Page 85 of Sealing the Deal

I check Sonia is still happy to close the bar, and then I step outside and start the walk back to my apartment, the night cool against my flushed skin, my thoughts tumbling faster with every block.

I used to think Grayson bought my building to blackmail me into helping him win over the fans. And then I got to know him and realized he did it because I was struggling to pay rent and I was hanging by a thread. He bought my building because he could help, and Grayson is a man who always helps. And now I understand there was more. He would’ve spoken to my old landlord. He would’ve known about the sale. He saw that my bar—and every other business on that street—was one signature and a few months away from being rubble. He’d seen, over and over, the devastation lost businesses and livelihoods had on those affected. He didn’t just make sure my bar was safe. He made sure the entire street was safe. That’s who Grayson Ashborne is. He saves people. Putting everyone else first even when it costs him everything.

By the time I reach my apartment, my chest aches with the knowledge. I push the door open and freeze. There’s an envelope on the table. My name is written on the front in familiar, careful handwriting. My hands shake as I open it.

Inside is a note. Just five words.

I love you. I’m sorry.

Tucked behind it is a fifty-dollar bill. Creased and soft with use.

I stare at it, breath hitching, suddenly certain it’s the same bill I handed him that first night when he stepped behind the bar, clueless about beer taps and bar work and hated by half the city, but determined to help anyway.

“I love you, too,” I whisper to my empty apartment.

Letting Grayson in was never the problem after all. It’s this. Letting him go. Because every instinct in me is screaming to do the opposite. To stand at his side while he takes on a legacy that isn’t his fault and a fight he never should have had to carry alone. He saves everyone else. And now I want to be the one who saves him.

Izzy told me to follow my heart. To choose happiness. And I see now that I’ve kept my life small because it felt safer that way. If my world was just the bar, the Red Zone, and the Sullivans, then I didn’t have to fear having anything taken away from me.

I told myself it was enough. That it was all I wanted. That I didn’t need more. But the truth is, I was afraid of more.

Mom left for Florida when I was twenty-two. She was chasing her own happiness after a lifetime behind the bar. I told everyone I understood. That I was grown and didn’t need her anymore. Maybe part of that was even true. But another part of me felt like the ground had shifted under my feet. Because she’d sacrificed my childhood, and countless small things in our family and our relationship, to run The Hay Barn. And then walked away from it in a heartbeat, like none it had ever mattered.

But even before then, losing people wasn’t new to me. I lost a father to drink then death. I lost Harry Sullivan, too. He was a decent man. The first person who, along with Mama, showed me what family could look like. He saw a lonely kid sitting in a bar and decided she deserved better. But too quickly, he died.

And even though Mama and the boys never stopped making Oakwood Ranch feel like home, some part of me learned that if I keep my world small and my circle tight, there’s less chance of getting hurt or abandoned again.

But loving Grayson changed that. Because wanting him means wanting more. It means a bigger life in a wider world. And that means risking everything I’ve spent years trying not to lose.

Grayson didn’t just walk into my life. He trusted me with his reputation. With decisions that mattered. He listened to me. Respected me. Put me at the table and asked for my voice instead of trying to drown it out. He showed me a world that was bigger than this bar—but where I still mattered inside it.

Then it hits me. Yeah, I’m terrified, but I don’t want less anymore. Keeping myself contained so nothing could touch me meant nothing could truly expand either. And I’m done with that. There are risks, sure. I could get hurt. But for the first time in my life, I’m not choosing safety. I’m choosing more.

Except I can’t ignore the words I said in his New York apartment. Not everyone wants to be saved. I was talking about Ana. But Grayson? Maybe I’d kept my world small to protect myself, but Grayson built his world around believing the burden is his and his alone, to protect and save and fix.

I don’t know if I can break through that. I don’t know that if I choose him and choose to change my life, he’ll let me. Because loving him isn’t the risk anymore. Grayson already has my whole heart. The risk is that he won’t let me stand by his side.

THIRTY-EIGHT

GRAYSON

My father’s office has always felt like a mausoleum. Sterile, imposing, suffocating. Glass, steel, and polished wood arranged with ruthless precision. I always hated this room.

A laptop is open in front of me. Another inbox filling up with contracts and briefing notes. Things I need to read but can’t bring myself even to open. My phone buzzes again, vibrating against the surface of the desk, and somewhere outside the door my assistant’s phone has been ringing nonstop since I arrived at dawn. The last twenty-four hours have been a blur of airports, calls with members of the board, hushed conversations, and decisions no one should have to make when they haven’t slept.

I saw my father in the hospital last night. He was unconscious. Tubes in his arms. Machines breathing rhythm into a body that has always seemed indestructible. He looked smaller than I’ve ever seen him. Weak. And that’s exactly what he was all along. Only a weak man could take pleasure in destroying others the way he did. This was the man who took sport in pressing my buttons. The same man who would rather put his own daughter’s life at risk than see her succeed. My mother sat beside him, fingers wrapped around his limp hand, her eyes rimmed red with an emotion I’d never seen in her before. I wondered if she really loved him or was just playing her part as the distraught wife.

His surgery is today. They’ve warned us the odds aren’t in his favor. That we should prepare ourselves. I stood there while the doctor listed risks and percentages and probabilities, and I searched for something inside me. Grief. Fear. Even anger. But there was nothing. No surge of love. Not even a whisper. And I won’t pretend otherwise.

I’m exhausted, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the familiar, dangerous instinct to sacrifice myself if it means holding everything else together. Fix it. Save it. Carry it. That’s always been my role. It’s why I’m here, even if doubt roils in my stomach and a small insistent voice in my thoughts asks me if this is really what I want.

The answer doesn’t matter. Want doesn’t come into it. This is what I’m choosing. It’s the right thing to do. Even if the hollow ache in my chest has grown louder since I left Denver and Flic at the hospital when all I wanted to do was sit beside her and comfort her. I hope Izzy and the baby are OK. I hope Flic is OK, too.

I don’t need you, Grayson.

The words still cut deep, but they’ve taken on a new meaning in the hours since. She wasn’t saying them to hurt me or push me away. She was saying them to reassure me. She was reminding me that she’s strong enough to stand on her own. She was telling me I don’t have to split myself in two and be everything for everyone, for her. Because she knows me. She knows I will never walk away when I can help. And Flic will never ask me to change. Instead, she was letting me go. Giving me permission to be exactly who I am. No fight. No pleading. No begging me to be someone I’m not. Just understanding, support, and trust. And I love her so much for that. For everything she is.

I pick up my phone again, thumb hovering over her name. I want to call her. I want to hear her voice and pretend, for a moment, that I didn’t walk away. But I don’t. It’s not fair to her or to me. I can’t be in Denver now. And Flic has always been clear. She wouldn’t ask me to change my life for her. And she wouldn’t change hers for me. I can’t ask her to come to New York and carry on standing beside me.