Chapter 29
Grey
Sabrina Sullivan has fucking audacity .
She has the nerve to smile at me as I take the seat across from her at this horrific singles mixer, which is the last place on earth I want to be right now. But Zen and Mimi conspired against me, and now here I am.
And with fucking Chandler Sullivan sitting just a few tables down too, thinking he has the upper hand again because I didn’t fight against his pricktastic attitude last week.
“Grey! Long time no see.” Sabrina flips a plastic cup off the stack in front of her, fills it with water from the carafe that’s been placed on every table, and pushes it to me. “Drink. You look dehydrated. How’s your grandmother liking town?”
“ You fucking called my grandmother ,” I hiss.
She lifts both brows, copper like her hair, which is curlier tonight. A single strand has fallen out and lays across her breast, a wave catching the light every time she moves and making me want to go complete caveman, shoving across this table and kissing her until she apologizes.
“I know everyone’s grandmother in town,” she says. “Or I did, if they’re not still with us. I just wanted her to know how much the community appreciates that you saved my family from having all of our credit ruined for overdue taxes, no matter what you do next with the building.”
I don’t know what makes me more furious.
That she did it, or that she’s pretending she did it for any reason other than to tattle on a grown fucking man to his grandmother .
When she said she was playing dirty, I didn’t expect her to go this dirty.
Add in that it feels so damn good to have Mimi here that I want to kiss her again to thank her, and I’m a mess.
A complete disaster of complicated feelings.
“Leave. My grandmother. Out of this,” I manage to force out.
She holds up both hands. “Sure. I won’t talk to her anymore. But I make zero promises if she asks me a direct question. Manners and all that.”
I start to feel the lightheadedness take hold, and I remind myself to breathe.
My vision blurs in the corners, but I can still see her taking a sip of her water while she watches me like she knows what she’s doing to my blood pressure.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Water .
Fucking dammit. She was right about the water.
I sip. I breathe. My vision clears.
Are people watching?
Is fucking Chandler watching?
Christ. Fuck . He probably heard. He probably heard what everyone else heard.
Grey Cartwright was so overcome at the sight of his grandmother that he fainted dead away .
Motherfucking fucker, this is not how any of this is supposed to go.
“Leave my grandmother alone,” I repeat to Sabrina, calmer.
Gotta stay calm.
She holds my gaze without blinking, which is the most fucking annoying thing about her. That woman can silently dare you to a staring contest and then win it without getting the slightest twitch in her eyelids.
Is it because she drinks so much coffee?
Or does she have staring contests with herself in the mirror? Is that her third-favorite pastime after drinking coffee and using her toothbrush?
“I know I should regret what I did, but I—” she starts, only to be interrupted by the moderator calling time.
I look at the dude to my right, who seems to think he’s taking my seat. “This one’s mine. Go around.”
“Yeah, Sabrina ,” the dude says. He holds out a hand for a fist bump. “We knew it wouldn’t end with a one-night stand.”
“Jesus effing Darwin on a honeycomb,” I mutter.
She stifles a giggle while she waves the fist bump away. “Oh my god, that was adorable. And quite the mental image.”
I suck in another deep breath and down the rest of my water.
She refills the glass before I can move.
Fuck .
I am not in control here.
“I didn’t call her to talk about you,” she says as everyone else settles around us. “I mean, yes, you came up. Possibly I should say I didn’t call her only to talk about you. You’re the reason I went down the rabbit hole in the first place, but ultimately, it had very little to do with you.”
“Very little to do with me.”
“Correct.”
“She said you told her I almost passed out in my entryway.” I’m keeping my voice as low as I can. I swear there’s not as much noise in here as there was five minutes ago.
Are they watching?
Are they listening?
“She asked how you were doing, I said you were doing great, she asked if you’d had any more of your dizzy spells, and since you’re the only person I tell lies to, I told her the truth.”
“That’s a lot of words for I called your grandmother to guilt you into not doing what you want to do here .”
She refills my water again.
Shit.
Didn’t even realize I’d drank it.
I lean even closer. God , she’s gorgeous. The green eyes. The cute nose. The slightest hint of freckles on her nose. The hair. That hair on her black sweater that I want to pick off and don’t dare in public.
Or private.
Or anywhere.
There are a lot of worst things about this situation.
At the moment, my worst thing is that I trust her with Mimi.
I clear my throat. “Mimi thinks I’m a fucking savior here because everyone in this damn town told her I saved the café and not a single one told her I’m planning to gut it from the inside out.”
“You still can be the savior here. There are other buildings that I could get put up for sale for you. Give Emma time to heal, and we can find something appropriate to make sure someone knows his time of playing the charming guy in public while being an asshole behind everyone’s back is over.”
“I’m no one’s savior.” But I fucking want to be .
“When you look at all the ways a person can let you down, the bar to be a savior is exceptionally low these days. I don’t think you’re a savior. I think you’re a complicated man who deserves some closure.”
“Time!” rings out again.
Sabrina rolls her eyes and waves the next guy past. “We both know how this would end, right, Jeremy?”
“I’m not opposed to another fun night,” he replies.
I look up.
The dude’s lanky. Wearing glasses. Big nose. One eyebrow hair is twisted up onto his forehead wrong.
“Appreciate the offer, but you’ll do better in about three tables,” Sabrina replies.
“Change your mind, you let me know.” He winks.
I almost come out of my chair to slug him.
“You slept with him ?” I hiss at Sabrina while the guy heads to the next row.
“Small town. Slim pickings. I’ve slept with a lot of these guys.”
I remind myself she’s trying to get my blood pressure to do its thing and take another long drink of water.
She leans over to grab the water carafe from the table next to us, then gestures something to someone behind me.
“I called your grandmother because I found a picture of her with my grandpa in his college yearbook,” she says without ceremony.
My jaw comes unhinged. I snap it back shut.
“I can show you too, if you want. They looked friendly. And my grandpa’s been lonely since my grandma died, so since you were here, and everything I could find online suggested your grandmother was a widow, I called her to see if she remembered him and if she wanted to come see both of you.”
“You…called my grandmother…to set her up…with your grandfather.”
She frowns. Squints up at the ceiling. Taps her finger to her chin while she wiggles her head back and forth like she’s debating if she wants to tell me that’s exactly what she did, or if she wants to stretch her story closer to whatever it is if I’m wrong.
And then she shrugs. “Sure. Close enough. In the interest of honesty, yes, I also called her to see if she can talk you out of converting my café into a kombucha bar. But a big part of it is that I hate seeing people lonely. I don’t care if they become friends or if they do something romantic, I just thought it would be nice to connect two old people who I thought might like to see each other again in a time when they’ve each lost someone important to them.
I’m sorry about your great-aunt, by the way. She sounded like a lovely person.”
“ You looked up my aunt too ?”
“No. Zen was telling me about her. Anyone Zen adores has to be a good person.”
“Time!” rings out while someone replaces the water carafe at our table.
Sabrina refills my water before I can move to do it myself.
I don’t push back from my chair.
She doesn’t wave me on.
“You gonna finally move, you old bastard?” Chandler Sullivan says entirely too close to my head.
Before I can react, Sabrina’s out of her seat and in his face. “ Leave .”
“Make me,” he replies.
“The quiet way or the loud way?”
I shove out of my seat too.
I am not letting someone else fight this battle for me, and I am not letting him get away with any more shit like he pulled last week either.
And that little voice in the back of my head telling me that this isn’t fake hatred that Sabrina has for the man who bullied my scrawny ass in college can shut up.
Not the time.
Chandler turns to me.
Takes a step back.
Looks up.
Up .
The asshole is looking up at me.
Didn’t used to be like that.
“Fuck, dude, you got tall,” he says. “Couldn’t see that when you were sitting down. You wanna tell this bitch?—”
I have him lifted to eye level before he can finish that sentence.
The prick’s not light, but I have rage operating on my side.
“You will walk out this fucking door, then walk out of this fucking town, and never fucking come back if you don’t want every single person in this room to find out every single way you’ve ever been a complete and total shit in your entire life.
Go fucking bully someone else. Better yet, go fucking bully yourself and leave the rest of the world in peace. ”
I drop him.
He teeters on his feet and doesn’t fall, but to my utter satisfaction, he’s gone whiter than a ghost.
“Do I need to repeat myself?” My vision is getting foggy again. My head is getting light.
But I fucking did it.
I stood up to him.
“So you sleep with a woman—” he starts, but he doesn’t finish.
“You’ve already used that line, you twatopotamus,” Sabrina says. “Say one more syllable and everyone finds out what you did the night your wedding didn’t happen.”
“What did he do, Sabrina?” one of the triplets calls from one corner.
“You haven’t told us yet,” another of the triplets calls from the opposite corner.
Iris bustles over to us. “Chandler Sullivan, you are booted . Get out. Get out , before I get your grandfather. And your parents. And Emma .”
Sabrina sucks in a breath.
So do half the people in the room.
Chandler blinks.
Then blinks again.
“Where’s Emma?” he asks.
“None of your goddamn business,” I growl through the dots in my vision.
“He slept with a reality TV star that he found on the beach an hour after the wedding didn’t happen,” Sabrina tells the entire room. “Leave, or I’m going back to what you did to Bean & Nugget when Grandma died.”
He glowers at her.
“I’d do what the lady says,” I say, not liking the way I need to grip the chair to hold myself up, but I’m doing it. I’m holding myself up and I’m pretty sure I’m glaring directly at him.
“Fucker, I thought we were friends.”
“Friends don’t destroy their friends’ lives and then let everyone else take the blame for it.”
“Maybe you can find some new friends at McDonald’s,” Sabrina says.
McDonald’s ? There’s not a McDonald’s here.
That’s random.
That’s too random.
That’s— holy shit .
Aunt Applebee and Uncle Five Guys are secretly having an open marriage because they can’t stand each other or their dear child Little McDonald .
“His parents’ marriage—” I start, and then the most beautiful thing in the world happens.
Chandler Sullivan squeaks in actual fear.
He squeaks. And he shrinks. And he goes red in the face. “Shut your—” he starts, but I take a menacing step toward him and he shrinks even further.
“Leave, or we will completely and unequivocally destroy everything you’ve ever loved,” I growl. “And for the record, I’m starting right here . There’ll be bees. So many bees. Bees everywhere .”
“I’m fucking leaving, you douchebags,” he snarls. “There’s nobody here worth knowing. Your numbers are uneven, and fuck you all.”
True to his word, he storms to the front door, flipping off the entire room of people.
“Somebody take Addison’s phone,” the third triplet yells.
“I’ll sit out,” Sabrina tells Iris. “Grey, just drink out of the carafe. Hey, you all remember that year the fairy lights short-circuited on our statue of Ol’ Snaggletooth and we thought his head was going to burn?”
A few people titter nervously.
Someone gasps.
I assume that’s Addison being tackled in the corner and having her phone taken away from her.
“Well, can’t say this won’t be the most memorable speed dating event the Tooth has ever seen,” Sabrina says.
“Who wants to be the person talking about this at their wedding? Somebody’s falling in love in here tonight, aren’t they?
Hey, Bitsy, wanna hit the timer? Iris, call it for us, yeah? Let’s go!”
Voices pick up again around the room.
“Go go go,” Iris calls while she pulls the door shut behind Chandler.
“Have fun tonight,” Sabrina says softly to me. “Good luck.”
“Wait—” I start, but she doesn’t.
Instead, a perky blonde leaps between us.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Oakleigh. We haven’t met. You were supposed to be at my table, but I thought I’d just come to you.”
I try to smile at her, but I can’t.
Not while I’m watching Sabrina head through the kitchen, knowing she’ll be slipping out the back door and off to god only knows where in this town.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “I have to go.”
And I do.
I stood up to Chandler.
I did what I came here to do.
But I think there’s something more that’s my real purpose here.
Something bigger.
Something terrifying.
But I’m about done with being afraid. It’s time to put Super Vengeance Man to bed, and start being Super Grey instead.
Just me.
All by myself.
Doing my best and taking a leap of faith.