Silence, then footsteps.
Grant stepped behind the SUV, feeling ridiculous. Like a teenager eavesdropping on something he had no business hearing.
Sabine walked past first, heels clicking a sharp rhythm on the pavement. Her face was composed—the same cool mask she'd worn at the gala—but her hands were shaking. Fingers white-knuckled around her car keys.
Tyce followed a minute later, adjusting his collar. His expression reset as he walked—irritation smoothing into ease, tension dropping from his shoulders like a coat he'd decided not to wear.
A mask sliding into place.
He spotted Grant.
"Knight!" The smile was immediate. Seamless. "Good tournament. That putt on the back nine was brutal, man."
"Thanks." Grant straightened. "Tough day."
"They always are." Tyce clapped him on the shoulder—too familiar, too friendly. "See you around."
He walked toward a silver Porsche without looking back.
Grant stood there, watching him go.
He didn't know what he'd just witnessed. But he'd been around Emmy long enough to recognize the patterns—the mask sliding into place, that tell-tale tremor in the hands that told a different story from the composed face. Sabine's attachment to Tyce wasn't professional. And Tyce's irritation wasn't about being overheard. It was about being known.
He didn't have Emmy's vocabulary for it. But he knew it wasn't nothing.
The shuttle dropped them back at the stadium. Grant found his car in the player lot.
He sat there for a long moment before starting the engine.
I'm not West's baby sister. I'm not yours to protect.
She was right. She wasn't. Hadn't been for years.
Grant started the car. Pulled out of the lot.
The highway unspooled ahead of him, familiar enough that he could drive on autopilot. He thought about the gala. Her voice defending him to a room full of people who'd written him off as a body that threw a ball. The jacket around her shoulders, still warm from his skin. Pizza at eleven PM, her wearing his hoodie like it was hers, comfortable in his space in a way no one else had ever been. The terrace, when he'd almost?—
And then Tyce's arm around her. Tyce laughing at her. Tyce steering her away like he owned her.
His throat went tight.
Concern, he told himself.She's Emmy. You've known her since you were twelve.
The skyline of Boston emerged through his windshield, familiar towers catching the last of the sunset. Orange and gold and pink, the whole city lit up like something worth keeping. Grant had lived here for ten years. Built a career here, a life here. He knew every highway, every shortcut, every route home.
He pulled into his parking garage and sat there, engine off, in the dark.
Tomorrow he had practice. Film review. A hundred things that required his full attention, his complete focus, the part of his brain that was currently occupied by blonde hair and champagne explosions and the look on her face when she'd said I don't need your protection.
Tonight he had the echo of her voice and the memory of Sabine's shaking hands and something he couldn't name sitting heavy in his chest, right where concern used to be.
CHAPTER TEN
The video had 2.3 million views.
When she'd gone to bed last night, it had been at 47,000. Embarrassing, but contained. A local humiliation. Boston's population was 650,000—the odds of running into someone who'd actually seen it were manageable. She could survive manageable.
Then Tyce had shared it.
