Chapter 42
GRIFFIN
For the first time in my life, I have no idea what to do.
My hands hang uselessly at my sides, while every instinct in my body roars at me to move and go after her. But Tiana told me not to follow her.
I should respect that, because after everything I’ve taken from her, the least I can do is give her one boundary without trying to bend it around my own needs.
When Tiana reaches the elevator, she turns, just enough for me to see her face.
She looks broken. Her eyes are wet, her mouth trembling with the effort to not fall apart in front of a rooftop full of strangers, and the sight of it knocks the air clean out of my lungs.
I did that.
Me.
I made her feel safe under a name that wasn’t mine. I let her hand over pieces of herself because she thought the man on the other side of the screen had no power to hurt her, all while the real me was making her feel disposable.
I hurt her in a way that goes beyond bad timing and grief and every excuse I have used to keep myself from saying the truth out loud.
And now she is leaving with that pain in her eyes.
I can’t let her go like this. I can give her space after she hears me out. I’ll let her walk away after I tell her the truth. I can stay away for the rest of my life if that is what she wants from me, but I can’t let her leave this building believing she meant less than she did.
Because she means everything.
“Tiana,” I call, already moving.
Her shoulders stiffen. The elevator doors open, and Tiana steps inside without looking at me.
I push through the crowd, ignoring the startled voices, the turned heads, the annoyed guy’s shoulder I clip on the way.
“Tiana, please.”
She lifts her eyes then and one tear slips down her cheek. The doors close; I reach them a second too late.
My palm hits the metal hard enough to send pain through my hand, but the elevator is already moving, taking her away from me floor by floor.
I turn and run for the stairs.
The stairwell door slams open beneath my shoulder, and the sound ricochets off the concrete walls as I take the first flight down too fast. My shoes hit the steps hard, my hand skimming the railing, every landing blurring into the next while my pulse pounds against my throat with brutal, punishing force.
My lungs burn by the time I reach the tenth floor. My knee clips a railing at the eighth hard enough to send a sharp jolt up my leg. By the fifth, I’m breathing like a man with no pride left to preserve, which is fitting, because pride is the one thing I should have buried a long time ago.
Pride kept me quiet and let me hide behind grief. It told me I was protecting Tiana, when all I was doing was protecting the version of myself that didn’t have to risk wanting anything I could lose.
When I burst through the stairwell door into the lobby, a few people turn to look at me, but I am already moving past them, eyes searching the space. The front doors open onto the curb.
Outside, cars idle along the hotel entrance. I scan faces, desperately searching for Tiana. When I spot her, one hand gripping the open door of a cab.
“Tiana!” I move toward her, the distance between us feeling endless even though it can only be a few yards. “Tiana, please stop.”
She starts to duck into the cab.
Panic tears through me. “Please,” I say, and the word breaks out of me so raw that she stops.
Her hand tightens around the doorframe.
I reach her, stopping at the curb in front of her, close enough to block the cab without boxing her in.
Tiana looks at me then, and the damage in her eyes nearly takes me to my knees.
So I let it.
I go down right there on the curb, one knee hitting the pavement, then the other, hands at my sides.
The city noise seems to fall back.
“Please,” I say, and my voice is no longer anything but a man finally stripped down to the truth. “Just hear me out. That’s all I’m asking.”
I bow my head, forehead lowering to her stomach, touching the silk of her dress. She doesn’t move away.
“I know you told me not to follow you,” I say against the soft fabric. “I’m already failing you again by being here, but I can’t let you leave without telling you the whole truth.”
Tiana’s lips part, shock mixing with the hurt. “Griffin.”
“If you still want to leave after, I won’t stop you,” I continue. “If you never want to see me again, I will find a way to survive that. But please, Tiana. Give me five minutes to tell you the truth, and then I’ll let you go.”
For a long moment, she says nothing. Then she inhales shakily. “Get up.”
I lift my head.
Her face is wet, her eyes furious and devastated and so fucking beautiful it makes my chest ache. She looks down at me like she wants to hate me but can’t, which might be another thing I have taken from her.
“Please get up,” she says.
I stand, careful to keep space between us.
Tiana doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“My car is over there,” I say, gesturing toward the side lot.
She glances away and tells the cab driver he can leave, and then she begins walking toward the parking lot. I step up beside her, every nerve in my body intensely aware of the chasm between us.
The lot offers more quiet than the curb, nestled against the side of the hotel under strings of warm lights and the dim silhouette of palm trees.
My car is parked near the far end. Stopping right next to it, I give Tiana plenty of space between the car and a low concrete planter so she won’t feel trapped.
Crossing her arms, Tiana says, “Start talking.”
I take a deep breath. With a thousand different ways to begin, I decide to lead with the ugliest truth first.
“I am @built2last.”
Her features tighten again, even though she has already figured it out. Still, hearing it spoken aloud carries a different weight.
Watching the pain ripple through her once more, it takes everything in me to restrain myself from stepping toward her.
“The profile existed long before I even knew who you were,” I explain. “It wasn’t set up to trail you. It was just a blank, nameless account I kept to look through construction designs and architectural feeds. But then I stumbled across your content, and I couldn’t look away.”
I run a hand over my mouth. “You captivated me —you were witty, smart, and you made me laugh again, something I hadn’t truly done in a while.
In the beginning, that was all it was. But eventually, I became hooked on the way I felt whenever I watched you.
” Tiana keeps her gaze locked on mine, unblinking.
“Then Mya introduced us in person, and everything fractured. I didn’t know how to stop.
I think about all those nights I spent quietly following your life, replying to your stories, messaging you at two in the morning while convincing myself that I could control it, that it wasn’t dangerous.
I should have confessed right then. I wanted to.
But I kept hiding behind whatever excuse I could find. It was pure cowardice, I know.”
Tiana blinks, her lips forming a tight line. “You lied to me.”
“Yes, I did.” I don’t let myself look away.
“I lied, and I kept lying. But not for the reasons you think. I wasn’t trying to manipulate you, or play some fucked up game.
It was because I…” My throat tightens, words fighting to get out, “I wanted you, but I didn’t know how to not ruin it. How not to lose you.”
Her eyes flash. “So you kept going.”
“I kept going because I was selfish.” That stops whatever she was about to say.
I swallow, throat tight. “The version of me on that account didn’t carry all the things Griffin Hayes carried.
He wasn’t your boss or Sylas’s father. He wasn’t a widower who kept panicking every time he felt ‘too much.’ He could talk to you without ruining it with guilt before the conversation even started. ”
Her eyes shine, but her voice is sharp. “Except he was still you, Griffin..”
“Nothing I say fixes it. I know that.”
Tiana looks away, jaw trembling.
I take another painful breath. “After we had sex, I pulled away because I was terrified of what it meant that being with you felt so right. I spent years convincing myself that wanting anyone after Lila would mean I loved her less,” I continue.
“I told myself distance was honorable, that restraint was protection, that if I kept enough space between us, I could keep from hurting you and keep from betraying her.”
Tiana lets out a laugh, but it’s wounded. “How noble.”
“I was a coward, and you paid for it every time I touched you.”
A tear slides down her cheek and she swipes it away angrily.
I let the sight cut me open because I deserve to feel every inch of it.
“I panicked. I hated myself, hated that I’d made myself unreachable to you, but online, you still talked to me.
You still let me have parts of you. Your jokes, your fears, Willow’s, LA, tonight.
And I took them because I missed you and I wanted to be the person you came to, even when I was the reason you felt like you couldn’t. ”
Tiana’s arms tighten around herself. “That is the part I don’t know how to forgive,” she whispers. “You knew I felt alone. You knew I was talking to the account because I didn’t feel like I could talk to you. And you still let me.”
“I wanted to come to you —as me. I wanted to stop,” I say. “I tried. Every message made me feel guilty, and every time you laughed with him, I hated myself for being jealous of my own lie. All of that is true, but I know none of it changes what I did.”
Her gaze returns to mine. “So why did you come tonight?”
“I figured out it was Markell. I saw you in his story, and he tagged the venue. So I dropped Sylas at Worth’s and got on the jet. I couldn’t sit at home and refresh my phone while you might have been scared, or worse.”
Her eyes widen with disbelief. “You flew here because I wasn’t replying to your DM?”
“I flew here because I love you.”
Tiana goes completely still.
“I love you, Tiana,” I say again.
Her lips part, but no sound comes out.
My bare left hand flexes at my side. I see Tiana’s eyes drop to it. Her breath hitches.