Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Griffin
W hat the fuck.
I tear the envelope open the second she’s gone, still half-believing there’s some kind of a letter inside—some explanation, something that will make sense of the way she just looked at me like a stranger.
But it’s not a letter.
It’s a check.
A fucking cashier’s check.
$150,000.
My stomach lurches. For one wild second, I try to spin it. Maybe she meant it as a gift. Maybe she wanted to surprise me. Maybe this was for our future?—
But that’s bullshit.
This cold, clinical transaction wasn’t meant for a future. It was meant to end us.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I mutter, my voice strangled.
And then I’m moving. I shove the envelope into my jacket, my feet already storming toward the ballroom, locked on her.
She’s with some uptight suit with whiskey in one hand and a possessive grip on her lower back, like she’s just another acquisition. She stands frozen beside him—rigid, pale, lifeless.
“Reese!” My voice rings out across the ballroom. She flinches but doesn’t move.
The guy turns, eyeing me with lazy amusement. “Ah. So this is him.” He scans me like I’m something he found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Didn’t realize they let the pool boy crash the party.”
“Please,” Reese says softly. “Let’s just go.”
I step in, teeth clenched. “Who the fuck are you?”
He doesn’t blink. “Vander Hale. Reese’s fiancé.”
The words detonate in my skull.
My gaze volleys from him to her, desperate to understand. “What the hell is he doing here?”
But Reese won’t meet my gaze. Her eyes lock onto the floor, her weight shifting as if her shoes don’t fit right. “He’s here for me.”
“No way.” My voice is deadly low now. “I told you to stay away from her.”
Vander chuckles, sipping his drink. “I think you’ve got that backward, my friend. She’s leaving with me tonight.”
I snap.
I rip the envelope from my jacket and shove it toward her. “What the fuck is this, Reese? A check? Seriously? What is this?”
Vander’s grin stretches wider as he wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls her close. “She’s paying you for your time. Isn’t that how this works? You fuck her. She pays you. Or is whoring different out here?”
I refuse to sink to this piece of shit’s level.
Because I’m more than just a former escort, and Reese knows that. Doesn’t she?
“Reese,” I whisper, my tone wrecked. “What are you doing?”
She still won’t look at me, her fingers fidgeting with the ring on her hand.
I take another step, softer now. “Talk to me. Baby, please. I love you. I love you so fucking much. Just look at me.”
Vander snorts. “Reese, don’t you know better than to let them fall in love with you?”
I turn toward him, fury boiling under my skin. “I’m not talking to you.”
My gaze flits back to her as my insides threaten to unravel. “Say something, Reese. Anything. You owe me an explanation.”
She finally lifts her eyes.
But when she speaks, it’s not her voice. Not the warm honey that rushed over me last night as I held her in my arms. Not the husky chuckle when I promised to put a baby in her tonight.
“It was fun,” she replies. Flat. Cold. Robotic. “But it’s over now. My life is in New York. It’s time for me to get back to it.”
I blink, reeling. My throat locks.
She can’t be doing this to me. To us.
She loves me. I know she loves me.
Until a horrible thought hits me. She’s never said those words.
Still, I won’t go down without a fight. She’s worth that. She’s my everything, and if she’d just talk to me…
“No.” I shake my head, pain clawing through every vein as I fight to understand. “This isn’t you, Reese. Don’t do this. Don’t?—”
She cuts me off, waving her hand much like I’ve seen the wealthy do to their hired help when they’ve had enough of their backtalk. “Learn to take no for an answer. I said that it’s over.”
Something detonates inside me—blood boiling, my heart seizing in my fucking chest.
“You’re just like all the rest of them, aren’t you?” The words scrape out of me, grief and rage tangled together. “I can’t believe I thought you were different. I would’ve given you anything. Everything . You told me this is what you wanted.”
Vander leans in, smirking, words pitched loud enough for those around us to hear. “Don’t you understand, boy? Reese has taken what she wants from you. That was the plan all along. And now?” His smile sharpens into a lethal point. “We’re done here. She was always mine. She was never yours.”
I don’t think.
I just move.
My fist connects with his jaw in one clean, brutal arc—bone on bone, sharp and savage. Vander stumbles back into a side table, whiskey shattering across marble as gasps ripple through the ballroom.
For a second, everything stills.
I expect Reese to look at me.
To run to me.
To remember us.
But she doesn’t.
She drops to her knees beside him , her hands fluttering to his jacket as she assesses the damage. “Are you okay?”
“I should press charges,” Vander grits out, holding his jaw.
“No, we’re leaving,” she says quickly, her words edged in panic. “We’re going, Vander. Come on, get up.”
Then, she looks at me.
“For the love of God, stay away from us.” She stumbles over the words, but I catch it—the flicker in her eyes. Brightness, sharp and fleeting, is eclipsed a second later by fear.
And in that moment, I don’t know who she’s afraid of—him or me.
“Reese—” My voice breaks on her name.
She lifts her hands like she’s warding me off, palms trembling. “It’s done.”
She turns and walks away.
And I lose it.
My fists curl. My chest heaves. My vision swims with everything I can’t fix—the check. My past. Her hand in his. The future I thought we had.
I barely register the commotion—the gasps, the murmurs, the clinking of shattered glass. Somewhere, someone yells for security. Another voice—Lauren’s—cuts through the noise, sharp and urgent.
“Griffin! What the hell just happened?”
I turn, breath ragged.
She’s running toward me, eyes wide, panic in her tone. “Griffin, talk to me. What is going on?”
I can’t answer.
I can’t breathe.
I look at Lauren, numb, my voice grinding out like gravel.
“My fucking life is over.”
And then I shove the door open and disappear into the night, because if I stay one second longer—I will either drop to my knees or burn this place to the fucking ground.
The knock at the door doesn’t register at first. Not over the pounding in my skull or the sour taste in my mouth.
I’m half-off the couch, one foot still on the ground, my entire body soaked in stale whiskey and self-loathing.
Another knock.
Then a voice that makes my head throb harder.
“All right, you two lovebirds, get the fuck up!” Piper crows, pounding on the door. “I swear to God, if you’re naked, I don’t care. Chowder is running out of food, and I am not explaining that to him.”
I groan, blinking awake. “Jesus.”
Piper breezes in like a tornado, voice leading the way before she clears the threshold. “If you two ran off to Vegas and got married without me, I will personally kick both your asses.”
She’s already halfway across the living room by the time I sit up, groaning, squinting through the pounding in my head.
“I just got back into town and noticed Chowder’s food bin’s practically empty,” she continues, scanning the room.
“Figured I’d pop in, see what kind of overpriced grain-free crap he eats before I go shopping.
Capri said you were holed up here all weekend, so I figured you were finally doing the nasty like normal people and forgot the world existed. ”
Piper pauses at the doorway to the kitchen, eyes narrowing as she takes in the ashtray and the reek of stale whiskey.
She fans the air with her hand, then plants both fists on her hips. “Who’s smoking?”
“Me.”
She lifts her brows, disbelief sharp in her tone. “You don’t smoke.”
“I do now.”
Her smile falters.
And then she says it—careless, casual, like it’s not about to tear the world in half. “Where’s Reese?”
Silence.
Her gaze flicks toward the bedroom, then back to me. “Wait, did she go somewhere?”
I stare at her, dry-mouthed, heart thudding. “Gone,” I say, the word like poison on my tongue.
“Gone where?”
“New York. Vander. Penthouse. Champagne brunch, probably.” I brush past her, grabbing the glass from earlier and tipping it back though it’s bone-dry. “Didn’t you hear? We broke up.”
Piper freezes. “What?”
“Left me a nice little parting gift, too.” I grab the envelope off the counter and wave it like a flag. “A hundred and fifty grand. Should keep me in whiskey for a while.”
“You’re lying,” she whispers.
“I fucking wish.”
“No, she wouldn't—" Her calm facade cracks as she takes a step back, as though someone knocked the air out of her. “She wouldn’t leave without telling me.”
“Oh, but she did.” I chuck the envelope down. “She left money, memories, and a handful of witty one-liners. Real generous.”
Piper’s already fumbling for her phone.
She paces a tight circle on the rug, phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. “No, no, no. When she didn’t answer me all weekend, I just figured…” Her voice trails off as she scrolls. “I thought you two were busy fucking like bunnies and didn’t want to be interrupted.”
She taps the screen, holds the phone to her ear.
Frowns.
“It’s still going to voicemail,” she mutters. “I’ve sent her fifteen texts—nothing. All unread.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I mutter, though the words taste like ash in my mouth. “She looked fine when she left. Right after assuring me that I was nothing to her.”
Piper looks up sharply, eyes wide and glassy. “You don’t understand. She didn’t take half of her stuff.”
I frown, but she barrels on, her volume increasing. “Her meds are still here. Her overnight bag is still tucked under the bed. Our grandmother’s necklace? It’s sitting on the bathroom counter.”
I drag a hand down my face. “I guess she didn’t need it. Maybe her fiancé plans to buy her a new one.”
“She didn’t take Chowder ,” she says, like that’s the damning evidence. “She would never leave him.”
I don’t have a response to that.