Chapter 38
Greyson
I make it four hours.
Four hours of glass walls and low voices and people glancing away too quickly when I catch them looking. Four hours of sitting in meetings I don’t hear half of. Four hours of walking past the design floor without looking toward Carly’s old desk.
It took me until after lunch to be able to force myself to come in, and I leave at five-thirty on the dot.
When I get home, my head is pounding, my body is exhausted, and my patience is gone. I loosen my tie in the entryway, shut the door behind me, and stop.
There are too many voices in my house.
Penelope is giggling somewhere in the kitchen, high and bright. Dana’s voice follows, warm and patient. That part is normal lately. But then I hear Cole. Then Maddox.
My hands clench around my keys, and I drop them a little too forcefully on the side table before walking into the kitchen to find the damn firing squad waiting for me.
Dana stands at the island with Penelope, helping her stick raisins onto celery filled with peanut butter. Cole leans against the far counter with his arms folded. Maddox is posted near the patio doors, looking far too casual for whatever this is.
Penelope looks up first. “Daddy!”
I force my face to do something human. “Hey, bug.”
She holds up a piece of celery. “Ants on a log.”
“I can see that.”
“I made you one, but I ate it.”
“It’s the thought that counts.”
“Gray,” Cole says, and I’m immediately on alert again.
I look at him. “No.”
Dana wipes her hands on a dish towel, then bends to Penelope’s level. “Hey, Penny, why don’t you take your snack upstairs and pick out a book? I’ll come read with you in a few minutes.”
Penelope pauses with a raisin pinched between two fingers. “Why?”
“Grown-up talk.”
Her little face pinches. “Is Daddy in trouble?”
Cole coughs once into his fist. I shoot him a look sharp enough to draw blood.
“No,” Dana says smoothly. “Daddy is not in trouble.”
“Debatable,” Maddox mutters.
“Maddox,” Dana warns.
Penelope looks between all of us, suspicious because she’s four, not stupid. Then she slides off the stool with her plate. “Fine,” she says, trotting out of the kitchen and up the stairs, humming to herself.
I wait until I hear her bedroom door close.
“She’s going to get fucking peanut butter on the carpet,” I grunt to Dana, rubbing my face with my hand.
“Yeah, well, if you’d have just listened to us from the start, you wouldn’t need to worry about that,” she fires back.
“I’m not doing this today. You all can leave.”
Dana gives me a look. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I absolutely can.”
“We went to see her today,” Cole says.
My hands flex at my side. “Excuse me?”
“We went to her friend’s cafe,” Maddox adds.
Heat rushes up my neck. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because you’re fucking miserable, man.” Cole runs a hand through his hair and leans forward onto the island. “She’s miserable. And apparently everyone involved is too stubborn to do anything but be miserable.”
I narrow my gaze at him. “I would rather all of you stay the fuck out of this.”
“No.” There's no flexibility in his voice in the slightest.
I stare at him. Cole stares back.
For a second, I remember the man he used to be. The one who would have ducked responsibility with a joke, a drink, a disappearing act. This version of him doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch — just stands there in my kitchen, sober and steady and infuriating as hell.
“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” I say.
“She doesn’t want to beg you to listen,” Maddox says. “Different thing.”
Dana steps in, gentler but no less firm. “You need to talk to her, Gray.”
“I don’t need to do anything.”
“You do,” she says. “Fix things or don’t. Get back together or don’t. But at least give her closure. Give yourself closure.”
I hate the word the second she says it. Closure. Like a door clicking shut, like packing away a chapter of your life and labeling the box neatly so it doesn’t bleed into the next one.
I don’t want closure. I want to stop wanting her. Those are different things.
“There’s nothing to fix,” I say, even though the words feel dead on arrival. “She had a plan. She left. End of story.”
Cole’s mouth flattens. “She didn’t leave. You threw her out.”
My head snaps toward him. “Shut up.”
“No,” he says, voice hardening. “You’re telling yourself a version of the story that lets you be angry instead of ashamed.”
I take a step closer to him. “You have no idea what I am.”
“I do, actually.” Cole’s eyes don’t leave mine. “You’re hurt. You’re pissed. You’re in love with a woman who made a backup plan before she knew you were going to become her life, and you decided that made her a villain because it was easier than admitting you fucked up.”
The room goes silent. Maddox looks at the ceiling like he’s praying for patience. Dana watches me with worry in her eyes.
I can barely breathe through the pressure in my chest. “You’re all taking her side.”
“It’s not about sides,” Maddox says.
I drag both hands through my hair and turn away, pacing once toward the living room and back. “You think I haven’t played it over in my head? I know what happened. She admitted she was going to move out.”
“She also tried to explain why,” Cole says.
“She had weeks to tell me.”
“And you had weeks to tell her at least half the things you were feeling,” Dana says.
I don’t have a response ready for that. I stare at her, trying to find words, but before they can even form in my throat, a small, sniffling sound comes from the stairs.
Every one of us freezes.
I move before anyone can say another damned thing, stepping too fast, rounding the corner of the kitchen. Penelope stands halfway down the stairs in her unicorn socks, plate clutched to her chest, eyes huge and wet.
My heart drops straight through the floor.
“Penny,” I say softly.
Her bottom lip trembles. “I miss Carly.”
It feels like the room is caving in around me. Fuck them for this, for doing this when she was here, for forcing this on me when I’m barely able to—
“I don’t understand,” Pen says, her voice squeaky as she rubs at her eyes and takes another step down the stairs.
It hits me, then, that I am a coward. I didn’t give her details, didn’t know how to explain betrayal to a four-year-old. I didn't tell her the truth because I’d have to commit to what the truth is.
I close the distance between me and the stairs and crouch at the bottom, opening my arms. “Come here, bug.”
She comes down slowly, holding the railing, thick tears spilling over smooth, rounded cheeks.
I’ve seen her cry so many times in the last few weeks, but that was all controlled, just my words that she heard and the careful ways I phrased things to try to soften the blow.
But I don’t know how much she’s overheard.
I didn’t curate this for her. And the way she’s looking at me breaks me more effectively than anything Cole or Maddox or Dana has said.
I pull her into my arms and she clutches the front of my shirt with peanut butter fingers.
“Was she gonna move out ‘cause of me?” she whimpers.
“No.” The word comes out too fast. I press a kiss to her hair, letting my lips linger against her skull. “No, baby. Absolutely not. This had nothing to do with you.”
“Then why?”
I can feel the weight of their stares behind me, know they’re watching this, and part of me fucking hates the lot of them for it. This is their fault. But I know what the root cause is, and I’m desperately clawing to keep it locked down.
“She had to leave,” I say, and hate myself for how thin it sounds.
Penelope pulls back enough to look at me, face crumpled. “That’s not enough.”
“I know.” My voice comes out too rough. “I know, bug.”
“Is she mad at us?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at her?”
I swallow. The answer should be easy. It isn’t. “I was,” I say carefully. “I still am, a little. But mostly… mostly I’m sad.”
She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Why?”
“Because we had a fight.”
“What kind of fight?”
“A grown-up kind.”
Her face scrunches with the full force of toddler upset and disapproval. “Then fix it. That’s what we do when we fight.”
I stare at my daughter, at the tears on her cheeks, at the stubborn set of her quivering chin, and all at once, I see every awful ripple of what I’ve done — Carly gone, Penelope hurt, me rotting in my office for weeks and struggling to be a good parent for her.
Fix it.
My throat constricts. “I don’t know if I can fix it, Penny.”
She sniffles. “You can try.”
I exhale slowly, watching as another tear slides down her cheek, and I wipe it away with my thumb. “Yeah. Yeah, bug, okay. I can try.”
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “Today?”
I huff out a broken little laugh. “I'll do it soon. Okay?”
Cole clears his throat behind me. “Funny you should say that.”
I close my eyes, willing myself to find patience. “Cole.”
“You don’t even have to plan it.”
Very slowly, I turn my head over my shoulder.
“We did that for you,” he grins.
Maddox checks his watch. “You’re meeting her in… an hour.”
For a second, all I can do is stare.
Dana gives me a soft, sheepish little smile. “You should shower.”
“And shave,” Cole adds, draping his arm around his wife.
Maddox looks me over. “I second both of these opinions.”
I should argue. A few seconds ago, I would’ve argued on principle alone. I would’ve demanded details, poked holes in their plan. But Penelope's looking up at me with those wet eyes and the absolute faith that grown-ups can fix everything they break if they just try hard enough.
I wish I still believed that as easily as she does.
“Okay,” I rasp, surrendering. “Okay.”