Chapter 13 #3
"It's—" Emmy caught herself. Almost stopped.
But Petra's face was so open, so interested, and the question was a good one, and Emmy had always been helpless in front of a good question.
"It's harder than you'd think. Because you know them too well.
You know what they need but you also know all the ways they'll sabotage themselves.
And you can't just—you can't be objective.
Not really. Not when you've watched someone build their walls since they were fifteen. And Grant, he—“
The prickle came then. Late. Much too late.
"I shouldn't have said that." Emmy set down her champagne. "I'm—I've had too much to drink. Can we forget the last—"
"Emmy." Petra's voice was gentle. Almost sorry. "I should have said this earlier. I write for Boston After Dark."
The room tilted. Or maybe Emmy tilted. The champagne turned to battery acid and she could feel it burning a slow hole through her chest.
"This wasn't an interview." Petra held up her hands. "I really was just enjoying the party. But I can’t help it when people literally bring the gossip to me.”
"No." The word came out strangled. "No, that's not—I was making it up, I was—"
Petra rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t bother.”
Emmy's vision narrowed the way it did before she fainted in tenth grade, the edges going soft and useless. She needed to deny. Say she was drunk and spinning stories. Rearrange her face into something breezy and dismissive.
But her body was already turning toward where she’d last seen him.
"You're going to him right now," Petra said softly.
Emmy froze. But her feet had already betrayed her, her whole body a compass needle pointing at the one person in this room she couldn't afford to look at.
Her eyes found him. Across the room, Grant was helping Bailey into her jacket. Safe. Almost out.
“The Grant Knight." Petra followed her gaze. "Of course. Boston's most eligible hermit." She laughed—a short, not unkind sound. "Someone you've known your whole life. Private. Famous. Here tonight." Her thumb moved across her phone screen. "You practically wrote his biography for me, Emmy."
"No." Emmy's voice cracked. "No, you can't—please. This is off the record. I never confirmed—"
"You described him in detail, unprompted, to a stranger at a party." Petra's smile was almost sympathetic. "That's not off the record. That's a conversation you chose to have."
Petra flagged down a passing man in an ill-fitting jacket—a quick gesture, a pointed look toward Grant. The man pulled slim digital camera from an inside pocket.
"Wait." Emmy grabbed Petra's arm. She heard her voice almost from a distance, thin and high. Bargaining. She was bargaining with a gossip columnist in a red dress while her career burned down around her ears. "Please. It's not what you think. He deserves privacy. He didn't ask for any of this."
"Then maybe you should have been more careful." Petra pulled free gently. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. But this is too good to sit on."
The photographer was already moving.
Emmy ran.
Coat check. Bailey in her jacket. Grant reaching for his.
"Grant." Breathless. Heart hammering. "Grant, wait."
He turned. Whatever he saw in her face made his expression change instantly—polite neutrality to sharp attention, his whole body going still.
"What's wrong?"
"I—" The words tangled in her throat. "There's a reporter.
Petra, Boston After Dark. I didn't know who she was.
She was just—we were talking, and I—" Emmy's voice broke. "I told her about you. Not on purpose, I just thought—I wasn’t thinking. She knows you’re my client.
“ She pressed her hands over her eyes. "Grant, I'm so sorry.
I did this. I practically wrote the article for her. "
"Where?" Flat. Controlled. Already scanning.
Emmy pointed toward the auction tables, where Petra was conferring with the photographer. Both of them were looking this way.
Grant's jaw tightened. He looked at Emmy.
One look.
Then he was in motion. Coat on, and from a pocket, a baseball cap. That stupid, ancient, faded-to-nothing cap, pulled low, ruining the shot the way it had ruined a thousand shots before. He was already moving to the door, a wide hand splayed on Bailey’s back.
"Side exit?" Bailey asked. No panic. No questions. She took one look at Emmy's face, one look at Grant's, and nodded.
“VIP lot,” Grant said. His hand found Bailey's elbow—guiding, protecting. He didn't touch Emmy. "Go."
Not just the glance that confirmed it—though that was the final nail.
The real damage had come earlier. Standing at the silent auction with a champagne glass and an ego that needed feeding, describing her most important client to a total stranger because the stranger made her feel interesting.
Because Sabine had called her a little girl playing with Barbies and she'd needed to prove she wasn't. Because she'd wanted, for five minutes, to be seen as someone who mattered—and the price of that five minutes was Grant's privacy, Grant's trust, and every promise she'd made to him.
She'd done it to herself. Nobody had tricked her. Nobody had forced her hand. She'd just talked, because talking was what she did, because she always had to be the most interesting person in the room, and this time the room had teeth.
They burst through the side exit into the parking garage. Cool air. Concrete. The harsh fluorescent light stripped everything to the bone.
But the damage was done.
Cars were already arriving—someone from the event must have tweeted, or Petra's photographer had been faster than they thought. Phones raised. Camera flashes. A voice shouted: "Grant! Grant Knight! How long have you been looking for a wife? Is this one of your matches?"
Grant didn't stop. Didn't look back. He steered Bailey toward his car, opened her door, closed it behind her. Then he was in the driver's seat, and the engine was running, and his taillights were gone.
He was gone.
Emmy stood on the concrete, heels on pavement, arms wrapped around herself in the fluorescent glare.
"Emmy." Tyce appeared at the exit, jacket off, collar loose. "What the hell is going on? Someone said there's press outside—"
"I have to go."
"Already? It's barely eleven. There's a whole—"
"I need to go, Tyce."
He studied her face. Whatever he saw there, it wasn't enough to override his evening. "I'm not ready to leave."
"Then don't."
She walked past him.
"Fine," he called after her. "Whatever."
She didn't turn around.
In the Uber, Emmy called Grant.
It rang once. Then straight to voicemail.
She hung up. Pressed the phone against her forehead like a compress, or a rosary. Tried again.
Voicemail.
The city slid past outside the window. Traffic lights. Storefronts. A couple arguing on a corner. A woman laughing into her phone. Everything going on like it always did, like nothing had happened, like the evening hadn't just detonated.
Seven minutes. That was how long she'd waited for the Uber. Seven minutes of standing alone in the fluorescent dark, arms wrapped around herself.
The story would be everywhere by tomorrow.
Grant Knight, the most private quarterback in the league, outed as a matchmaking client because his matchmaker couldn't stop talking to a stranger at a party.
Because she'd needed to feel important for five minutes and the price was everything.
The internet would do the rest—connect the dots, find her name, trace the line from Emmy to West to Grant to Elite Connections.
Twenty years of friendship and three months of lies, unraveled because she needed to matter.
Because she always needed to matter. Because mattering was the only thing she'd ever been afraid of not doing.
And for the first time in months, the restlessness was gone. The hum behind her sternum that had driven her to every reckless choice — the lie to Cecelia, the tennis court, Tyce, tonight — was silent. In its place was something so still it scared her. Like an engine that had finally seized.
She stared at her phone. Willed it to ring.
It didn't.