"Emmy Woodhouse," Bailey said. "I was wondering if I'd see you again."
"Can I talk to you? Five minutes. I know you've been on your feet all night."
Bailey searched her face. Then she nodded toward a bench near the entrance, sheltered from the wind by a concrete overhang.
They sat. Emmy didn't waste time.
"I came to tell you that what happened—the press, the leak, the whole disaster—that was my fault. All of it. Grant didn't do anything wrong. He's a good man who got caught in something he never asked for because I was too ambitious and too careless to protect the one person who trusted me."
Bailey listened without interrupting. Her hands were folded in her lap. She wasn't wearing gloves, and her knuckles were pink from the cold.
"I know you two aren't together anymore," Emmy said. "And I know it's probably because of the mess I made. The press, the cameras, your name getting pulled into something that had nothing to do with you." She took a breath. The cold air burned her throat. "Grant is worth it, Bailey. Whatever happened—whatever I broke—please don't let my mistakes be the reason you walk away from someone like him."
The automatic doors hissed open behind them, releasing a burst of heated air.
"Emmy," Bailey said. "It wasn't you."
"It was. I said his name to a gossip columnist because she was being nice to me and I was feeling sorry for myself and..." She swallowed. "I practically wrote the article for her."
"I don't mean the leak." Bailey's voice was gentle and direct. "I mean the reason we ended. It wasn't the press."
"Are you sure? Because?—"
"We just didn't work out." Bailey said it simply. "Like any relationship in the beginning, you have to find your footing. And it just wasn't right. I like him. But we're better off as friends." She paused. "And he—I think he wanted it to work. But it would have been work. And both of us work hard enough as it is."
"Because of me." Emmy's voice came out hoarse. "Because of what I did—the press, the exposure—I made it impossible for him to just be in a normal relationship without?—"
"Emmy." Bailey's expression was kind and slightly amused, which was worse than anger. "Do you really think you're so powerful that one mistake could break a man who's survived worse than a tabloid headline?"
"Grant Knight is notbroken," Bailey said. "He's not damaged. He's not incapable of love because you hurt him. He's a grown man whose heart was somewhere else before I ever met him."
Emmy opened her mouth. Closed it.
Emmy stared at her. The wind cut across the hospital entrance, and a strand of hair blew into her face. She didn't brush it away.
Bailey stood. Pulled her jacket tighter. She looked down at Emmy with an expression that was neither pitying nor cold—just honest.
"You came here to fix something," Bailey said. "That's very you, from what I understand. But this isn't yours to fix."
Emmy couldn't speak. The cold seeped through her coat, through her jeans, settled into her bones like it meant to stay.
Then she zipped her jacket to the chin, pulled out her phone, and walked toward the parking garage without looking back. The kind of clean exit Emmy had never learned to make.
Emmy sat on the bench for a long time.
She replayed Bailey's words. Somewhere else. Before I ever met him.
For one terrible second, she let herself feel it—the possibility that uncoiled in her chest like a fist opening. That "somewhere else" meant somewhere specific. That it meant her.
Then she shut it down. Because that was exactly the self-serving delusion she'd built her entire career on—thematchmaker who saw love everywhere except where it actually lived. Emmy Woodhouse, making herself the center of someone else's story. Again.
No. Grant's heart was somewhere else because she'd hollowed it out. Three months of treating his privacy like currency, his trust like collateral, his quiet steady presence like something she was owed. She'd used him up. And now he couldn't give himself to Bailey or anyone else because Emmy had taken the part of him that was available and spent it on her career.
Already gone.
Because of her. All of it, because of her.
Emmy stood. Her legs were stiff from the cold. The hospital entrance cycled open, closed, open, closed—a mechanical breath that didn't care about her revelations.
