14. Heather
— ? —
Heather
Penelope asks to meet alone.
The text arrives on a Tuesday morning, three days after the foundation meeting. Three days after Kirk’s nose got broken. Three days since anyone from my old life has contacted me directly.
Can we talk? Just us. The café on Madison.
Grayson hates it.
“She’s going to try to manipulate you.” He paces the length of my apartment, his jaw still slightly swollen from Kirk’s punch. “That’s what she does. She finds the weak spot and she presses until something breaks.”
“I know.” I track him with my eyes from the couch.
“Then why go?” He stops at the window and turns.
“Because I need the last word said to my face.” I catch his arm as he passes. “So it’s finally over.”
He stops. His eyes search mine.
“You don’t have to prove anything to her.” He covers my hand on his arm with his own.
“I know.” I smooth his lapels, feeling the tension coiled beneath. “I have to prove it to myself.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then his hands come up to button my coat, straightening my collar, his fingers lingering longer than necessary.
“I’ll be right outside.” He tugs the lapels closed at my throat.
“You don’t trust her?” I tip my chin up to look at him.
“I don’t trust her with you.” He smooths his thumb along my jaw.
I smile - really smile, for the first time in days - and kiss him properly.
“Thirty minutes.” I press the words against his mouth. “Then you can rescue me.”
***
The café used to be ours.
Back when whatever Penelope and I had passed for friendship, lunches between foundation meetings, shopping trips where she always found better clothes, the kind of surface-level connection that looks good in photos but crumbles under weight.
She’s already there when I arrive. Showing more now, drawn and tired beneath the careful makeup. Her hands wrap around a tea cup she’s not drinking, and her eyes follow me across the room.
Two tables over, a woman with a phone angled a little too casually. A blogger, probably. Or a gossip. Or just someone who recognized us both.
I clock her and decide I don’t care.
Let it all be public. I’m done with secrets.
“Thank you for coming.” Penelope’s voice is soft, carefully modulated. “I know this isn’t easy for either of us.”
“Let’s not pretend this is mutual suffering.” I sit across from her, not removing my coat. “You asked to see me. So talk.”
Her face flickers, surprise, maybe, at my directness. The old Heather would have made small talk. Would have ordered tea and chatted about the weather before getting to the point.
The old Heather is dead.
“I wanted to apologize.” She says it like she’s reading from a script. “For everything that happened. At the gallery, at the foundation meeting - I was out of line.”
“You slapped me in public and told a room full of people that Grayson was defective. ‘Out of line’ is generous.”
She winces. “I was hurt. I said things I didn’t mean.”
“You meant every word.” I hold her gaze. “You’ve been saving those weapons for exactly the right moment. The infertility thing - you knew how much damage it would cause. You said it because you wanted to hurt me, and him, and anyone else in range.”
“That’s not-”
“And now you’re here with your apology and your tea and your carefully arranged vulnerability, hoping I’ll feel sorry for you.” I lean back. “How am I doing so far?”
Her expression hardens. The mask slipping.
“Fine. You want honest? Here’s honest.” She sets down her cup. “Grayson will never love you the way Kirk did. You’re a rebound. A revenge fuck. Something to parade around while he gets over me.”
“That’s your theory?”
“That’s reality.” Her voice sharpens. “I know him better than anyone. Eight years of marriage. I know what he needs, what he wants, what he’s capable of giving. And I’m telling you - you’re not it.”
“Interesting.” I fold my hands on the table. “Keep going.”
“You’re tearing apart my child’s family.” She puts a hand on her belly - the gesture again, always the gesture. “Kirk and I could make this work. We could be happy. But you won’t let him go.”
“I filed for divorce. He’s the one who won’t let go.”
“Because you took everything!” Her voice rises, drawing glances. “His friends, his reputation, his place in every room that used to want him - you destroyed him because you couldn’t handle the truth.”
“The truth being that he spent three years in your bed while telling me he loved me?”
“The truth being that he chose me.” She leans forward. “He chose me, Heather. Every time. For three years. And you can’t stand it.”
The words land, and I wait for them to hurt.
They don’t.
“You’re right.” My voice is calm. “He chose you. Every time he could have stopped, every time he could have told me the truth, every time he had a chance to be honest - he chose you.”
“Exactly.”
“And now he’s choosing you again.” I meet her eyes. “Congratulations. You won.”
Something flickers across her face. Uncertainty. Like she expected a fight and got surrender instead.
“I’m not being sarcastic.” I stand, gathering my coat. “You wanted him. You got him. He’s yours now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done fighting for something I don’t want back.
” I look down at her - this woman who took my husband, my dignity, three years of my life.
And I feel nothing but tired pity. “You’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if he’s doing to you what he did to me.
Every late night, every business trip, every unexplained text - you’ll wonder.
And you should. Because he didn’t suddenly become faithful just because he’s with you now. ”
“He loves me.”
“He loved me too. Look how that turned out.”
I start toward the door.
“Heather.” Her voice stops me. Something desperate in it now, the carefully arranged composure cracking. “If I’m winning... why do you look like you don’t care anymore?”
I turn back.
She’s still sitting there, one hand on her belly, her eyes glistening with something that might be tears.
“If that’s winning,” I say quietly, “then I hope he’s everything you gave up for it.”
I walk out into the light.
Grayson is waiting on the sidewalk, exactly where he said he’d be.
His eyes find mine immediately, scanning my face for damage, for cracks, for any sign that she got to me. I watch the tension in his shoulders ease slightly when he sees that I’m intact.
“How bad?”
“She called me a revenge fuck.”
“Creative.”
“She also implied you’re incapable of love and that I’m destroying her child’s family.”
“Less creative.” He opens the passenger door. “Home?”
The word lands strangely. Home. My apartment, the clean lines and big windows I chose specifically because they looked nothing like the life I was leaving. The space I built to be alone in.
“Yes,” I say. “Home.”
The drive is quiet, but not empty.
Grayson keeps one hand on the wheel and one hand on my thigh, his thumb tracing absent patterns through the fabric of my dress. He doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t push. Just maintains that steady point of contact, grounding me while my mind processes everything Penelope threw at me.
You’re a rebound. A revenge fuck.
The words should sting. They don’t. But they’ve lodged somewhere in my chest, sharp and small, and I can’t quite shake them loose.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Grayson says.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just tell me what she said that’s still rattling around in there.”
I watch the city blur past the window. “She said you’d never love me the way Kirk did.”
“She’s right.”
I turn to look at him. His profile is steady, his jaw relaxed, his eyes on the road.
“That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be reassuring. It’s meant to be true.
” He glances at me briefly before returning his attention to traffic.
“Kirk loved you the way he loves everything - as a possession. Something to display. Something that reflected well on him.” His hand tightens slightly on my thigh. “I don’t love you like that.”
“How do you love me?”
The question comes out before I can stop it. We haven’t said the words, not explicitly, not outside of the heat of the hotel room. We’ve been circling around them for weeks, showing instead of telling, and part of me is terrified to make it real.
Grayson is quiet for a long moment. We turn onto my street, and he pulls into a parking spot with practiced ease before cutting the engine.
Then he turns to face me.
“I love you like you’re the first thing that’s made sense in years.
” His voice is low, rough. “I love you like I’ve been waiting for you without knowing I was waiting.
I love you like every time I’m not touching you, I’m thinking about touching you, and every time I am touching you, I’m thinking about how I almost missed this. ”
My breath catches.
“I love you like I want to spend the rest of my life making sure no one ever makes you feel invisible again.” He reaches up, his thumb brushing my cheek. “Is that different enough from Kirk?”
I can’t speak. My throat is too tight.
I nod.
“Good.” He unbuckles his seatbelt. “Now let’s go inside before I do something inadvisable in a parked car.”
***
The elevator ride is torture.
We’re not touching - there’s an elderly woman with a small dog sharing the car, and we’re both too aware of her presence to risk anything - but the air between us is thick with everything we’re not doing.
Grayson stands close enough that I can feel the heat of him, smell the cedar and skin that I’ve started associating with safety.
The woman gets off on the fourth floor.
The doors close.
Grayson’s hand finds the small of my back, and I feel it everywhere.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs. His thumb strokes a slow line over the silk.
“I know.” I lean back into his hand.
“Do you want me to-” He turns me to face him.
“If you finish that sentence with anything other than ‘take you to bed,’ I’m going to be very disappointed.” I fist my hand in his shirtfront.
The sound he makes - somewhere between a laugh and a groan - sends heat pooling low in my stomach.