22. Now
TWENTY-TWO
now
I know it’s wrong.
I know that.
But after four mornings of his stupid billboard slapping me in the face, I can’t stand it anymore.
I convince myself that I need to see Stryker & Sons’ headquarters—if anything, I argue internally, it will give me a sense of what to expect from their new addition to my neighborhood.
My phone doesn’t help. The Maps app informs me that the walk is much shorter than I imagined, meaning I have time to make my ill-advised journey and still catch a taxi to be on time for yoga with Mags.
Eight blocks pass in a blur of commuters and cabs—my mind races along with my heart. I shouldn’t do this , it chants. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do this.
But it’s too late.
It’s done.
I’m here.
Stryker & Sons stretches up into the skyline, all steel beams and smoky curved glass.
I imagine he’s probably still inside. His father always worked well into the evening. I also know that it would be a catastrophe if either of them saw me. Not to mention the Other Strykers…
Does that stop me, though?
I ghost in from the crowd teeming on the sidewalk, craning my neck back to admire the edifice looming over me. It’s impressive—a twisted cylinder, stacked up into the skyline… and just familiar enough to make my pulse leap.
Because I’ve seen the building before.
In a notebook, back when it was no more than an errant idea. One of Gray’s doodles, sketched into the margins of some financial accounting assignment he didn’t care about.
I remember the exact moment I first saw it, almost three years before. One of our lazy Sunday mornings in his fashionable loft. He stood at his kitchen island, glaring down at his homework, pouting gorgeously. I wasn’t able to resist drifting over to him, running my hand between his broad, bare shoulder blades, rubbing the tension from the back of his neck while I peered around his bicep.
The page presented a jumble of notes and equations scattered among pencil-gray skyline sketches. My gaze followed the lines of his imagined vista, snagging on a crude version of the very building that now stands before me.
“That one,” I’d murmured, hugging his waist with one arm while my free hand traced the cylindrical spire. “That’s my favorite.”
Gray had given me a bemused, guarded look. “That one, huh?” He considered the doodle, frowning some more before he dismissed his work as he always did, “No. It’s too… standard. Doesn’t stand out enough.”
I used to hate hearing him critique himself. With all his breeding and refinement, I once assumed he was simply a critical person, but I’d learned the only person he ever truly disapproved of was himself.
Brushing my fingers over his jaw, I’d offered him a soft kiss. “Looks perfect to me,” I told him easily. “Besides, you’ll think of a way to make it stand out. Maybe a garden or something.”
He finally cracked a smile then. One of his wry, rueful grins. “A garden in Midtown,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head while his eyes ran back over the doodle, gears spinning. “Huh.”
And here it is.
Just yards from the building’s automated doors, a concrete park adorns the grounds. Singular and unexpected, the oval patch mirrors the cylindrical shape of Stryker & Son’s tower. All statues, with life-size bonsai trees and modern topiary shapes, it’s essentially a Japanese landscape dipped in smooth gray stone.
I recognize Grayson’s unique genius immediately. It’s his take on my idea. Something to set their skyscraper apart from the masses. Something beautiful and creative but still understated. Like him.
I sink onto one of the floating slate benches tucked into the rock-trees, feeling a strange burst of pride.
He did it. He took the job at his father’s company and made it his own. He found a way to use his talent without letting his family down. I always knew he could.
My hand traces the edge of the nearest bonsai statue. Cool stone sends a shiver up my arm while tears build inside my chest.
Somehow, I feels like it’s… ours. His brilliance, my reassurance .
We did it .
The pressure inside me breaks on a sob as I cover my face in my hands. I try to breathe through the memories, hoping anyone who walks by would assume I’m some random secretary who got fired and keep walking.
“No, I can’t do drinks tonight, but I can do breakfast next week.”
I could pick the voice out of a line-up of hundreds. It’s murmured the sweetest words into my ear, given me wicked commands, woken me, along with kisses, in the mornings. It sails through the other side of the paved garden, heading for the street. I crack my fingers over my streaming eyes, peeking out just in time to catch Grayson clip toward a white Mercedes idling at the curb.
The air in my lungs evaporates.
Holy Lord .
If Grayson Stryker was a god three years before, I don’t even have a word for him now. Women turn their heads, mouths hanging open, as he strides past. His fitted blue suit and white tie make my jaw drop, too.
For a long moment, I stare, re-memorizing the sharp lines of his face, the straight slope of his nose, the way his dark hair catches the twilight. White-hot longing pierces my middle. For one insane second, I wish he would look at me, just to get a glimpse of those green eyes one more time.
In a flash, I realize the real reason I came—I needed to see him , not the building. I needed to know, once and for all if I would always want him more than I wanted anything else on the planet.
If I would truly have to carry that yearning in my heart forever.
At least now, I have my answer.