Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
I dumped the crumbs from the boxes into the garbage can, then broke both boxes down and put them in the recycling bin. The cleaning crew would’ve done it in a couple hours, but I’d been feeling antsy ever since Grant had told me he’d be recusing himself.
What would it mean for him? He’d be in trouble—maybe even a lot of it.
Was I worth all of that? What if he realized he’d put his job on the line to date the human version of a spreadsheet?
A few straggler crumbs littered the countertop, and I opened the drawers one by one to find a rag. I paused on the third one, a wide and deep drawer full of various snacks and the Bad Date Recovery Kits Brooke had put together.
I needed the opposite—a Blew-Your-Socks-Off Date Recovery Kit.
Grant and I weren’t even “together,” but to my heart, that fact was just the fine print. It belonged to him as much as it belonged to me.
I shut the drawer and my eyes. I had no idea what was going to happen between Grant and me. It was entirely possible that this hiccup with work could sour him on the idea of us. Even if it didn’t, statistically speaking, any relationship was a ticking time bomb.
I wanted so badly to throw caution to the wind and just enjoy whatever time I might have with him. But the smarter move—the one that would protect me most—was to try to reduce the boiling emotions I had for him to a simmer. That way I could see whether his feelings for me persisted.
He’d said he could be patient, but saying that and actually waiting while I eventually drove him crazy with my overanalyzing and intensity? They were very different things.
Chase had said a lot of sweet things when we’d started dating too.
I grabbed my phone from the counter and tapped the messages app.
Don’t do it, my heart said.
I scrolled down and opened Chase’s text, my heart thumping like I was reading someone’s secret correspondence instead of a message meant for me.
“What is that?”
My head snapped up, and I lowered my phone to my side like I’d been found with my hand in the cookie jar.
Grant watched me from the doorway, looking like a tall glass of water in the Sahara.
“What’s what?” My cheeks betrayed me with a fiery color only a ginger could achieve.
“Vivian,” Grant said, stepping into the break room. “Don’t pretend. Not with me.”
I swallowed but said nothing.
“I don’t know what it is you’re looking at on there, but I do know you get the same expression on your face every time you do.”
I was quiet, my heart still pounding blood straight to my cheeks. How did he see through me so easily?
He came over and stopped in front of me.
We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.
“Tell me,” he pleaded softly.
I didn’t want to. It was too humiliating—not just the message of the text.
It was the fact that I’d kept it all these years and that I looked at it so often.
It was messed up on multiple levels. Grant would look at me differently if he knew I wasn’t the composed businesswoman I pretended to be.
I wasn’t elegant and simple like the tray he’d made, all gold flecks and soft swirls.
I was deeply and thoroughly screwed up. What person created a matchmaking app when she was so terrified of love that she looked at a disaffirmation daily to keep her safe from it?
Maybe that was why I should show the text to Grant, though. It would prove the point I needed him to understand, like Chase had come to understand before him: he didn’t know me well enough yet to know he didn’t want me.
My rough spots hadn’t had time to wear him down, to shape-shift from endearing quirks to things that made you want to tear your hair out.
Men were often intrigued by successful women like me, but when push came to shove, they didn’t actually love the personality traits that had gotten us where we were.
Grant used his finger to brush the stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Show me,” he whispered.
After another moment of hesitation, I lifted my phone from my side and turned on the screen.
My stomach swam, but my mind was determined as I navigated back to the messaging app and scrolled all the way to the bottom—a well-worn road.
I tapped on Chase’s name and swallowed as the stark words glared at me.
You’re so intense.
I’d never shown anyone the text, and the impulse to shut off the screen and keep it that way flooded me.
But another part of me needed someone—anyone—to know this twisted mind game I played with myself.
I handed the phone to Grant.
His gaze stayed on mine as he took it, then his focus shifted to the screen.
I clenched my fingers to stop the impulse to take the phone right back.
To hand over the words that had haunted me for the last two years to the man whose admiration and affection I most craved seemed like insanity.
It was like personally delivering evidence of why he should rethink whatever he felt for me.
But there was no going back now.
His brows slowly bunched together. “Chase. Is that your ex?”
I couldn’t form words, even one as simple as yes, so I just nodded. I was the CEO of a tech app, and Grant was the person I most needed to believe me confident and capable, but my entire body was starting to shake.
“And this is what you’re always looking at?” He still didn’t look at me. Of course he didn’t. He must be disgusted.
“Whenever I need the reminder.”
“What reminder?” His head came up.
It took me a few seconds to answer. I tried for a light tone when I responded. “That I’m too much. Or not enough. I don’t know. That I’m just not built for relationships.”
The corners of his mouth turned down, and he looked at the phone screen again, that bright white banner assuring him that his feelings for me would change, like Chase’s had.
“When I got my first scathing review, I threw up,” he said.
“And then I reread it. Over and over. Probably fifty times. I can still quote some of the lines, all these years later. Grant Wilder is as much a journalist as the person writing a Play-Doh instruction manual.” He smiled wryly, head still lowered so I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Sometimes when I’m writing an article and it’s not coming together like I want, those phrases will pop to the forefront of my brain.
” His head came up, and his eyes rested on me.
“This wasn’t a review from some stranger, Grant. This was someone I was in a relationship with. Someone who once said he loved me.”
He nodded, reaching up a hand to the piece of hair he’d tucked behind my ear.
“I know. I’ve had someone stop loving me too, Vivian.
Getting left behind like that hurts in a way nothing else does.
My point is that it’s painfully easy to believe the people who confirm our worst fears about ourselves. ”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My eyes were full and my lungs in the grip of some emotional vice.
Grant’s hand dropped slowly, returning to my phone. He tapped out of the message, then swiped left on the thread with Chase. The garbage can icon appeared.
He handed the phone to me.
I stared at Chase’s name and the trash icon for what felt like hours. I wanted to delete it. I should delete it.
But my finger hovered. If I put that message in the trash, there’d be nothing tethering me to the caution that had been keeping me safe. There’d be no reminder not to fall. No warning. No safety net.
Chase’s words might be emblazoned on my mind, but memories faded and failed, and with Grant, it had become more obvious than ever how easy it would be to ignore something less solid than this text.
Grant took my face in his hands. “Vivian.”
I raised my gaze to his.
“Don’t let a man who didn’t have the capacity to appreciate one of the best things about you pull you down even a second longer.”
I blinked quickly, struggling to maintain eye contact as salty tears burned and pooled in mine.
Grant leaned in and pressed a light, deliberate kiss to my right cheek.
I shut my eyes and inhaled slowly, focusing on the feel of his lips against my skin and the smell of his cologne.
He pulled back, looked at me for a second, then turned and left.
I let out a rickety breath and stared at the message from Chase again.
It felt different now looking at it. Less stark, like letting Grant see my secret shame had sapped it of its potency.
Maybe it had.
Maybe the type of pain Grant talked about—the kind you felt when someone confirmed your fears—thrived in secret.
My thumb hovered over the trash can icon, and finally, I tapped it.
Just like that, the words were gone. Chase’s memory in my phone was gone.
My phone vibrated, and a banner notifying me of a text message from Grant popped up.
I tapped it.
Grant
You’re so intense.
My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Until I read the next words.
Grant
It’s my favorite thing about you. Never dim your light for anyone.
I gave something between a laugh and a sob and pulled the phone to my chest like maybe I could transfer the message straight to my heart.
Grant’s words burned in my chest like a spark on tinder, glowing, curling, and warming me as I fell asleep. The moment I opened my eyes, my mouth pulled at the corners, and I reached for my phone to reread them.
The first part was the same—you’re so intense—but what came after made all the difference. It was like the rest had always been there, written in invisible ink until Grant had come along and revealed it.
I thought about texting him something. Good morning, maybe. Or I love you.
Whoa. No. There was intensity, and there was wanton recklessness.
I tucked my phone under my pillow and stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes, letting his words fill my body before I got up and showered for work.
It was when I was heading out the door that I spotted the tumbleweed box. It had been sitting there since my date with Grant. I hadn’t tossed it in the garbage, mostly because I’d forgotten about it. It had become a fixture on my entry table.
I opened the box and looked at the brittle, brown object that had once been a plant.
I guess you can water it later.
That was what Grant had said when I’d called it a decrepit baby bush. How exactly did one water dead tumbleweed? It wasn’t like it had stems.
I took it into the kitchen with me, grabbed a Pyrex bowl from one of my lower cupboards, put a couple inches of water in it, and set the brown mass inside.
I felt like an idiot, like someone digging up a grave and doing CPR on the corpse.
I arrived at work early, but a half-dozen employees were already there. A couple of them waved to me as I walked by, and I waved and smiled back.
I sincerely hoped that the same magic Grant possessed that had made me fall in love with him would be in play when he broke the news to Russ—and told Vantive why there would be no article about Matchify.
Maybe not the same magic—I was selfish enough to want that to be just between him and me—but some of his charm, at least. My employees depended on it.
My inbox was quieter than usual, partly because I’d stayed late last night. I frowned at one of the emails notifying me I had a new message in my Matchify inbox.
I navigated to the browser version and opened the message folder.
Tanner’s name was in bold, and I clicked on it.
No hard feelings, right?
I frowned and reread it, then scrolled up in our message history, certain there’d been a message I’d missed. Or had Tanner decided to message me two weeks after our date to make sure I wasn’t mad that Grant had been the central focus of our date?
It was a strange message choice, regardless, and I had no idea what to respond. Did he think I was sulking? Little did he know I’d been playing emotional footsy with his idol for the past few days.
I left his message without a reply and returned to my email inbox, wondering when Grant would come in.
I was on the phone when my door opened and Katie appeared. She noted me on the phone and motioned for me to hang up.
I shot her a look. I wasn’t about to hang up on a CTO. I did, however, wrap up the conversation sooner than I might have, inspired—or maybe concerned—by the nervous energy in Katie’s tapping foot.
“What?” I said with a hint of impatience once I set down the phone.
She walked over to my computer and hip-checked my chair out of the way, sending me rolling to the side so she could have access to my keyboard. She opened a new tab in my browser and typed in an unfamiliar web address.
“Is this another panda video, Katie?” I said. “I love them too, but you made it seem urgent, and—”
She stepped back and pointed to the screen, one hand on her hip. “That. Look at that.”
I glossed over the row of ads at the top of the page and read the headline.
When Chemistry Trumps Compatibility: Matchify CEO’s Low-Score Love Story
My brows drew together, and my heartbeat quickened.
“Scroll,” Katie said.
Obediently, I scrolled down the page and sucked in a breath.
There was a picture of Grant and me in a parking lot, looking cozy.