“Me too,” I agree.
“This hasn’t been going on for all this time, has it?” Ivory questions.
“Gosh no. I wouldn’t have kept it a secret all this time if we were actually a couple. Our relationship was over almost as quickly as it started. We met and got married within a few months and didn’t even make it to our first anniversary before it fell apart. I took the promotion to the LA office, and with the way it ended, it was too painful to get into afterward. By the time I started my own agency and was working with Ivory, I was trying to pick up the pieces and put it all behind me so we could move on. I served divorce papers, but Grant never signed themand I didn’t want a divorce enough to force the issue. We just lived our lives separately. I promise I didn’t keep it a secret because I didn’t trust you with it. It was a means of self-preservation.”
“But why didn’t you tell us when Grant showed up in St. John?” Gabby asks.
“It was Ivory’s wedding. Not the time for a huge reveal. What would I have even said? ‘Oh, hey, I know I didn’t have a plus one, but have you met my husband? You actually invited him yourself.’”
Gabby looks at me like she’s trying to decipher a hidden code. “That’s why you were so distant and frazzled that day. It wasn’t because of the wedding logistics.”
“My feelings with the wedding were complicated. I don’t know how to explain it. I wasn’t anticipating how it would feel to plan your wedding and then I was blindsided by the resurgence of memories from my own wedding. We got married on the beach in Long Caye. Everything about your wedding day reminded me of mine, and then Grant showed up wearing his ring, and I just wasn’t ready to deal with all that. It hurt too much.”
“You love him,” Ivory confidently states.
I nod. “With my whole entire heart, soul, everything. I’ve put him through hell too over the years.”
“I’m sorry, Tay.” Ivory leans her head on my shoulder.
“I was too for a long time, but I’m not anymore.”
“You’re not?” Gabby sounds skeptical.
“Not at all. Everything happened how it was supposed to. We were always meant to find our way back to each other. Grant just helped it along.” I tell them about all of Grant’s moves to bring Preston and Miller to Nashville. About the condition Mike had for coaching and how Grant used Chase’s situation to get me to stay in the city and work for the team.
“That’s so romantic,” Ivory swoons.
“This makes so much sense now,” Gabby chuckles.
“What does?”
“All the shared glances, the chemistry when you’re both in the room together, how it always seemed like there was more to the story. And why you always deflected when we brought up Grant in any way.” Gabby lists out all her observations over the past few months.
“I came to your house the day after Bark in the Park to talk to you about all of it. Grant and I had just slept together a couple days before that and I was dying to tell you. To talk it out and figure out my feelings about it all,” I tell them.
“And I wasn’t home because it was the same day as my appointment. That’s why you were at my house with lunch when I got back. I’m sorry, Taylor.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’ve been dealing with a lot on your own, G. It was more important to me to be the shoulder for you to lean on if and when you were ready. You take too much on yourself. I’m so relieved the biopsy came back negative and that you’re okay. And so so happy that you have Chase. He’s your soulmate.”
“I’m lucky, that’s for sure. I am definitely feeling the love and care lately, not just from him, from all of you. My chosen family.”
“It’s pretty great,” I agree. “Grant has been wanting me to tell you guys for a while. I told him we’d feel things out today and decide if it was time, but he couldn’t resist a ‘my wife’ moment.”
“So hot.” Gabby fans herself and giggles.
“Wait, wait, wait. So the house on Long Caye that we stayed at. It’s your house?” Ivory bounces in her seat.
“Well, we agreed to leave it alone in the post-nuptial settlement, but yes that’s the argument I made to get him to let you stay there.” I laugh.
“So what you’re saying is if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be reconnected with your husband?”
“You’ve been hanging out with Miller too much, Ives.”
“He is the third in my relationship. We really need to find him a woman.”
“Do you think he still talks to Chloe?” I ask. Chloe was the photographer at Ivory and Preston’s wedding, who Miller knew from his secret social media page. We’ve never seen Miller so flustered, and he crashed and burned majorly when he finally met his online crush in person.
Gabby answers, “I have no idea. He hasn’t mentioned her, and when I said her name at Bark in the Park, he shut me down quickly.”
