Not one of our usual spots. A dive on the south side where nobody gives a shit who you are. Message received.
I get there early. Order a whiskey. Take a corner booth.
Easton shows up at 9:15. The fifteen minutes is deliberate—I've known him long enough to recognize a power move. He slides into the booth, doesn't order anything, and just looks at me.
I wait for him to say something. He doesn't.
"Thanks for—"
"Don't." He cuts me off. "Don't thank me. I'm here because you mentioned my sister. That's it."
"Okay."
Silence. He's going to make me do the work. Fair enough.
"I fucked up," I say.
"Yeah."
"In the boardroom. What I said—"
"I know what you said. I was there." His voice is flat. "Watched you stand up and tell a room full of executives thatyou trust Sloane McKenzie with your future. Real romantic. Great timing."
"I was trying to—"
"I don't care what you were trying to do." He leans forward. "I care about what happened. She got fired. Escorted out by security. Had to sign an NDA so she can't even defend herself. And you got, what, a suspension? A fine?"
I don't have an answer for that.
"You know what she's doing right now?" Easton continues. "She's in her apartment, alone, trying to figure out how to rebuild a career that took her fifteen years to build. Fifteen years, Garrett. And you blew it up in thirty seconds because you couldn't keep your mouth shut."
"I know."
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you thought you were being some kind of hero. Big man standing up for his woman." The contempt in his voice is worse than if he'd just hit me. "She didn't need you to stand up. She was winning. She had them."
"I know," I say again. "I didn't see that. I should have, but I didn't."
"Why not?"
The question sits there. I turn my whiskey glass in my hands, not drinking.
"Because I was so focused on proving I'd fight for her that I didn't notice she was already fighting for herself." I make myself look at him. "I made it about me. What I needed to prove. And I turned her into... into someone who needed a man to vouch for her."
Easton's expression doesn't change. "Keep going."
"She was right. Everything she said when she kicked me out. I didn't see her—I saw someone to protect. And that's just as bad as not caring at all. Maybe worse."
He's quiet for a long moment. I can't read his face.
"You know what my problem is with you right now?" he finally says. "It's not that you screwed up. People screw up. It's that you screwed up in exactly the way I told Sloane you would."
"What do you mean?"
"I told her this would end with her getting hurt. I told her guys like us—athletes, guys with big egos and bigger platforms—we don't know how to love someone without making it a performance." He shakes his head. "She said you were different. Said you understood her. And then you stood up in that boardroom and proved me right."
I absorb that. Don't try to deflect.
"She trusted you," Easton says. "She doesn't trust anyone. Not like that. And you—"
