And the text. The text Sabine had sent during the auction, right when everything was falling apart. Exciting news to share soon. Emmy had assumed it was a wrong number. Or a taunt.
It was neither. It was a victory lap.
Not because it didn't sting—it did. But the sting wasn't about Tyce. Emmy searched herself for jealousy, for the bruised vanity of a woman who'd been passed over, and found nothing. Tyce Duke and his practiced charm and his four million followers could have Sabine Greer and her cold ambition and they could open a hundred satellite offices and target every ultra-high-net-worth individual on the eastern seaboard. They deserved eachother with a precision Emmy's matchmaking instincts should have recognized months ago.
No. What stung was the miss.
She was a professional people-reader. That was supposed to be her gift—the pattern recognition, the ability to see what was really happening beneath what people showed you. And she'd spent months reading Tyce's flirtation as interest, Sabine's hostility as professional jealousy, Cecelia's mentorship as belief. She'd built an entire career on her ability to see people clearly, and she'd been wrong about every single one of them.
The matchmaker who missed the match happening right in front of her.
She'd wanted to find Tyce a good match. She really had. She'd read and reread his intake questionnaire and analyzed his attachment style and genuinely tried to understand what he needed. And the whole time, the answer was sitting two desks away, equally duplicitous, equally ambitious, equally willing to use other people as stepping stones.
She should have looked for someone just like him. Someone reptilian, with a long scaly tail and horns and a pitchfork in her closet.
And Grant—Grant, who couldn't name an attachment style to save his life but could read a room in two seconds flat—Grant had seen it. He'd tried to tell her about Tyce at the golf tournament. He'd warned her, plainly and without agenda, and she'd chosen pride over his judgment. She'd rather be wrong on her own terms than right on his.
That was the real miss. Not Tyce. Not Sabine.
Grant.
The elevator dinged.
Emmy turned to Beckanne one last time.
"Thank you," she said. "For telling me the truth. That's been in short supply around here."
Beckanne blinked. Of all the responses she'd expected—tears, fury, a dramatic monologue—gratitude clearly wasn't one of them.
"You're welcome," she said.
Emmy stepped into the elevator. Hit the lobby button. Watched the doors slide shut on Elite Connections—the flowers, the photographs, the efficient little Christmas tree with its silver tinsel and no ornaments. The beautiful machine that converted human loneliness into quarterly growth.
The laugh came from somewhere she didn't expect.
Low in her chest, involuntary—not humor, not joy, just the sound of three months of clenching finally giving way. Tyce. Sabine. Cecelia. Herself.
Especially herself.
She pressed her forehead against the cool metal of the elevator wall and laughed until her eyes burned and her breath came ragged and the sound turned into something that wasn't quite laughing anymore.
The doors opened on the lobby.
Emmy wiped her face with the back of her hand. Straightened the blazer—which was not a replacement for a winter coat, but it was what she had. Walked through the marble lobby and pushed through the glass doors into December.
The cold was immediate and total.
The sun was already gone behind the buildings—four o'clock, and Boston was doing that thing where the sky went bruised purple and the streetlights stuttered on with their yellowish glow, turning everything sepia. Across the street, a shop window displayed a pyramid of gift boxes wrapped in gold paper. A woman walked past carrying a Douglas fir that was taller than she was, its branches leaving a trail of needles on the sidewalk like breadcrumbs.
She was twenty-five years old. She was unemployed. She had an eighteen-month non-compete, a permanent confidentiality agreement, and no references that wouldn't route through Cecelia Ferrance. She owed her parents a phone call. She owed Harper more than that. She owed West an explanation she didn't have yet, and she owed Grant?—
She didn't know what she owed Grant. Everything. Nothing he'd accept.
Two weeks until Christmas. Grant's chair at the Woodhouse table—the one he'd claimed when he was twelve, when he still had parents, when the world hadn't yet taught him to build walls against the people who claimed to care about him.
That chair would be empty this year.
Emmy started walking. Not toward the T station—she'd missed the part of the afternoon where public transit felt manageable. Just walking. No direction. Just movement, because standing still had never been something she could do, and today was not the day to learn.
