CHAPTER THREE
Grayson
The only thing worse than a vacation coming to an end was walking into the office the morning after you returned from the trip.
That was exactly what I was doing this fine, brisk Monday, wishing more than anything that I were still cruising the beautiful waters outside Saint-Tropez, that I were still hanging with my buddies, surrounded by the six gorgeous women and endless amounts of scotch and cigars.
There was certainly nothing warm or inviting or even gorgeous about the elevator in our building, where I was resting against the back wall, gripping the handle with both hands as it lifted me to the executive-level floor. I could only imagine the pile of papers waiting on my desk, along with an inbox that had thousands of emails needing a reply.
Aside from looking at the membership numbers, I’d done nothing while I was away. I hadn’t responded to any messages. I hadn’t even checked in with my partners.
I assumed that would earn me a lashing, especially given that these dudes were my best friends, but I had needed to unplug. I’d needed to focus on anything other than work, and conversations with them would have brought me right back to the place I was trying to avoid.
We all deserved a break after the most taxing period of our careers.
Mine just happened to come with zero communication.
The dreaded ding sounded through the elevator, signaling that I’d arrived, and I released the handlebar and stepped out, immediately catching eyes with our assistant, who was perched behind her desk.
“Welcome back, Grayson.”
I nodded and mentally prepped myself for the walk down the hallway, knowing I had to pass Drake’s and Easton’s doors on the way to mine. I hoped to hell they weren’t in yet, so I could go unseen and hurry to my office, where I’d lock myself in.
I was just about to step toward Easton’s doorway when I heard, “Grayson?”
Did the motherfucker have a tracker hidden somewhere on me?
How would he know I was even here?
I stopped in the center of his doorframe and looked inside his office. Both of his arms rested on his desk, his face pointed down as if the weight of his head were too much to hold up. The gel was gone from his hair, his clothes wrinkled and disheveled, like he’d slept in them.
Or he’d been in the same position since yesterday.
Or the day before.
Fuck.
“Hey, bud.” I swallowed, readying myself for the attack. “You’re looking good this morning.”
“I should fucking whip you.” He stood from his desk and joined me. “Conference room. Now. Follow me.”
I chuckled but didn’t move. “You’re bullshitting me, right?” When he didn’t respond, I added, “But I just got in. I haven’t even been to my office yet—”
“You’ll go to your office after. The team needs to talk to you first.”
“Does that mean I don’t have time to grab coffee?”
“That’s precisely what it means.” He sighed. “If you weren’t my best friend, I’d fucking despise you right now. Let’s go.”
I stayed in step with Easton as we rounded the corner, past Drake’s office, mine, and then Holden’s—all empty, which told me everyone was in the conference room already. “I get the feeling I’m grounded.”
Easton laughed, but I could tell he wasn’t finding me funny. “You deserve to get fired.”
I winced. The air I sucked in was loud enough for him to hear.
“Do you know how many texts I sent you—”
“I shut off my phone.” That was partially true. There were periods when I’d powered it down and moments when I’d had it on. The latter was unfortunately the majority.
“Was your phone off when you posted a picture of the yacht on Instagram? Or how about the video of you Jet Skiing? Or the most recent one of you sitting on the couch of Hooked’s private plane during your journey home? Or are you going to tell me you hired a social media team while you were away and that wasn’t you posting, it was your publicist?”
I halted.
As soon as Easton realized I was no longer walking, he stopped and faced me.
“I get it.” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans, unsure what to do with them. “I’d be pissed at me if the roles were reversed. But there’s a reason I didn’t respond and it’s not a personal one.”
Easton crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
I didn’t know if it was anger or disappointment, but something was coming off his stare and hitting my goddamn chest like the pounding of a hammer.
“If I told you how hot the chicks were and all about the incredible food I was eating and the fun I was having, the conversation would have circled back to work.” I shook my head, wishing the strands were wet and dripping from the Mediterranean Sea. “I needed a fucking break, man. I’d reached my limit. So I went off the grid, minus the posts on Instagram.”
“You’re fucking unbelievable.” His stare narrowed. “If your silence was the only thing I was pissed about, I’d be getting over this quickly, but you created a hell of a shitstorm while you were gone, and Drake and I have been cleaning up the disaster you created. Hell, Holden even flew home early from Disney to help us.”
My heart began to speed up as I processed his words. “A ... shitstorm?”
His lips turned thin as he pulled them inward and roared, “Like I said, follow me.”
I caught up to him, and within a few paces, we were heading into the conference room, where the entire executive team waited—Holden, Drake, our head of HR, our in-house counsel, and the head of finance.
All staring at me.
Their expressions aloof, but their postures stiff.
Bothered.
Ready for battle.
And as I looked at each one, I realized there was a face I didn’t recognize. She sat at the head of the table, wearing a starched olive-colored suit with red glasses, her hair so stiff, it wouldn’t move even in a windstorm.
“Grayson, meet Laura Day,” Easton said once I found an empty seat. “She’s our PR crisis manager.”
I nodded at her and said, “Since when do we employ a PR crisis manager?”
“Since this.” Holden held up a piece of paper. The words on the page were too small and too far away for me to see. “I’m sure you’ve read the article by now, so you know exactly what we’re facing.”
I took a seat, dropping my bag next to me, linking my hands on top of the table. “What article?”
“What article?” Holden mocked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“If you don’t mind, Holden, I would like to take over from here,” Laura said. Her voice was as crisp and firm as her appearance. With Holden’s approval, she started, “Your partners decided to hire me after two very serious and very alarming scenarios occurred while you were in Saint-Tropez.”
“Alarming?” I repeated, eyeing the woman, who I believed was the queen of exaggeration. “I was on a yacht. In Europe. What the hell could have happened? I was off the grid—”
“This happened,” Easton said. He was holding a remote, and within a few seconds, the TV began to play a video.
One that I hadn’t seen, but I remembered the moment quite fondly. It was when I’d just finished chatting with Freddy and was standing on the top deck with a scotch and a cigar, toasting to bachelorhood.
“I didn’t post that,” I told the group once the video cut off and the room turned silent. “I don’t know who did. It wasn’t any of the women. They weren’t allowed to have their phones on the boat and they all signed NDAs.”
“We know you didn’t post it. Whether it was one of the women or not, it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t change the outcome,” Laura said. “What matters is that someone took that footage and sent it to Celebrity Alert, and that video you just saw and some pictures of you were released to their entire subscriber list, along with an adjoining article that appeared on their app and website, having the potential to reach”—she glanced down at the tablet in front of her—“over eighty-five million people.”
I couldn’t fucking believe what I was hearing.
Who would have the balls to take that footage and send it in?
Why would Celebrity Alert—a site that focused on actual celebrities—give two fucks about me?
“What was the article even about?” I asked her. “And why would anyone care what the hell I was doing? And that I was toasting to bachelorhood on a yacht—”
“The reason they care, Grayson, is because you’re now the cofounder of the largest dating app in the world and the inventor of the marriage arm—something you adamantly dismissed and basically dissed in your toast.” Holden’s voice wasn’t raised, but I could see the steam coming off the top of his head. “This international launch has made Hooked one of the top twenty-five tech companies in the world.” He leaned forward in his chair. “In. The. World.” He repeated and enunciated each word as though I hadn’t heard him previously. “That means all eyes are on us.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question.” I looked at each of their faces, hoping I would get something, anything, that would clue me in as to why they were currently holding a meeting about me. What I did in my personal time—whether it went on the internet or not—was my fucking business. “Why do my extracurricular activities interest them?”
Laura held up her hand, claiming the stage, and said, “What the video and pictures don’t show are any other male companions who joined you on the yacht. Your partners have informed me that there were three other gentlemen with you on the trip. But what this alert insinuates and what the article emphasizes is that you were alone with six women.”
I laughed.
The editing that had been done to that footage and the conversation we were currently having and the looks I was getting from the people around this table were fucking hilarious. “You all know I was there with Freddy and Royston and—”
“It makes no difference what we know,” Holden said, cutting me off for the umpteenth time. “It matters what they know. They being the entire world. And what they see is you on a yacht having an orgy with six women.”
Maybe I should have read some of the texts that Holden and Easton had sent over the last week.
Maybe I should have returned their calls.
Nah, fuck that, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
This was absurd—on every level.
“So ...” I exhaled. “What’s the big deal? Maybe I was having an orgy.” I smiled to make their blood boil just a tad bit more. “Maybe I didn’t touch any of them. But what I do in my spare time has nothing to do with Hooked.”
“Except it does,” Easton barked back, the tips of his fingers white as he squeezed his hands together. “When you’re the CMO of a top twenty-five tech firm that invented a dating app and, ironically, the division you founded was the marriage arm, what you do in your spare time reflects directly onto Hooked.” He glanced at Drake and then Holden before he fixed his stare on me. “While you were out gallivanting in France with half a dozen women, shit was exploding here. There are ramifications to your actions, and the quicker you realize and acknowledge that, the quicker we’ll be on the other side of this.”
I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done. I hadn’t done a fucking thing wrong.
I was sorry that my best friends were here, while I was in France, and they had to clean up my so-called mess.
That wasn’t fair to them.
But to understand how deep this went, what my actions had caused, I needed to know more.
I looked at Laura, the ringleader, who seemed to have all the data. “And what are those ramifications, exactly?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” she responded. “First, I need to address the other part of this PR crisis.”
My eyebrows shot up. “There’s more?”
“A lot more,” Holden said. “There’s also this.” Still holding the paper, he pushed it toward me. “The day after your little bachelorhood toast aired, this article was published in the Boston College newspaper. A paper that’s distributed to students and faculty and available on their website. We’ll continue after you’ve finished reading it.”
It didn’t matter whether I wanted to read it; he wasn’t giving me a choice.
Hooked for Life or Marketing Ploy?
If you’ve been online in the last twenty-four hours, then there’s a very good chance you saw the toast Grayson Tanner, Boston’s Biggest Bachelor and cofounder of Hooked, gave aboard the megayacht he’s currently on. One can assume Tanner, 30, rented the yacht for the week, which comes—to my estimate—at a whopping price tag of $100,000 minimum. In the video, he’s holding a tumbler, filled with an amber-colored liquid—if I had to guess, it’s the Macallan 1962, which sold for $1.9 million at auction—along with a cigar—possibly a King of Denmark that goes for over $4,000 apiece. Why am I listing the possible price tags? Because given the timeline of events, I can assume this was the way Tanner chose to celebrate the international launch of Hooked, the company he started with Easton Jones and Holden Hayes while in their last year of graduate school at Harvard.
If you’re not in the dating scene or you don’t use technology to help aid you in that department, then let me tell you a little about Hooked. Within the last month, since its international launch, Hooked is now considered the top dating app in the world. When a user signs on to the app, there are three divisions to choose from: one that’s just for people looking to hook up, another for marriage, and a third that’s solely dedicated to single parents. According to Hooked’s website, Grayson was the inventor of the marriage division. Isn’t that ironic. For a man who, according to multiple sources, has never been in a relationship and, by the looks of it, isn’t even interested in settling down.
So that brings me to the title of this article.
Tanner represents a brand, specifically the branch of the company that he founded, that promotes relationships, marriage, and monogamy. But any person who has access to the internet can clearly see that Tanner’s promoting a brand he doesn’t use. That Boston’s Biggest Bachelor invented a software that’s intended to match you with your soon-to-be significant other, someone you’re, according to Hooked, statistically compatible to marry, yet he doesn’t utilize it. Dare I say, Tanner doesn’t even believe in it? Instead of practicing what he preaches, he would rather reap the benefits of his false advertising and spend the millions he’s raked in from us—his members—to cruise the waters of France with a plethora of women. Half a dozen, to be exact.
So here lies the ultimate question: If the cofounder of Hooked doesn’t believe in the service he’s selling, is Hooked really a viable option for dating? Can this app fulfill what they’re promising in their branding and messaging? And is it worth the monthly subscription fee Hooked charges, a fee that’s affording one of the owners a vacation that most of us could only dream of? Or is Hooked nothing more than a marketing ploy to make the Hooked owners even richer than they already are?
Hooked users, if you’ve had your membership to the marriage division for more than, say, six months, I think it’s safe to admit you already know the answer to that question. I know what I’ll be doing the moment I submit this article to my editor. Bye-bye, Hooked.
It infuriated me that someone had the balls to write an article off the Celebrity Alert, sharing information that was only partially true, and omitting details that would change the whole direction of their story. Rather than track down the facts, the student, probably a senior, was looking for some notoriety and a job with a local news outlet that might see the story, like the Boston Globe.
Still, the anger pulsed through me.
I ground my teeth together before I said, “It’s a school newspaper. Who gives a fuck about what they print. I’m sure only a handful of people even read it—”
“Seven million people care, apparently,” Easton said. “That’s how many times it’s been shared as of this morning. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of TikToks that have been made in your honor and how Boston’s Biggest Bachelor is now a trending hashtag.”
Seven fucking million?
Goddamn it.
“Who wrote it?” I asked.
“Who wrote it?” Holden mirrored, like the question was ludicrous.
“Yes. Who the hell wrote it.” I hissed. “I want to know the name of the journalist, so when I call the paper and threaten libel—”
“One, you’re not going to do that,” Laura stated. “Whomever the journalist was, we’ll never know since they published the article anonymously. After a little digging and pursuing some contacts, I learned that the name will never be disclosed. It was either a student or a faculty member, but it doesn’t really matter. They have every right to voice their opinion. It’s freedom of speech.”
It did matter because I wanted to rip their fucking face off.
They had every right to share their opinion, if their opinion was only of me, but to bring Hooked into the equation and challenge the integrity of our business, that was where they crossed the line.
I mashed my lips together. “Tell me the ramifications of this, Laura.”
She glanced at her tablet. “The marriage division is down over twenty percent.” She looked up. “And it’s dropping more and more every hour.”
I shoved my hands under the table and squeezed them, my fingers bound like individual padlocks. “What about the other two arms?”
“Single parent is steady, but we suspect a decline to start immediately—today, tomorrow at the latest,” Holden said, the tension obvious in his voice.
Easton pushed back from the table to cross his legs. “The hook-up division has decreased a bit, too, among our longtime US-based users. Those numbers are offset by the new international memberships that are rapidly coming in, but still, the cancellations are happening just as fast.” He blew out a mouthful of air. “And there are a lot of them.”
This business meant everything to the three of us.
It was our dream. Our livelihood. Our future.
When we started this company, we worked out of our apartment, which then led to the top floor of this building, and we’d recently bought the entire high-rise. We employed more than two hundred people. We had plans to keep growing.
The Celebrity Alert, the article in the school newspaper—they didn’t have the power to ruin us.
I wouldn’t let them.
But . . .
“Fuuuck.”I stood from my seat and began to pace the room, passing our head of finance, who hadn’t uttered a single word, and our in-house counsel, who had remained quiet, and Drake, who had also stayed silent. I stopped near our head of finance and asked her, “I understand memberships have dipped, especially in the marriage arm, but are you seeing an overall change in our revenue?” I hesitated, the question burning the back of my throat. “How ugly can things get?”
“If the marriage sector begins to plummet even further and we continue getting this type of press, affecting the other two arms, it’s hard to predict what things will look like in a week. Or even a month.” She glanced down, away from my line of sight. “Stating the obvious, but I can tell you that at least for the marriage arm and quite possibly the hook-up arm, we’re not going to see the growth we hoped for. Not at this rate.”
My hands clenched, my feet pounding the floor as I walked across the room and halted behind Holden’s chair, looking directly at Laura. “How do we stop this?”
“We can’t stop what’s already been done. The accusations are out there, and the rumor mill is worse than a California wildfire.” She leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed. “There isn’t anything people love more than a scandal that contradicts what’s been promised. So all we can do is try to bandage the bleeding.”
I gripped the back of Holden’s chair. “How?”
A smile moved across Laura’s lips. Something I didn’t know she was capable of. “We have to give them another narrative.”
My patience was already nonexistent, and it was running even thinner. “And that is?”
“Whether you realize it or not, you and your partners are the face of Hooked. How you conduct yourself, how you’re seen in public, will matter even more over the next couple of months.”
“You’ve made your point, Laura. The message of this meeting is loud and beyond clear.” I looked around the room, connecting with each set of eyes that stared back at me. “It sounds like you all need to hear me say that I don’t want to lose this company. Life is good. I want to keep things that way.” I wiped my mouth. “You’re telling me the narrative has to change. I’m asking you, How the fuck do I do it?”
The room turned even more silent. It was as if everyone in here had stopped breathing.
Laura shifted her gaze to Holden, to Easton, and then finally back to me. “You need to get married.”
I laughed.
And it came out so fucking hard and loud, I snorted. “I ... what?”
Laura nodded. “You need to show the world that you not only believe in the app and the service it provides, but you’re the result of what the app is capable of.”
I held the chair even tighter. If Holden weren’t sitting in it, there was a chance I would pick it up and throw it across the goddamn room. “Are you joking? Because you have to be. This all has to be one big fucking joke.”
“You don’t have to get married immediately,” she countered. “Whomever the woman is, you need to court her for several months. Have her move into your condo. Be seen with her in public.” She framed her hands around her tablet. “We need to make sure the media knows that Grayson Tanner is off the market because Hooked and its incredible software was able to match you with your soulmate.”
My fucking ears were on fire from her words.
My heart was pounding at a speed I couldn’t control.
Sweat was beginning to pool from every crevice of my body.
“I would say by the four-month mark, you have a wedding,” Laura said. “We’ll drop the photos with several news outlets. We’ll make sure there are shots of you two on your honeymoon. When you return home, we need to see the two of you walking your dog—if you don’t have one, we’ll get you one. A doodle or a Frenchie, something everyone coos over. We need you dining out together. Attending sporting events.” She paused. “You get the point.”
“A fucking doodle?” Heat was filling my face to the point where I had to wipe my brow. And possibly sit down, my feet suddenly no longer feeling steady. “No. No. No. And fuck no to everything.”
“Like I said, we have to change the narrative,” Laura added. “There’s no better way to do that, Grayson, than to prove them all wrong. The world doesn’t believe you’ll ever get married. Let’s show them you’re not only willing to do so, but you’ve found the woman of your dreams. And because of Hooked, you’re in the throes of love.”
“The throes of love?” I snapped. “What the fuck is that?”
This was impossible.
It couldn’t happen.
It wasn’t even an option.
I didn’t do love.
Commitment.
I definitely didn’t do marriage.
The team had to have my back on this. They had to believe there was another way, a different route, a goddamn narrative that had nothing to do with me marrying a total stranger.
Still holding Holden’s chair, I looked at each member of the executive team. “Do you all agree?” My voice was rising. “Do you really believe this is a good idea? Knowing how I am? And my aversion to relationships?”
Each head nodded.
Easton even said, “You fucked things up for Hooked. It makes no difference whether we think this is a good idea or not—it’s decided.”
And Holden contributed, “If I wasn’t so angry and disappointed in you right now, I probably wouldn’t find satisfaction in saying ‘You’re going to become a married man,’ but it feels good to say those words because I’m hopeful it’ll fix everything you’ve done.”
My best friends.
These bastards knew why I felt the way I did, what I’d witnessed, how it had shaped me.
How dare they tell me to go against everything I believed in, to sacrifice my happiness, to do something so preposterous as get married.
I released Holden’s chair and walked toward the middle of the room, my fingers pulsing, my throat tightening, the sweat soaking through the pits of my polo. “I’m not doing it, and fuck you all for thinking I should.”
“But you are doing it, Grayson,” Easton said. “Our company is losing money by the second. It’s your fault. You need to mend what you’ve done, and this is the only way.”
“If I was in the same position,” Holden said, “I’d do whatever needed to be done, even if that was marrying someone I didn’t love.”
My head shook as I stared at the guys who were like brothers to me. “You’ve lost your fucking minds,” I seethed, and I walked out.