Chapter 14 #2
"Yeah." West's voice was distant now, already pulling away. "Safe travels, I guess. We'll talk when I'm back."
He hung up before she could say goodbye.
Emmy stood in her kitchen, phone pressed to her ear, listening to dead air. The coffee had gone cold. She dumped it in the sink and watched it spiral down the drain.
He always had a soft spot for you.
Past tense now.
She thought about the photo on Grant's mantle.
Fifteen-year-old Emmy with braces and terrible hair, caught mid-laugh at West's graduation party.
Had Bailey noticed it, asked about it, learned the story of the girl who'd grown up to be the family friend who'd grown up to be the matchmaker who'd destroyed his privacy for a career that wasn't even going to survive the week?
Something ugly moved through her chest—not one feeling but several, tangled together like Christmas lights pulled from storage.
Grief, first: for the friendship she'd torched, for the easy warmth that used to exist between them.
Jealousy underneath it, sharp and specific: Bailey at that dinner table, Bailey making Grant laugh, Bailey getting the version of him that Emmy had glimpsed and fumbled and lost. And underneath both, something she couldn't name—a hollow ache in her sternum that felt like watching someone else open a present that was supposed to be yours.
Three hours later, Emmy sat at her kitchen table with her laptop open.
She'd showered. Changed into leggings and an oversized sweater that had once belonged to West—the soft cotton of defeat. Made herself eat half a piece of toast that tasted like cardboard.
The cursor blinked in an empty email draft.
Dear Grant,
She deleted it. Too formal. They'd known each other twenty years.
Grant,
Better. But what came next?
Emmy had written hundreds of professional emails. Client outreach, feedback summaries, carefully worded rejections. She knew how to phrase things. How to manage expectations. How to deliver bad news wrapped in corporate pleasantries until it barely stung at all.
This wasn't any of those things.
She'd spent the last three hours composing apologies in her head, and every single one of them had dissolved before she could type the first word.
Too defensive. Too groveling. Too much like she was asking for something she didn't deserve.
"I'm sorry" didn't cover it. "I ruined your life" made it about her own guilt.
And "I didn't mean to" was what people said when they meant "I didn't think about the consequences. "
She typed:
Grant,
I'm not going to make excuses. What happened last night was my fault—not just the moment with Petra, but all of it. The arrangement, the pressure, the months of treating your privacy like it was mine to spend. I told myself I was being professional. I was being selfish.
Per our agreement, I'm terminating the Elite Connections contract, effective immediately.
The NDA is in effect upon termination—I won't speak about our arrangement to anyone.
You never wanted this arrangement in the first place, and I should have respected that instead of talking you into something that only served my career.
I've attached the termination documents. You don't owe me anything—not a response, not an explanation, not forgiveness. I just wanted you to know that I understand what I did, and I'm sorry.
I think it's best if I take some time away, so please don't avoid my parents or West on my account. And for what it's worth—you turned out to be a much better matchmaker than me. You were right about Tyce, and Bailey is great.
—Emmy
She read it three times. Attached the contract PDF with the termination clause highlighted, her signature already at the bottom.
Her finger hovered over Send.
This was the right thing to do. Give him a clean exit. One less thing to handle while he was managing the press and preparing for a busy post-season and figuring out his life with Bailey.
She stared at the cursor for a long moment. Then she hit Send, because West was right, and this was all she had left to offer.
The rest of Sunday passed in a blur.
Emmy checked her email obsessively—every ten minutes, then every five, then every time her phone so much as vibrated. Nothing from Grant. She told herself that was fine. He was busy. He had a game to prepare for. He had a life that didn't revolve around her.
She forced herself to look at her other messages. Most were noise. A newsletter about winter skincare. Spam offering discount matchmaking services, which felt like the universe's idea of a joke. Work emails she couldn't bring herself to open.
One text from Sabine.
Emmy almost scrolled past it. But something made her stop.
The text had been sent during the auction, timestamp 10:41 PM—right around when everything was falling apart.
Exciting news to share soon. Talk when things settle down. —S
Emmy read it twice. It had to be a mistake. Wrong recipient. There was no way Sabine meant to send this to her—not after standing there with champagne in hand and feeding Petra exactly the right hints to follow.
She locked her phone and set it face-down on the counter.
That's when she noticed the calendar notification she'd been ignoring. A meeting that hadn't been there yesterday, inserted into her Sunday like a summons.
Cecelia Ferrance. 3:00 PM. Elite Connections. Mandatory.
Emmy stared at it. Sunday. Cecelia was calling her in on a Sunday.
She pulled up the news—not sports this time, but business and lifestyle. And there it was.
Boston After Dark: Exclusive Interview with Elite Connections Founder on Grant Knight Revelation
The article had a photo of Cecelia at the top, poised and polished, the kind of headshot that cost four figures. Emmy scrolled down, her stomach sinking with every paragraph.
"Our clients come to us because they value discretion," Ferrance said in a phone interview Sunday morning.
"And while I can't comment on any individual relationship, I will say that Elite Connections has always prioritized meaningful matches over.
.. spectacle." A pause. "Though of course, when love happens, it tends to make headlines. "
When asked about Dr. Bailey Lim, the pediatric surgeon photographed with Knight at the Commonwealth Club, Ferrance offered a knowing smile audible even over the phone. "A lady never tells. But I will say—when our clients find love, we consider that a success, however it happens."
Emmy's coffee turned to acid in her stomach.
Cecelia was taking credit for Bailey. Bailey, who Grant had found on his own. Bailey, who had nothing to do with Elite Connections. And Cecelia was spinning it like she'd orchestrated the whole thing—while saying absolutely nothing that could be proven false.
Emmy closed the browser. Looked at the calendar notification again.
3:00 PM. Two hours from now.
She forced herself into the shower. The water was hot and she stood under it until her skin turned pink, until the steam filled her lungs, until she felt marginally less like someone whose entire life had detonated twelve hours ago. It wasn't enough. It was something.
She chose armor: her best blazer, her most professional heels, the earrings her mother had given her for graduation. War paint. The outfit of someone who still believed she had a job to lose.
She wasn't sure she did believe it anymore. Wasn't sure she cared. This job—this obsession with proving herself, with mattering—had cost her Grant. Had cost her West's trust. Had turned her into someone who used people and called it ambition.
But she put on the blazer anyway. Muscle memory. Or maybe just the need to feel like she was still standing.
The T was nearly empty on a Sunday afternoon. Emmy found a seat by the window and watched the city slide past, gray and indifferent.
Mom
Emmy, your father has been refreshing Boston After Dark all morning. Please call when you can. We're not angry, just confused. Love you.
She couldn't deal with that right now. She locked the screen and stared out the window until her stop came.
The elevator at Elite Connections opened onto chaos.
No Ryan at the door. On weekends, she guessed, matchmakers opened their own doors. She felt a pang anyway—thought of Harper, thought of another relationship she'd managed to damage.
Phones ringing. Voices overlapping. Beckanne at the front desk with a headset on, juggling three lines at once.
Every matchmaker and assistant in the building, it looked like—most on phones, one shouting out email questions to be answered by the room.
"He wants to know if we work with women over forty!
" "Of course we do, tell him our oldest success story was eighty-three! "
No Sabine, though. Emmy scanned the room twice to be sure. Every desk occupied except hers.
Everyone looked up when Emmy walked in.
The phones kept ringing, but the voices stopped. Beckanne's eyes tracked Emmy across the room with something between pity and satisfaction.
Emmy kept walking.
Cecelia's office door was closed. Through the glass, Emmy could see her on a call, pacing behind her desk, gesturing with one hand while the other held her phone. She was smiling.
Emmy stood outside the door and waited.
A television in the corner of the reception area was tuned to a local news channel, muted but captioned. Emmy watched the words scroll across the bottom of the screen:
...ELITE CONNECTIONS FOUNDER CECELIA FERRANCE SAYS MATCHMAKING INDUSTRY "HAVING A MOMENT"...
The segment cut to footage of Grant at the airport—that same shot from the sports article, cap pulled low, sunglasses hiding his eyes. Then a photo of Bailey, pulled from what looked like a hospital staff page. Then Cecelia's headshot again.
...FERRANCE DECLINED TO CONFIRM WHETHER DR. BAILEY LIM WAS AN ELITE CONNECTIONS MATCH, BUT SOURCES SAY...
Emmy looked away.
Cecelia's door opened.
"Emmy." Cecelia's voice was warm, professional, terrifying. "Come in. Close the door behind you."
Emmy walked into the office. Closed the door. The sounds of the chaos outside went muffled and distant.
Cecelia settled behind her desk, folding her hands in front of her. She didn't offer Emmy a seat.
"Well," Cecelia said. "What a weekend."
Emmy opened her mouth to respond—to apologize, to explain, to beg—but her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She ignored it.
Cecelia raised an eyebrow. "You can check that. I'll wait."
Something in her tone made Emmy's stomach drop. She pulled out her phone.
The notification on the screen: Grant Knight
Her heart stopped. Then started again, too fast.
She opened the email. No message. No words at all. Just an attachment: the termination contract, signed and dated.
She stared at it for a long moment. His signature, neat and familiar. The same handwriting she'd seen on birthday cards, on the original contract, on the note he'd left with the flowers after the golf tournament. You're right. I'm sorry.
He'd apologized to her, once. For interfering. For taking ownership of something he had no right to.
And she'd repaid him with this.
No acknowledgment of her apology. No "I understand" or "I forgive you" or even "Go to hell." Just the clean, efficient severance of everything they'd been.
Emmy put her phone back in her pocket.
Cecelia was watching her with an expression Emmy couldn't read.
"Bad news?" Cecelia asked.
Emmy met her eyes. "Grant Knight is no longer a client of Elite Connections."
Cecelia's smile didn't waver.
"I know," she said. "Now. Let's talk about what happens next."