Chapter 21 #2
“I did cheat, but Brynn was the only one. I promise.” Debatable, but Sydney waited for him to continue.
“I was trying to break it off with her, but The Devereux Group was gearing up to do business with Stan. So when you broke up with me and I admitted to my dad what had happened, he told me that I needed to see things with Brynn through. That this was an opportunity to secure our family’s future.
I’d just lost you, and I wasn’t thinking straight.
” He ran a hand through his hair, and it seemed like he was almost talking to himself when he said, “This whole thing has gotten so out of control. I never wanted this.”
Sydney didn’t think she’d had any more disgust left, but she found some deep inside of her, and it welled up at the thought of what a terrible person Tripp Devereux truly was.
But Reese and Grant had been raised in the same home, and they couldn’t be more different.
For any sympathy she felt toward Grant at living his life under his father’s thumb, it was a decision he’d made, ultimately, and, worse than that, he’d been willing to leave as much collateral damage in his wake as necessary all to stay on Tripp’s good side.
For what? A job? A flimsy at best legacy?
He truly was his father’s son.
“Say the word, and the wedding is off. It’s always been you, Sydney. Do you know how hard it’s been this summer, watching you with Reese?” he lamented, genuine pain in his voice.
“Grant, that’s?—”
“We can move to Stoneport now. Start a family. Our plan doesn’t need to change. We got together too young, and I made a mistake. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you. How good we were together.”
“I only ever thought our relationship was good because you showed me the side of yourself that you wanted me to see,” Sydney bit back, losing her patience at his mawkishness.
She started to stand up, but Grant’s hand captured her own. “Sydney, please. I’m begging you; we can make this work. I will do everything in my power to make this work. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’d be an idiot to let you get away.”
She hated how his hand felt, holding on to hers, her body revolting at everything about him. His cologne, the same one he’d always worn. His too-soft fingers, which had never known a day of real work. And his eyes, pleading with her but only seeing what he wanted to see in them.
It was the realization that she was nothing more than a prop to him that settled deep in her bones; she didn’t think he had it in him to be the type of person who understood what it meant to truly love someone else.
The compromise.
The trust.
The want to truly exist as a team, whatever that brought .
The way she loved Reese .
Despite the love flowing through her body at the thought of Reese, her face painted a different picture as she looked at Grant. She could feel her features morph with disdain as she pulled her hand away.
“Don’t touch me,” she said and was grateful that he immediately let go. She took a step back. “I’m already gone, Grant. You just need to accept it.”
She left the lobby before he could follow, her phone already out to call Reese.
Sydney awoke to knocking on her door, the sky still enveloped in darkness.
She’d managed to fall asleep a few hours ago.
After she’d called Reese and told her everything that had happened.
After she’d taken a long, hot shower before falling into bed, intent on washing any traces of Grant and their conversation from her mind and her body.
It took her a few seconds to orient herself in the darkness, and she rubbed at her tired eyes, but once she heard the light knock again, she padded over to the door, willing away her apprehension.
Her conversation with Grant didn’t feel real, and if she’d woken up a few hours from now, you could have probably convinced her that it was all a strange dream.
But it had happened, and she was letting the reality of that settle in her.
Still, she wasn’t going to take any chances. She’d had overzealous fans in the past, though none she’d shared quite as personal of a relationship with. Unfortunately, that meant that she knew the rigamarole when there was the threat of fanaticism.
Her last point of order before falling asleep had been to call the front desk and give them Grant’s description, asking that he be removed from the premises if he hadn’t left already .
But when she stared through the peephole, her body instantly felt lighter. Reese’s gorgeous face came into view through the fisheye lens the peephole created.
“You’re here,” Sydney said, the words rushing out of her in hushed surprise at the same time she threw open the door.
Reese was in her arms immediately, enveloping Sydney’s senses. She breathed in Reese’s scent, clean and floral, and all the anxiousness inside of her steadied.
“I’m only a few hours early.” Reese stepped out of the hug but held Sydney’s hand, which allowed Reese to pick up her weekend bag and usher them both inside. “I wanted to let you get some sleep. I know you have a big day today.”
“You trump sleep, every time,” Sydney said as she waited for Reese to put her bag down.
Reese looked like a dream in a soft, oversize button-down and a pair of tapered, navy-colored slacks.
Sydney couldn’t get enough as she took her in.
The way Reese’s full lips pillowed so delicately, pressed together.
Even her worried brow made Sydney feel warm, knowing that it was concern about her causing the furrow.
“Are you okay?” Reese asked, taking Sydney in her arms. “I’m so, so sorry that Grant showed up here.”
Sydney’s stomach shifted uncomfortably at his name. “It’s not your fault. I was a little shocked, too, but it was a conversation that was long overdue, I guess.”
They’d gone over the high-level details on the phone. Sydney hadn’t wanted there to be any confusion or miscommunication as to why she’d entertained the conversation with him, and there was no world in which she wasn’t going to call Reese and tell her everything.
“He’s such an ass,” Reese said, which was a phrase Sydney had already heard at least a dozen times on the phone earlier tonight.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Sydney leaned forward and brushed a soft kiss across Reese’s lips. “But I don’t need to give any more of my energy to him, unless there’s anything you want to discuss.”
She shook the sleep from her mind when Reese stood up a little straighter. Sydney immediately missed the softness from moments ago.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, leaning back so she could look Reese in the eye.
“I was thinking on the way here… about Grant showing up, now.”
“A last-ditch effort before he marries Brynn?” Sydney responded, her own words causing the uncomfortable churn that now bubbled up in her stomach whenever Grant was involved.
But if being forced to deal with him for the next fifty years was the cost of keeping Reese in her life, it was a price worth paying.
“I just wonder if Grant would have made the same decision, if the deal with Stan’s company hadn’t gotten pushed back. Maybe indefinitely shelved.”
Sydney considered the idea. Grant had been childish to a fault this summer, but he’d never once publicly commented that he didn’t want to go through with the wedding. “Have you talked to Stan any further?”
The week had been hellishly busy, so tonight had been the longest she and Reese had had to talk on the phone.
“We met twice this week. Once for lunch again, and once at his office in Boston,” Reese said, rolling her shoulders uncomfortably, though Sydney was well aware of those two meetings. Reese had texted her about them, even if they hadn’t fully debriefed on the details.
Still, Sydney didn’t understand her distress.
She ran hands she hoped were soothing down Reese’s forearms, could feel the goose bumps pebbling on Reese’s skin.
“That’s good, right? He’s serious about doing business with you.
Expanding your footprint. And judging by how your dad and Grant have been running things, there may be some inventory coming on the market soon,” Sydney joked, even though it was very possibly the truth.
Truly, Sydney was thrilled for Reese. She’d seemed so alive the past few weeks, thinking about what an expansion could mean, running ideas by Sydney, and picking her brain endlessly on hotels.
What Sydney liked about them. What she disliked about them. What made her want to go back to a place again.
Sydney had laughed one night when, in their bedroom, Reese had stopped pacing at the foot of the bed before squaring Sydney with a look of pure decisiveness, a look that Sydney thought could command a stadium.
She’d been entirely turned on by how in control Reese seemed when she made a decision within a world where she excelled. Her excitement had been infectious.
“Privacy and predictability. That’s what you care about. I’m talking to a literal celebrity about their hotel experience.” And then, she’d lightly thwacked her palm on her forehead before adding, “I need to talk to Hallie about this. Maybe ask guests for some feedback.”
Sydney had watched Reese run over to the desk near the door and pick up her notebook, furiously scribbling in it before Sydney had lulled Reese into bed, notepad still in hand, so that they could at least cuddle while her girlfriend plotted her plans for world domination.
In the here and now, with Reese looking surprisingly forlorn during what should be a happy reunion, Sydney led her over to the bed. “What’s got you upset?”
“I know this isn’t about me, but once I accept what a not-great guy my father is, he goes and does something else to blow his previous poor behavior out of the water.”
Sydney was dealing with accepting the lengths that Grant would go through to obfuscate his selfishness, but she knew that it was something different to accept that your parent could do those things.