CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GRANT
“ G rant!” Braxton knocks on my partially open bedroom door. “We’re going to dinner! Come on!”
Savannah rolls her eyes from where she’s stretched across my bed. “The door’s open, B. You can come in.”
“You’re safe, man. Your sister was just mooching off my TV.”
She’s been here the past few hours. While I’ve been doing homework for my business administration class, she’s been pretending to take notes on her laptop while watching The Real Housewives in my room.
He pushes the door open, a blank expression on his face. “Just making sure I don’t walk in on anything I’m not supposed to.”
“Wouldn’t want that to happen again.” All Savannah does is glare at the two of us.
The last time Braxton came into my bedroom unannounced a couple months ago, he walked into a less than ideal situation.
Savannah had just put her black mini-skirt back on and was in the middle of pulling her tights up when she stepped on a loose piece of the fabric and fell flat on her ass.
The sound echoed throughout the room, making me hiss under my breath while she bit her lip, trying not to audibly groan in pain.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Savannah and I were hooking up at the time, but we also knew it wasn’t information Braxton wanted to know, so we didn’t announce it.
“Grant? Are you good?” I didn’t even think about the fact that my bedroom door was unlocked until Braxton came barreling in.
Savannah made a girly screeching sound from where she lay on my floor, completely topless with her tights only halfway up her legs. “Braxton!”
“Get out!” I yelled at the same time.
I have no idea how much he saw, but from the way he groaned and slapped his hand over his eyes, I would say he caught a glimpse of his twin sister practically naked on my bedroom floor.
“Jesus Christ!” He swore, looking up at the ceiling as he backed out of the room. “I heard that loud thud and thought something was wrong!”
“Why didn’t you knock, you moron?” Savannah yelled, pulling her bra over her head, and then her top.
“I did knock! Plus, I had no idea you were even here!” he called from the hallway. “I’m gonna bleach my brain now. Thanks a lot.”
It was definitely mortifying, and just bringing up the situation now makes Savannah throw a pillow at my head. “Not funny.”
“Just put your coat on,” I say, throwing her the brown peacoat and her pink plaid scarf. “You can come to dinner with us.”
She slips on her heeled boots and grabs her pink Chanel purse while I throw my laptop and notebook back in my backpack.
“Is Lina coming over tonight?” Savannah asks.
“She comes over every night.”
Because of my situation with Lina sleeping in my bed, Savannah and my hookups have become more and more sparse. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time us hanging out even evolved to something more.
Savannah doesn’t have a problem with it and has made it very clear how much she likes Lina. Though, I’m sure it's confusing to her when she doesn’t know the full situation. She knows we aren’t fucking, but I haven’t told her why Lina sleeps here almost every night because it’s not my story to tell.
“She’s a sweet girl,” she says casually. “I think you should take a risk.”
“Take a risk?” I ask, stopping dead in my tracks.
She steps past me into the connecting bathroom, looking in the mirror while she fixes her hair. It reminds me of what Lina does so often, the way she constantly runs her fingers through her hair, either to detangle it or twirl it around her finger.
“You know what I mean. You have this idea that you have to sabotage every possibility you have of an actual relationship, when we both know damn well that you’d make a good boyfriend. I think you need to give yourself the chance.”
I feel my throat dry up, forcing me to swallow the lump that’s building. “And you think Lina’s the person I would want to try that with?”
She gives me a duh kind of look. “I mean, who else?”
“Come on, Sav.” I pull one of my nicer long-sleeve polos out of my closet and slip it on. One thing I know for sure: I will not be dressed down when being seen at dinner with Savannah Sinclair. “You know I don’t work like that.”
“You haven’t in the past, but who says you couldn’t?” She surveys me with her expression. “It’s clear that you like her, so don’t even try to deny it.”
My breath catches as I fasten the last button. I stay silent for a long moment because I have no clue how to respond.
It feels as though Savannah has already reached inside my brain, unwrapping the thoughts I was too scared to think about and putting them right out in the open. She’s infuriatingly perceptive, and it makes it nearly impossible to lie to her.
The truth of the matter is, I’ve never thought about a person more than Lina—never had someone take up so much of my mental real estate without even trying.
I’ve constantly talked myself out of it, though. With all the ways she constantly endangers herself, it’s not a good idea for me to get tangled up with her.
She puts me on edge, and makes my intrusive, worst-case scenario thoughts run rampant. She’s a brush fire, reckless and relentless, and I know it’s only a matter of time before she consumes me.
But no matter how hard I try to stay away, I keep running back toward her—bucket of water in hand, hoping somehow I’ll be enough to keep her from burning.
Ideally, with my neurotic, damage-control-ridden brain, I’d like to prevent the fire. But with Lina, it’s impossible, and I’m stuck constantly pulling her out of it.
“I’m a control freak,” I remind Savannah. “I can’t constantly be worried about someone else. I would drive myself insane.”
It wouldn’t matter if she was the most easygoing girl in the world. I still would be in a constant state of paranoia, wondering where she is, what she’s doing, if she’s safe.
Hell, I’ve been doing that, and that was before we even became friends. It’s the same reason I have to call my sisters every Friday morning and stick to my rigid routine. It’s why I love the routine that comes with playing football so much.
“Grant…” Savannah sounds more worried than she did a few minutes ago. “Don’t you think there are things you can do about that? Therapy? Finding a better coping mechanism?”
I stare at her, my brain spinning. “It’s not something that can be fixed or controlled. This is who I am.”
“Well.” She steps back from the sink, straightening out her hair one last time before reentering my bedroom. “Other people’s feelings and actions aren’t yours to control, but yours are. Ignoring your own feelings only makes you lose it even more.”
Her knack for psychology is really starting to show, and it throws my brain off-kilter.
I open my mouth to respond, to say something dismissive, maybe deflective, but I don’t get the chance.
Braxton’s voice cuts through the paper-thin walls like a chainsaw. “By the way,” he yells way too loud, “Meredith said to meet at that new pasta place on Ainsley. Lina and Eden are coming too!”
Savannah and I both freeze like a goddamn scene from a sitcom.
She slowly turns to look at me, one brow arched. “Lina and Eden,” she repeats.
“And Meredith.”
“Well, this should be fun.” Savannah says, not cruel, not mocking, but amused.
I give her a stern look. “Please don’t say anything.”
“Hey.” She raises her hands in the air, leading us out of my bedroom. “It’s not mine to tell.”
“ T hank God the two of you are here,” I say as Braxton, Savannah, and I are seated in the corner of the restaurant. “It’s the only reason we got a reservation.”
The two Sinclairs hold power, and not only in New York City, where they were born and raised into an empire of wealth.
In New Haven, the two of them have formed names for themselves while also being recognized for the family they come from. They’re likely two of the most well-known people at Yale, and even more so when they’re in NYC.
So, yeah, getting a table at this restaurant that has a six-month waitlist would have been impossible for anyone but them.
“It didn’t hurt that Savannah was practically sucking off the hostess,” Braxton grunts, glaring at his sister.
He’s overly protective of her, even though he knows she’s going to do whatever the fuck she wants regardless.
She teasingly tilts her head. “I know how to work the system.”
“Isn’t your last name leverage enough?” I ask.
“Grant, we’re in New Haven. Everyone in this town knows how much money you’re being given to play football for Yale. We would have gotten a seat regardless.” Then she glances around, moving on quickly. “I love these chandeliers.”
The lights above the table are dim, keeping up with the expensive atmosphere. The crystals hanging down from the hardware cause gold light to scatter on the white tablecloth.
I’m shocked Savannah is impressed by them. “Don’t you have even bigger chandeliers in the entryway of your house?”
“Yeah, but the ones in my parents’ house are gaudy. They only wanted them to make a statement. These ones are placed purposefully.”
“Gaudy” would be the last way I’d describe the Sinclair mansion. It’s more elegant than anything—with marble floors and a grand double entry staircase. It looks straight out of a magazine.
But Savannah has always looked at beauty as something that has to be intentional to mean something.
“Aren’t your parents rich?” she then asks me, turning in her chair. “You probably have chandeliers in your house too.”
I immediately shake my head. “I might be rich, but my mom was always adamant about our house feeling homey. She was convinced that if it was too big or too elegant, then it would feel like a museum.”
The Sinclair house was exactly what my mom didn’t want.
“Your mom didn’t come from money, did she?” Savannah asks knowingly.
“No. The complete opposite. I think that’s why all of the flashy ways people usually show off their money always made her uncomfortable.”