Chapter 12
Carly
Avoiding Grayson would be ideal, but unfortunately, ideal is not currently available to me.
We live together now. We work together now.
And because the universe enjoys torturing me, I am sitting three seats away from him at a business lunch with a group of NFL executives at one of Boulder’s most popular restaurants, trying not to look like I was kissed by the CEO and then emotionally hit by a bus, because apparently I’m expected to join these things now, too.
Hooray.
The restaurant is all dark wood and low lighting, the kind of place where the water glasses are never less than three-quarters full and every entree costs three times my monthly cell phone bill. I don’t even know what half of them are.
I’m wearing one of the nicest work dresses I own and pretending I belong here.
Across from me, one of the league executives is talking through distribution goals for the first rollout of the NFL line while Grayson sits at the head of the table looking maddeningly composed, like he didn’t kiss me yesterday and then tell me he wanted to keep things professional.
He’s in a dark brown suit today, which is making my life significantly harder.
His watch flashes when he reaches for his glass. His jaw ticks when he thinks. His voice drops into that smooth, controlled register when he’s answering questions, and every time he says something smart — which is annoyingly often — I have to work twice as hard to keep my face neutral.
I have spent the past forty minutes hyper-aware of every single time his knee brushes mine before moving away again like neither of us is touching a live wire.
“Carly?”
I blink and look toward the man to my left.
Shit. “Sorry?”
He smiles politely. “I was asking whether the women’s concept work can scale across all team variants without losing cohesion.”
Right. My actual job. The one I should be focusing on instead of the shape of Grayson’s hands around a wine glass.
“Yes,” I say, sitting a little straighter.
“Absolutely. The key is building a strong base system first and customizing outward from that instead of reinventing each collection from scratch. The silhouettes and performance logic need to stay consistent even if the color stories and team details shift. We’ll obviously have to take into account some of the more egregious color decisions from teams, but we can make it as long as we have a strong backup that we can reuse for things like that. I’m working on it.”
That gets nods around the table.
Good. I still know how to be employable.
I talk them through a few more design points, grateful when the conversation turns practical enough for my brain to click into work mode for a minute. Fabric weights, trim variation, fan appeal versus wearability, margin-friendly upgrades that still feel premium — this part, at least, I know.
I know design. I know how to sell a concept. I know how to act like I belong in rooms that demand that of me.
What I apparently do not know is how to sit diagonal from a man who kissed me and then went ice-cold, without becoming pathologically aware of my own mouth.
By the time the server clears our plates, I need a break before I say something weird or spontaneously burst into flames. I murmur something about the restroom and push back from the table. No one questions it, but I feel Grayson’s eyes track me for a second before he answers another question.
The hallway leading there is quieter than the dining room, lined with framed black-and-white photos of old Boulder and lit by little brass sconces that make the lighting feel warmer than this place feels.
I exhale as I walk. One full breath, then another.
I’m fine, I tell myself. I am an adult woman, a competent designer, and a nanny, somehow. I can survive one lunch without visibly unraveling because Grayson Sparkks briefly forgot about boundaries.
I reach the turn near the restrooms — and stop so abruptly I almost twist my ankle in my heels.
Aaron.
For one awful second, my brain refuses to process him as real.
He’s standing near the host stand in a white button-down and green sport coat, blonde hair slicked back like he’s trying very hard to look like a responsible adult man instead of the same guy who cheated on me and then made it sound like I was inconveniencing him by existing in the space we shared.
And next to him is Sarah.
Same shiny black hair, same too-white smile, same polished, smugly-pretty energy I clocked the first time I saw them together after the breakup, back when I was still stupid enough to think maybe it had only just started.
But based on the ring on her left hand, it clearly hadn’t just started.
My stomach drops so hard it feels like I missed a stair.
They’re engaged.
Of course the man who looked at engagement rings with me while apparently picturing someone else has managed to speed-run a whole relationship milestone with the woman he swore I shouldn’t worry about.
For a split second, I can actually hear his voice from that night — cold and impatient, ushering me out of our apartment.
I pictured Sarah’s hand instead. When we were looking at rings. That’s how I knew.
Jesus Christ.
Aaron notices me first. His face shifts through surprise and something like discomfort before he pastes on a smile that makes me want to throw the wooden block our bread had arrived on at his head.
“Carly.”
Sarah turns, sees me, and her expression does the same fake-bright smile she’d done the first time she’d met me.
I could keep walking. I should keep walking.
Instead, I stop, because apparently, self-preservation is not one of my stronger qualities.
“Aaron,” I say, and I’m proud of how normal I sound. “Sarah.”
“Wow,” he says. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
I want to tell him that I didn’t expect to see him either, that I especially didn’t expect to see the woman he’d been cheating on me with wearing a diamond larger than my last shred of patience. But I don’t. “Yeah, I, uh, I’m here.”
Smooth. Good job, Carly.
Sarah’s fingers drift to her ring automatically, like the thing has its own gravitational pull. “We’re meeting some friends.”
“Oh. Yeah, cool.” I can feel the fake normalcy leaving me in droves, and I tense, willing it to come back. I gesture toward the ring to get it out of the way. “Congrats, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Aaron glances down the hallway behind me. “Are you here with someone?”
The question is casual in the way a land mine is casual. I know what he’s really asking. Are you alone? Did you end up pathetic and single and still stuck in the crater I left?
My pride rises up so fast that I don’t even think before speaking.
“Yeah,” I lie. “I’m seeing someone.”
The words leave my mouth and hover there in the air, stupid and inevitable, like floating dust mites.
Aaron’s smile tightens by a fraction. “Really?”
I nod, because I’ve committed now and can’t exactly say, Actually, that was a reflexive lie, I’m actually still at rock bottom. “Really.”
God. This might be the saddest thing I’ve ever done.
His eyes flick over my shoulder again. “Anyone we know?”
“Uh...” I’m painfully aware that my answer is, in fact, not an answer at all, but instead a noise made by a woman who is digging her own grave.
Sarah tilts her head. “You should come to the wedding.”
I blink. Excuse me?
Aaron gives a quick laugh like this is all perfectly normal and not deranged. “Yeah. We’ll have a lot of the old group there. You should come.”
The old group. The group of our friends from university. Great. Humiliation is more fun when it’s social.
“And bring your boyfriend,” Sarah adds with a bright smile that is either sincere or sociopathic. “It’d be nice to meet him.”
Every thought in my brain grinds to a halt to keep my mouth in check, because although I should say, yes, fantastic, and never show up, there are other things I want to say more: No thank you. I’d rather eat gravel. I hope your entire life catches on fire.
Instead, I stand there in stunned silence because the brain power it takes to do anything else is the same brain power that wants to spew venom from my lips, and I need to keep that locked down. I can practically hear the pause lengthening, stretching, turning from normal to weird.
My mouth opens, half a second from telling them to kiss my ass, when a warm, solid weight settles around my waist.
I can’t help the automatic jump my body decides to perform, even though I don’t need to turn my head to know who it is.
Grayson.
His arm slides around me like it belongs there, easy and firm and so natural it makes my heart trip over itself.
Heat presses along my side through the fabric of my dress.
The clean scent of him — cedar, musk, and something sharp I can’t quite place — cuts through the restaurant air and lands straight in my bloodstream.
“There you are,” he says to me, his voice warm in a way I haven’t heard since before the pool yesterday. “Was wondering where you’d snuck off to.”
Aaron blinks in utter surprise. It takes every bit of sense I have left not to do the same.
I turn just enough to look up at Grayson.
He’s calm. He’s ridiculously, overwhelmingly attractive in that middle-aged, polished way he nails. And he is entirely unreadable except for the look in his eyes that tells me he understands exactly what he just walked into and has decided to set it on fire.
His hand flexes once against my waist as if to say, I’ve got this.
“This is Grayson,” I hear myself say, feeling like I’ve just taken a seat in the back of my brain and have decided to let him take the reins.
Aaron stares. “Grayson Sparkks?”
Grayson gives him a courteous nod as if this is entirely normal. “You want me to sign something?”
I nudge him gently in the ribs for that.
“Uh, no, that’s okay,” Aaron says carefully, his gaze slowly turning back to me. “You’re dating your boss?”
Silence hangs for a second too long. I can’t tell if Grayson is internally panicking that Aaron knows he’s my boss — if he is, his poker face is next level.
I don’t want to answer. If he decides to back out of whatever the hell he’s doing, me confirming it just makes this a million times worse. But then he pulls me a fraction closer, dips his head, and presses a kiss to the side of my head just above my temple as if he’s claiming this head-on.
My lungs forget how to breathe.
“For a little while now,” he says. “You going to introduce me, sweetheart?”