Chapter 15 #2
He reaches behind him, popping open a cabinet and plucking out a bottle of wine and two thin glasses. “Celebratory glass?” he asks, already plucking the corkscrew out of a drawer in his desk. “For already having all of this done before I even needed it.”
I blink at him. “You keep a wine stash in your office?”
“One bottle doesn’t qualify as a stash.”
“Fine, emergency bottle, then.” I grin, gratefully taking a glass when he offers it to me.
His lips quirk up at the corner. “Less emergency bottle and more for mini, solo celebrations.”
“Not solo tonight.” That slips out before I can stop it. I flick my eyes away, taking a sip to hide my cheeks again. It’s dry, bold, bursting with tannins and fruitiness. It’s almost certainly more expensive than I would ever buy for myself.
I can feel his eyes on me, can hear his soft, almost surprised exhale. “No. Not solo tonight,” he says, clinking his glass against mine once before taking a sip himself. “Can’t say I’m particularly upset about that.”
Zoe’s words from this morning hit me like a freight train. He’s trying not to be interested.
“Did you always want to do this?” he asks, resting his free arm on the armrest of his chair and resting his ankle on his knee, relaxed, comfortable in his own skin in his own home.
My throat goes dry. “Design?”
He nods.
“Pretty much,” I say, lifting one knee up to my chest, resting my foot on the edge of the stool. “I used to have these sketchbooks as a kid, ones that had the body already printed and you’d just design outfits on top of it. I was obsessed.”
“Not surprised,” he grins. “I got Penny one of those, but it’s hard to design a cohesive outfit when you’re not very good at coloring inside the lines.”
“Maybe she wants to go the avant-garde route,” I offer, grinning into my glass.
He huffs a laugh. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I rest my chin on my knee, watching him, memorizing the way his eyes get softer when he’s not stoic as a rock. “Did you always want to run Sparkks?”
“Eh,” he says, shrugging, rotating the chair a little back and forth. “I played football for a long time, then started Sparkks because I thought it’d be fun. Didn’t realize just how much work it’d be, if I’m honest.”
“You thought running a business would be fun?” I bite back a laugh, but it comes out as an amused huff anyway.
He rolls his eyes, but it’s not angry — if anything, it’s playful, for once, like the way he does with Penny. “Yeah, yeah, I know, it was naive. But I’m not mad I did it. It keeps me busy, made me more money than I could ever spend, secured Pen’s life forever. Worth it, if you ask me.”
“That’s fair. I’d go to war for her, and I’ve only known her a couple of weeks.” I take another sip of wine, letting it linger in my mouth a little longer. “Running a business is significantly less effort than battle.”
“You don’t have to lie to make me think you’re good with her.”
“Not a lie. She’s wormed her way into my heart already.”
The wine helps with this. It takes away the tension that feels like it’s always blanketing everything with him, makes it feel lighter, makes it seem... almost easy. It’s like we’re just two actual people having a conversation instead of a boss and his employee navigating a minefield.
Almost as if he can feel it being too easy, too, he drops it back into something serious.
“So, Aaron kicked you out.” His voice is lower, more steady, but shockingly soft.
I go still. I don’t know what to say to that, don’t know if he wants more information or if he’s segueing into a question. “Yeah,” I rasp, dropping my gaze to my glass of wine so I don’t have to see the pity on his face.
“Why didn’t you fight back on that? Keep the place you guys were living in?”
I let out a breath. “It was his apartment, really. He’d bought it. His name was on the mortgage, not mine. It wasn’t really mine to insist on keeping.”
Grayson’s jaw tightens.
“He could have given me more time, though,” I huff, that old anger rising in my throat like bile.
“The day he told me, he said I had to be out by that night. I packed up everything I could grab and left what I didn’t really need anymore.
Sarah was coming over, so I had to go before she got there.
He said, and I quote, that my sadness would ruin the vibe. ”
“Ugh. He’s a piece of shit.” He shifts, grimacing, and drags his gaze back to mine. “I don’t say this to take away from what he did, but he kind of did you a favor in ridding himself from your life.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “Yeah,” I murmur. “Doesn’t erase the almost-three-months I spent living on my friend Zoe’s couch, though.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“Hard?” I scoff, trying to be lighthearted but sounding a little brittle instead. “Her landlord was remodeling the bathroom the last two months, which was this whole... thing, so I was having to get ready for work in the bathroom of this little cafe she runs around the corner.”
His brows shoot up. “I’m sorry, you were doing what?”
I snort. “It was a nightmare. Some mornings were all right, but others, I’d end up twenty minutes late because people kept knocking on the door and I’d have to let them use it since I wasn’t a paying customer.”
“You never said that when you pitched yourself to me at the bar,” he says, shaking his head a little in surprise.
I laugh softly. “I didn’t want you to pity me.”
“I don’t—I mean, maybe I pity you a little. I won’t lie.” He looks at me for a long second. “Honestly, if you’d told me that before you’d offered to nanny Pen, I would have tried to help you get on your feet regardless. Even if it was before you ruined my shirt and I promoted you.”
My cheeks heat again. I swirl the wine in my glass, watching the dark red climb the sides. “I appreciate that, but I didn’t really tell anyone. I kept telling myself it was temporary. Which it was. It just…”
It was humiliating. It made me feel disposable, like I was at the lowest point in my life. I wouldn’t have shared that with anyone I didn’t have to. But I don’t say any of that.
Something in my face must do the talking for me, because his voice is quieter and gentler when he speaks again. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
I tear my gaze from him, not wanting to observe the sympathy in his face, the compassion that doesn’t really feel earned, or the way either of those will make me feel.
But I see, from the corner of my eye, his body shift, pitch forward, leaning onto his elbows on his knees, bringing him a little closer.
The scent of him invades my nostrils, musky and sharp from what has to be fairly recently applied cologne, and god, it’s too much.
“I’m glad you’re here, if that makes a difference,” he adds.
And dammit, it does. It makes too much of a difference, makes me want to gravitate toward the warmth in his voice like a houseplant stretching toward a sunny window.
I chance glance up.
It might be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
He’s already looking at me, studying me, too close for comfort and too relaxed for professionalism. He exhales, and he’s close enough that I can feel his breath fan across my skin.
“Grayson,” I rasp, my voice anything but steady, my heart slamming against the inside of my ribs like it’s trying to break free.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
My lips part, a shaky breath escaping, but I can’t stop my gaze from lowering to his, too, studying the faint pink of them, the hint of stubble across his upper lip and over his chin.
It would be so easy to cross that line, so easy to throw us into catastrophe, to chaos, to complication.
He slowly shifts in his chair, and my breath catches. His hand lifts, his fingers trailing over my cheekbone as he pushes a tuft of hair behind my ear, and he’s just there, observing, so close I can’t breathe without inhaling his exhales.
I know I should say something, know that he said he wanted to keep this professional, but what if Zoe’s right? What if he’s trying not to be interested? What if he wants—
The office door swings open and Grayson retreats like he’s been burned, cursing under his breath.
“Daddy?”
Penelope stands there clutching her stuffed Daddy Bear by one paw, hair mussed from the couch cushion, eyes heavy with sleep.
I have never loved and resented anyone more in my life.
Grayson clears his throat and sits back in his chair so fast it’s almost comedic. “Hey, princess. What’s up?”
She rubs one eye. “Movie’s over. M’sleepy.”
I try to school my features back into something normal, try to calm the incessant thudding in my chest.
Grayson starts to get up. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
I move before he fully sits up, desperate for oxygen and distance and a task, and set my glass down on the desk. “I’ll do it.”
Grayson’s gaze snaps to mine immediately.
“I mean,” I say, scrambling to sound normal, “if you want. If Pen wants.”
“I want Carly to!” Pen chirps, suddenly a little more awake.
Grayson hesitates, then breathes out like all the air in the world just left his lungs. “Yeah. Okay.”
I take her hand and lead her to her bedroom, getting her into her bed, making sure she has every stuffed animal possible beside her in the correct order. She yawns so wide her whole face contorts as she settles deeper into the pillows.
I smooth a hand over her hair. “Tired?”
She nods. “The rabbit made me sleepy.”
“I hear that’ll do it.”
She blinks up at me, sleepy and solemn all at once. “I like when you put me to bed.”
My heart gives a traitorous little squeeze. “Yeah?”
She nods, grinning. “I like you a lot,” she says, her voice all soft and genuine in that way only kids can do.
I smile back down at her. “I like you a lot too, Pen.”
“Even when I ask a lot of questions?”
“Especially then.”
She considers that. “I think my daddy likes you a lot too.”
I go still.
Kids say things all the time, random things, weird things, especially when they’re tired. But I can’t help but wonder what she might have heard in passing and only half understood.
“Why... why do you think that?”
She squeezes Daddy Bear tighter. “He smiles more.”
I blink.
She yawns again, eyes already drifting shut. “He used to be grumpy a lot. He’s happier now.”
Those silly, simple words make something in my chest ache. That’s not something a four-year-old invents out of nowhere. That’s something she’s noticed. And kids are terrifyingly good at noticing the things adults think they’re hiding.
“Night, Carly,” she mumbles.
“Night.”
I wait until her breathing evens out before I slip from the room and pull the door mostly closed behind me.