thought he meant I was colorful. Full of life.
Later, I learned he meant exhausting.
Now, standing in his beautiful office with coffee soaking into my boots, I realize he was waiting for me to become the version of myself he knew how to handle.
I was emotional, loud, messy, easy to redirect.
But right now he wants tears because tears can be soothed. He wants a scene because a scene can be condemned.
He wants me to give him proof that I’m too much.
So I give him nothing.
I set the pastry box on the edge of his desk. He watches me warily. “What is that?”
“An apology croissant.”
His face flickers.
“For last night,” I say. “When I hurt your feelings by having opinions about my own business.”
His mouth parts, but no words come out.
I smile. It doesn’t feel like my own.
“Seems unnecessary now,” I muse.
“Halston,” his voice is soft again, which I hate more than the anger. “Please. I know this looks bad.”
I chuckle. “It looks accurate to me.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is. We’ve been under so much pressure. The wedding, your shop, my work—”
“My shop?”
He hesitates.
“Oh, please,” I say. “Please tell me how my bakery made your pants fall off. I’d love to hear the mechanics of that.”
Grant looks to where Elise slaps her hand across her mouth before looking back at me, fear in his eyes.
But it’s not fear of losing me. It’s fear of being seen.
He takes a step toward me. “You need to calm down.”
There it is.
The phrase I can hear in my sleep.
“I am calm.”
“You’re not.”
“I promise you, Grant, if I were not calm, you would be wearing that croissant.”
Both of our eyes drop to the pastry box.
For a second, the image almost derails me. Grant Whitaker, future husband, real estate golden boy, son of Baltimore’s most respected food critic, standing in his pretty glass office with almond cream dripping down his perfectly ironed shirt.
The image should have been satisfying.
But I do not waste good pastries on bad men.
I look at Elise. “Did you know we were getting married in October?” We chose it because it wouldn’t be too warm. Grant wanted an outdoor wedding. Somewhere fancy.
Her face crumples. “Yes.”
“Elise,” Grant says, and she flinches at his tone.
I study her. The tremor in her hands. The shame in her eyes. The way she moved behind the desk and kept looking at him as if awaiting instructions.
Some horrible, unwanted part of me understands that Grant has probably made her feel chosen too.
“How long?” I ask again.
“Halston, I don’t think—”
“How. Long.”
He looks at me. Waits ten seconds. “It doesn’t matter.”
Which means it was long enough to matter.
My mind flashes to the late meetings. The dinners he missed and all the times Elise had answered his phone after hours. Every moment I told myself to trust him.
I look down. The diamond on my engagement ring has cream on it. A tiny smear of almond cream from the pastry box sticker.
I stare at it.
And it almost breaks me.
Not Grant or Elise or the desk, but the frosting. I had made something beautiful because I thought that love meant trying harder.
I twist it once, and it slides free.
Grant goes still. “Halston.”
I hold it between my fingers. It looks small off of my hand. Beautiful, but the more I look at it, the more I hate it.
It’s not me.
Grant takes a step forward. “Don’t.”
The words hit me.
“For the first time in this room, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
His face turns white.
I walk past the spilled coffee, past Elise, and the desk where my apology croissant sits. Grant reaches for me, his fingers brushing my wrist.
I stop.
Slowly, I look down at his hand. Then up at him.
He lets go.
I move to the little coffee station in the corner of his office, where he keeps the expensive machine he pretends to not understand so assistants make him drinks. A clean mug sits in the middle of the marble surface. White, monogrammed with a silver W for Whitaker.
I drop the ring inside, closing my eyes as it makes a delicate little sound. It’s final.
“Halston, stop,” Grant says.
I walk over to where his remaining iced Americano sits on the floor. The one that hadn’t exploded. Light ice. No sweetener. Exactly how he liked it.
I pour it into the mug over the ring.
The coffee swallows the diamond, and for a second, I don’t feel anything.
And then it hits so hard I nearly double over.
I set the cup down.
“There,” I say. “Something borrowed.”
Grant’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Maybe because there is nothing polished enough. No phrase for this. No investor-ready explanation. No gentle correction that made him the reasonable one. Just me.
Just the ring at the bottom of his coffee. Just Elise crying silently by the desk, and the croissant I had wasted my morning on.
I turn to leave.
At the door, Grant finds his voice. “You’re being dramatic.”
I pause. The last little knife.
Not sorry, or I love you, or no, don’t go.
But dramatic.
I look back at him.
Maybe I’ll have regrets later. Maybe I should have yelled at him earlier. Maybe I should have cursed him out. Or maybe I should have thrown the pastry after all.
But instead, right now, I smile. Just enough to let him know he has not won the scene he wants.
“No,” I say. “I’m single.”
I walk out.
The reception area is still empty. The elevator ride down lasting approximately nine hundred thousand years.