Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Then Tyce had shared it.
Teaching moments.
Like he'd been trying to help. Like she'd been a willing participant in her own destruction.
The comments section had become its own ecosystem:
girl WHAT was that grip — 47.2K likes
the way the champagne cart guy DOVE — 38.9K likes
I feel so bad for her omg you can see she didn't want to do it — 22.4K likes
holy red flag energy on tyce duke jfc. he literally pushed her into it and then LAUGHED — 31.7K likes
At least the internet had figured out what she'd been too stupid to see. Thousands of strangers had watched thirty seconds of footage and immediately clocked Tyce as the villain. Meanwhile, Emmy had spent weeks defending him. Telling Grant to back off. Insisting she knew what she was doing.
wait is that Grant Knight in the background at 0:47??? - 8.3K likes
Emmy's stomach dropped. She scrubbed back to the timestamp.
There he was. Edge of the frame, arms crossed, watching her humiliate herself. Even through the grainy phone footage she could see the tension in his jaw. The way he was leaning forward, like he was physically restraining himself from stepping in.
She scanned the nested replies, heart pounding:
he was playing in the tournament
yeah if you call a handicap of 14 'playing' lol
prob just watching from the sidelines like everyone else
who is grant knight
NFL quarterback google him
No one had connected them. No one had pieced together that the matchmaker was the quarterback's secret client, that they'd been orbiting each other for months, that he'd warned her about Tyce and she'd thrown it back in his face.
Small mercies.
But somehow that made it worse. 2.3 million strangers had opinions about her golf swing, and she barely cared. What she couldn't stop thinking about was one person. One pair of eyes at 0:47, watching her defend the man who'd just publicly humiliated her.
Grant had known. He'd tried to tell her. And she'd said—what had she said? I'm not a little girl who needs protecting. I'm not West's baby sister. I appreciate your concern, but I don't need it.
And then she'd walked away from him. Toward Tyce. Who'd been planning his content strategy around her failure before the champagne cart had even stopped rolling.
The video had 2.3 million views, and Emmy couldn't stop watching one frozen frame at 0:47. Couldn't stop wondering what Grant had thought, standing there. Whether he'd been angry or vindicated or just tired of watching her refuse to see what everyone else could see.
She should be worried about Cecelia. About Monday. About her career imploding in real time.
Instead she was lying in the dark, refreshing a video she'd already memorized, looking for Grant.
That told her something about herself she wasn't ready to examine.
She closed the app. Set the phone face-down on her nightstand. Stared at the water stain on her ceiling that still looked like a map of somewhere she'd never been.
Her phone buzzed. She didn't look.
It buzzed again.
And again.
Emmy pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. She'd turned off notifications hours ago, but the phantom vibrations persisted—her nervous system convinced that somewhere, someone was watching her fail on loop and typing something clever about it.
The lock on her front door clicked.
Emmy sat bolt upright. She'd ignored three knocks from Mrs. Jasinski today, a text from Callie that had started with fourteen laughing-crying emojis and ended with that tennis dude is giving me the ICK, and a voice note from Jaciel she couldn't bring herself to play.
She'd been sure the building had given up on her.
Burglar. Murderer. Someone who'd seen the video and tracked her down to finish the job.
She grabbed the first weapon she could find—a decorative bookend shaped like a fox—and crept toward the bedroom door, heart hammering.
Harper appeared in the hallway, holding a paper bag and looking triumphant.
"How did you get in here?" Emmy demanded, clutching the fox like a very ineffective sword.
"Bobby pin." Harper dropped onto the couch like she owned the place. "My brother taught me before he went to prison. Don't worry, it wasn't for breaking and entering. Different thing entirely."
"Harper—"
"You're hiding in your apartment at 2 PM on a Friday with the curtains closed and your phone probably somewhere you can't see it.
" Harper surveyed the scene with the clinical detachment of a crime scene investigator—noting Emmy's silk robe, the shadows under her eyes, the way she was holding a brass fox like it was a loaded weapon.
"That's crisis mode. I had to intervene. "
"I'm fine."
"You're catatonic." Harper opened the paper bag and pulled out a croissant the size of Emmy's fist. "Eat this."
"I'm not hungry."
"I don't care. Carbs are medicine. Your brain needs glucose to spiral properly, and right now you're just lying here like a broken GPS. Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating." She thrust the croissant at Emmy's face. "Eat. Then we can discuss."
Emmy set down the fox. Took the croissant. She wasn't hungry, but Harper was giving her that look—the one that said she'd sit here all day if necessary, cheerfully dismantling Emmy's defenses until she complied.
"I watched the video," Emmy said.
"I know. Everyone watched the video." Harper kicked off her shoes and settled cross-legged on the couch.
"It's bad. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't even know anything about golf, and watching you square up to that ball is like one of those car crash compilations where you know what's coming but you can't look away. "
"The champagne cart—"
"The champagne cart guy is fine. I looked him up. He posted his own video about it. He's thriving. He has a GoFundMe now."
Emmy let out something between a laugh and a sob. "Great. I'm launching influencer careers."
"Silver lining." Harper reached over and physically guided the croissant toward Emmy's mouth. "Eat. Chew. Swallow. Be a human person who ingests food."
Emmy bit into the croissant. It was good—buttery and flaky, delivering a bitch slap of French pastry directly to her nervous system—and her stomach, which had been clenched like a fist for the past eighteen hours, unclenched slightly.
"There we go." Harper nodded approvingly. "Now. Sitting up, going to the couch. We're relocating to a room with natural light because vitamin D prevents murder."
Emmy let Harper steer her toward the living room, still clutching the croissant. The afternoon sun streaming through the windows felt aggressive after hours in darkness.
Twenty minutes later, Emmy was wrapped in her silk robe on the sage green armchair, working on her second croissant while Harper made coffee in her kitchen with aggressive competence.
"The thing is," Harper called over the hiss of the espresso machine, "everyone will forget about this in, like, three days. As soon as the guy who's trying to sell the NFT of your shocked face gets bored—"
"There's an NFT?"
"—you'll be old news. The internet has the attention span of a goldfish on cocaine. By next week they'll be obsessing over some senator's weird vacation photos or whatever."
"Or." Emmy stared at the ceiling. "Cecelia fires me and I move back in with my parents and my dad spends the rest of my life explaining the respiratory dangers of despair."
"That's catastrophizing." Harper emerged with two mugs, setting one on the side table. "What did Cecelia actually say when she called you?"
Emmy winced. The phone call had come last night, while she was still in her car in the club parking lot, mascara smudged, dignity in shambles. Cecelia's voice had been ice: We'll discuss this Monday. In person.
"Nothing good. She said we'd 'discuss it Monday.' Which is Cecelia-speak for 'prepare your belongings in a small cardboard box.'"
"Or it's Cecelia-speak for 'I'm too busy doing damage control to deal with you right now.'" Harper curled up on the opposite end of the couch. "You don't know she's going to fire you."
"I humiliated the company. On video. In front of the entire Boston donor class."
"You attempted golf. At a charity event. Because a client peer-pressured you into it." Harper's voice sharpened. "And speaking of—what the hell was Tyce Duke thinking? He's the one who handed you the club. He's the one who told you to swing."
Emmy didn't answer. She'd been thinking about that too—replaying the moment when Tyce had pressed the driver into her hands, when he'd leaned close and murmured don't be boring, Woodhouse, when she'd felt the weight of the cameras and the crowd and hadn't known how to say no without making it worse.
She'd also been thinking about Grant.
The look on his face when the ball went wide. The way he'd found her afterward, behind the clubhouse, away from the cameras. The way he'd said he set you up like it was a fact, not an opinion.
And then she'd said things. Harsh things. Things about not being a little girl, about not needing his protection, about not being West's baby sister—
A knock at the door.
"Stay." Harper was already moving. "You're not ready to face delivery people."
Emmy heard the door open, a murmured exchange, then Harper's footsteps returning. She was carrying a vase of flowers—elegant but not ostentatious. White roses and pale green hydrangeas, an arrangement that cost exorbitant money but didn't announce it.
”Delivery," Harper said, setting the vase on the kitchen counter. "There's a card."
Emmy's stomach flipped. She crossed to the counter, pulled the small envelope from its plastic holder.
The card was cream-colored, heavy stock. The handwriting was bold and slightly uneven—like someone who signed autographs for a living but rarely wrote anything longer than his own name.
You're right. I'm sorry. — G
Emmy stared at the words. Read them again.
"Those are nice," Harper said carefully.
"They're from Grant."
"Ah."
Emmy set the card down and picked up her phone, hands moving before her brain weighed in.
Emmy