"Yeah."
West turned to go, then stopped. "Grant."
"Yeah."
"Merry Christmas, man."
"Merry Christmas."
West disappeared around the corner. His footsteps faded. A door opened and closed, and then the locker room was just Grant and the hum of the lights and the weight of a three-letter lie still sitting in the air where he'd left it.
No.
He grabbed his keys and walked out.
The parking lot was half-empty, the late afternoon sky doing that thing where it couldn't decide between gray and purple. December in New England—the sun was already giving up by four o'clock, slinking behind the stadium like it had somewhere better to be.
Grant's breath came out in clouds. He was reaching for his keys when he heard her.
"Grant!"
He turned. Bailey was crossing the lot, zipping up her puffer jacket. She must have just dropped off Dr. Nwosu—Jenny's car was perpetually in the shop, and Bailey had been her ride to the facility since before Grant had met either of them.
"Merry Christmas Eve," Bailey said. "How are you? The Jets game looked brutal."
"Controlled brutality. That's the job description."
"Mmm. You should put that on a T-shirt." She pulled her gloves on, studying him with the same frank attention she'd brought to their three dates—direct, warm, unbothered by the silences other people rushed to fill. "You look tired."
"'Tis the season."
Bailey tilted her head. "How's Emmy?"
The name landed like a finger on a bruise. Grant kept his face neutral—or tried to. Bailey had always been hard to hide from. It was one of the things he'd liked about her, and one of the reasons they hadn't worked. She saw too clearly, and what she saw was a man whose attention was already spoken for.
"Haven't talked to her," Grant said.
"Really?" Bailey's eyebrows rose. “I assumed you two would be…wait. She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"She ambushed me." Bailey said it lightly, almost amused. "Outside Mass General. Seven in the morning. I'd just comeoff a twelve-hour shift and there she was on a bench near the entrance, looking like she'd been there awhile."
Grant's hand stilled on his car keys.
"She'd found out we weren't together anymore," Bailey continued. "Thought it was because of her—the leak, the press, all of it. She apologized. Tried to convince me to give you another chance." She paused. "It was sweet, actually.”
The parking lot was quiet. Somewhere in the stadium, a door slammed. Wind rattled a chain-link fence along the perimeter.
"She tried to get you to take me back," Grant said. Not a question.
"She made a very compelling case. You should hear her in full matchmaker mode." Bailey smiled. "She told me you were worth it. That whatever she'd broken, I shouldn't let her mistakes be the reason I walked away from someone like you."
Grant's chest did something he didn't have words for. A compression. A dropping.
Emmy had gone to Bailey. Not to apologize for herself. Not to explain or justify or spin. She'd gone to fix the thing she thought she'd broken—his relationship with someone else. She'd stood outside a hospital at dawn and argued for a woman to take him back, knowing that if it worked, she'd lose him.
The matchmaker making one last match. And this time it cost her everything she wanted.
