Chapter 43
Carly
Sketchbooks go into the tote first. The black one with the elastic strap, the blue one with the coffee stain on the back cover, the small spiral-bound one I bought at the campus bookstore and used only for sneaker concepts.
My laptop slides into its sleeve. Charger.
Portfolio folder. A change of clothes because if the interview goes well, I might stay overnight in Colorado Springs to look at apartments.
Apartments.
The thought moves through me like icy water.
I close the trunk of my car and stand there with my hand still pressed to the metal, staring at my warped reflection in the rear windshield.
My hair is curled. My makeup is mostly perfect.
My blazer is the good one, the one that makes me look competent and polished and not at all like I spent last night lying awake on Zoe’s couch, trying to decide whether I needed to worry about how heartbreak can actually cause organ failure.
If this goes well, I could be gone in a week.
A week.
It’s a little terrifying, but underneath that, there’s something almost like relief. A fresh city, a new job, streets that don’t have memories waiting at every red light, grocery stores where I won’t accidentally run into him or his maid.
It’s sad. But it’s refreshing.
I slip my keys from my bag and pull open the driver’s side door, but Zoe’s apartment door bangs open before I can sit down.
“Carly!”
I turn just in time to see Zoe practically fling herself down the steps in her slippers, and I'm suspicious before she even reaches me.
“No,” I say.
She stops short. “I didn’t even say anything.”
“You have the face.”
“What face?”
“The face that says you're about to tell me not to go.”
Her mouth opens, then closes, like she knows I'm right. “I need you to come with me to the brewery.”
My eyes go wide. “No. Not a chance in hell.”
“Carly—”
“Nope.” I slip down into the driver's seat. “Absolutely not. I know what this is.”
“Cole and Dana and Maddox are there,” she rushes out, following me when I open the door. “No one else. I promise. They still care about you, Carly. They want to wish you good luck before you go.”
My hand freezes on the wheel.
I stare at the dashboard. The sensible thing would be to shut the door and leave Boulder before this city can put another hook in me. The interview is at two. I have time, but not endless time.
“I just want to leave,” I say, and I hate how small it sounds.
Zoe’s face softens. “I know.”
“Then let me.”
“I will,” she says. “After this. Just ten minutes. They’re your friends too.”
My throat tightens. I close my eyes, taking a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. “Ten minutes,” I say.
Zoe exhales in relief. “Ten minutes.”
* * *
The brewery parking lot is almost empty when we pull in.
Pearson Beers doesn’t technically open until later, and the whole place looks strange in daylight without the low roar of conversation spilling through the doors, without laughter and music and the clink of glasses.
The building sits quiet and still, all brick and dark windows.
There are three other cars in the parking lot, and blessedly, none of them are Grayson’s Aston Martin.
Inside, the brewery smells faintly like wood polish, hops, and floor cleaner mixed with beer. The tables are empty. The chairs are tucked in. The bar lights are on low, enough to make the bottles gleam on the shelves but not enough to chase the shadows from the corners.
And suspiciously, there is no Cole, no Dana, no Maddox.
Not a soul.
I stop just inside the door. “Zoe.”
“Huh,” she says, and I can hear the act in her voice now. She’s never been a very good liar. “That’s weird.”
I slowly step in, watching her as she keeps walking.
She avoids looking at me entirely, wandering forward. “Maybe they’re in the back.”
“I’m leaving.”
“No, wait—just—let me check.”
“Zoe.”
“I’ll look for everyone.” She backs away toward the swinging door behind the bar. “Since it’s midday and they’re not technically open yet, maybe they’re doing brewery things. Maybe there’s a, uh, yeast crisis? I don’t know.”
“Zoe.”
“Love you!” she chirps, then disappears into the back, the door swinging shut behind her.
I stand in the middle of the empty brewery with my keys still clutched in my fist, tempted to just walk back out, my heart beating too hard. Not a single part of me trusts this.
For one blissful second, nothing happens.
But then I hear footsteps. Not from the direction Zoe went, but from my left, down a short hallway marked Employees Only.
My suspicions are immediately confirmed.
Grayson steps into the open and stops a few feet away, and every thought I have goes clean out of my head.
His eyes are still tired, and there’s a tension around his mouth that makes my chest ache, but he’s shaved, dressed nicely, standing straight with color in his face and determination in the line of his shoulders.
I take the smallest step back.
“I know you have an interview,” he says slowly.
My fingers tighten around my keys. “Gray—”
“I’m not here to stop you from going.”
That shuts me up.
He takes a breath, his eyes fixed on mine. “I’m here because I should have gone after you the other day.”
My mind goes quiet for once.
“I should have gone after you the moment I calmed down after the wedding. I should have gone after you when you left the cafe. I should have shown up at Zoe’s door two nights ago and kept apologizing until my voice gave out.”
My throat tightens.
“But I… I froze,” he says. “And I told myself I was respecting what you asked for, but the truth is, I was scared of making it worse. I was scared of pushing too hard. I was scared of doing the wrong thing, so I locked up and did nothing. And I know doing nothing was the wrong thing.”
My eyes burn, and my hand loosens around my keys just a little.
“I’m so sorry, Carly,” he says. “Again. And I’m going to keep saying it, not because I think the words fix anything, but because you deserve to hear it as many times as it takes for you to know I understand what I broke and I never want to do that again, even if you don’t want to be with me.”
A choked little noise escapes me, and I swallow, trying to calm it. I don’t know if he’s here because he chose to be or because the rest of them made him, and my brain can’t stop turning that question over, hoping more than I should.
“I have fought for everything I’ve ever wanted,” he continues. “Every contract. Every win. Every minute with my daughter. Every stable piece of the life I built for her. I fought for my company, my reputation, my future.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple moving.
“I don’t know exactly how to fight for you. But I’m trying,” he rasps, taking a step toward me. I don’t move. “I love you, Carly. I do, and I swear to god, I will keep trying until you won’t let me anymore.”
I choke a little at the words laid out so easily. They’re not implied or hidden or buried under soft sex or a gentle touch or a look across his dinner table. He said it. Out loud.
“I love you,” he says again, and this time his voice breaks around it. “I love you so much it scares the hell out of me, but I’m done letting fear make decisions for me.”
My vision fully blurs, his shape turning into a smudge, and I blink hard to clear it.
“Penelope loves you too,” he says. “She misses you. She asked me yesterday morning if I loved you, and when I said yes, she told me I had to try more, then.”
A broken little laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. He told Pen.
“So this is me trying more,” he says. “No one made me come here. Cole helped because I asked him to. Zoe lied to your face because she loves you but she is terrible under pressure.”
I hiccup a wet, broken laugh.
“And Penelope may have given me some strategy,” he adds, his lips pulling into a soft little grin. “But this is me. I chose this. I am choosing you.”
He takes another step closer, closing the distance little by little, slow enough that I have every chance to move away. I don’t.
“I know I hurt you,” he rasps, stopping in front of me.
“I know loving you doesn’t erase that. I know an apology doesn’t magically repair trust, and I’m not asking you to pretend it does.
I will work on myself. I will talk to someone if that’s what I need to do.
I will learn how to never punish you again for wounds you didn’t give me, and I will happily spend the rest of my life proving to you that what happened will never happen again. ”
A tear slides down my cheek, and I wipe it with the back of my hand, confusion swirling in my mind. “The rest of your—?”
“I don’t want you because I’m lonely,” he continues, barreling through, his voice tightening.
I notice, then, that his hand is shaking before he buries it into his pocket.
“I don’t want you because you’re good with Pen or because you made my house easier or because you fit into my life.
I want you because you changed it. You changed me.
And, god, I don’t want to go back to who I was before you. ”
He takes a deep, stuttered breath, his gaze locking on mine and pinning me to the spot.
“I know what I’m doing is insane,” he murmurs.
Two things happen at once. One of them is that Grayson pulls a tiny wooden box from the pocket of his slacks and clutches it in his trembling hand.
The other is that he lowers himself to one knee in front of me.
For a second, my brain refuses to understand what my eyes are seeing, but then the lid opens, and I forget how to breathe entirely.
“Oh my god,” I croak, but the words come out shredded, barely more than air.
Inside is a ring.
A ring.
Not an apology gift, not flowers, not some pretty thing meant to make it up to me before I drive two hours south and pretend my heart isn’t still in Boulder.
A ring.