25. Graham
GRAHAM
Ihave given speeches to rooms that could move markets, and I stand on a cracked sidewalk in front of my niece's nanny's brother's building with both hands empty and absolutely nothing prepared, because for once in my life I came without a deck.
She comes down in borrowed slippers and a coat thrown over what's clearly a sleep shirt, and she stops on the bottom step so we're nearly eye to eye, arms crossed, that bracing set to her shoulders I learned to read months ago.
Behind her, up in a lit window, I can see a lanky shape that has to be the brother, openly watching, ready to come down and end me if I say it wrong.
I find I respect that. I'd want someone willing to do that for her.
"You found my brother's place," she says.
"Spencer found it. I drove." I make myself stop reaching for the next clever thing and just say the true one.
"I've been standing here twenty minutes because I wanted to get it right, and then I realized getting it right is the exact instinct that lost you, so I'm going to get it honest instead, which I'm worse at, and you'll have to forgive the quality. "
"Graham —"
"Please let me. I rehearse everything, and I can't rehearse this, and if you stop me I'll reach for the armor and we'll both lose.
" She goes quiet, and I take the breath that costs me.
"When that paper landed in front of me, I wasn't doing the math you thought I was doing.
I swear to you I wasn't pricing you. I was so angry at what Vanessa did — at men crawling through the worst night of your childhood to use it — that the rage took up all the room where the comfort should've been, and I stood there empty, and you read the empty as a verdict because that's the verdict the world's always handed you.
I let you. That's mine. I had one job in that kitchen, which was to say I don't care, come here, and I hesitated, and I will be sorry about that hesitation for the rest of my life. "
"You don't have to —"
"I do, though. Here's the part I need you to hear.
" My voice isn't steady and I let it not be.
"I never asked about your past. Not once.
I told myself it was respect, giving you privacy, but that's a lie I'm done telling.
I didn't ask because asking is intimacy, and intimacy is the one thing that's ever frightened me.
I have stared down hostile takeovers and federal regulators and my own father, and none of it scared me like the idea of knowing you all the way down and being known back, because known people can be left, and I built a whole life so that nothing could ever cost me anything again.
" I take the last step up so there's nothing between us but cold air.
"And then you walked in and made the apartment breathe, and I told myself I could have the warmth without the risk.
There is no version without the risk. I know that now.
I'd rather have you and be terrified than be safe in that vault for the rest of my life. "
She’s not crying, and that silence tells me it’s landing — she goes still and listening, the way Chloe does when something matters.
"So I'm going to say the thing I was too much of a coward to say in the kitchen," I tell her.
"I love you. Not you're good with her. Not the household runs better.
I love you, Taryn Cole, the whole loud freckled stubborn impossible truth of you, and yes, Chloe needs you, she's not eating and she's gone quiet and the penthouse is a tomb without you and all of that is true — but I'm not here because my niece needs a nanny.
I'm here because I want you. For me. Not as staff, not as the fix for a custody case.
As the woman I want across the table for the next forty years, in a chair by the window I'm going to buy whether you come back or not, because I can't look at the old one anymore. "
"You can't just —" Her voice breaks and she presses it back down. "You can't show up at my brother's with a speech and a chair and expect me to —"
"I don't expect anything. That's new for me too.
" A breath. "But you don't get to do the thing you do, either.
You taught me the whole game — show up messy, come in, stop hiding — and then the second it got hard you did the exact thing you bullied me out of.
You ran before the verdict so the verdict couldn't land on you.
You're allowed to be scared, Taryn. You're not allowed to call it my rejection when it was your own hand on the door. "
That lands. I watch it land. Her arms come uncrossed, slow.
"That's a low blow," she says, wet and almost laughing, "using my own material on me."
"You used mine for months. I'm a fast learner everywhere but this, remember.
" I reach out and tuck the curl back, the one that's been undoing me since the bakery, and leave my hand against her cold cheek, and she lets me.
"Here's what I'm done with. I'm done hiding behind appearances.
I'm done managing my own life like a position I'm afraid to lose.
I told my father to take the company if it comes to that.
I told the board to keep your name out of their mouths.
I will stand up in that courtroom and tell a judge that the best decision I've made as Chloe's guardian was the day the agency sent me you, and if it costs me the chair, then I'll be unemployed and warm, and I have honestly never wanted anything less than that chair. "
"Then why are you out here," she says, "instead of in there fighting it. The hearing's in days, Graham. They're saying you're unfit because of me. Walking back in with the scandal on your arm is exactly what Vanessa wants."
“I know what Vanessa wants. I’m not doing this the smart way. I’m doing it the true way, and Spencer can handle the smart.” I force myself to ask instead of maneuver. “Come home. Not for the case. For what we’re building. Tonight, if you’ll let me drive you.”
And here's where she's braver than I am, because she steps back instead of in.
"I want to," she says, and the want in it nearly takes my knees.
"God, I want to. But if I come back tonight, in the heat of all this, then I'm the thing that ran and came crawling, and Chloe learns that's how love goes — out the door in a panic and back in a rush, no floor under it.
I won't teach her that. And I won't be the photo on the courthouse steps that loses you your girl.
" She takes my hand off her face, gently, and holds it instead.
"Win her first. Go be unguarded in that courtroom like you just were on this sidewalk.
And when it's done — however it lands — you come find me, and we do the rest with no judge and no board and no fire to put out.
That's the version I can build a real thing on. "
It's not the answer I drove here for. It's a better one, and I'm only now the kind of man who can tell the difference.
"All right," I say. "But I'm telling you what I told the board, so you've heard it from me before you read it anywhere.
I'm not letting go. I've got you. I had it backward for thirty-eight years and I'm not having it backward anymore.
" I bring her knuckles up the way she once did mine.
"Trust me one more time. Let me show you what I do when I finally choose right. "
"One more time," she says. "Don't waste it, Whitlock."
I go back to the car wanting to look up at the window like a fool, so I do, and Jasper's still there, and he gives me a single grudging nod that I think I'll be working the rest of my life to earn the rest of.