“I’ll say it.” Grayson carefully removes his suit jacket and folds it in two. “He really was a prick, wasn’t he?” Grayson lifts his palm, his muscles bulging beneath his button-down. “Not supposed to speak ill of the dead, I know, but the lying bastard led us here.”
“Don’t you mean the two of you lying bastards?”
“I mistook you for more evolved than a woman scorned, Mallory.” He takes a seat in front of her, spreading to fill every inch of the chair. “Is every woman simply Taylor Swift at heart?”
“Enough.” Anger jabs like a bee sting. “You’re resigning. I’d like to say ‘today,’ but I’m not a masochist. Not even to get back at you. Give it a month. Then you’re out of AIM.”
Her tone causes the flirtatious glint in his eye to fizzle out. “Or?”
“Or I tell the truth. You used Ethan Sonders to create and perpetrate a fraud on all of our investors, employees, and the public for your own financial gain. It’ll tar my reputation, Ilena’s, Aubrey’s, maybe even end AIM. But I now know there are worse things.”
“You don’t believe that. You’re bluffing.”
“I was the first time at the outing. But now...” She shrugs. “We’ll see.”
“Believe what you want, Mallory, but I had nothing to do with it, not until after it was done. Our valuation was going up and up, and you and I were riding high in more ways than one. The duplicate accounts were a brilliant idea, which is how you know I’d take ownership if it was actually mine. Little prick had the nerve to call me and solicit a thank-you. He followed it with a demand for a payoff, laughing like we were in some boys’ club.”
“But I was there,” Mallory says. “I heard you both.”
“What you heard was me staving off a blackmail attempt, which apparently then became an unfortunate pattern. It’s astounding, truly, that Mr. Sonders actually thought he could gain the upper hand. But no one fucks with me or this company. I haven’t believed in a business more since my first—”
“That’s bullshit. Don’t rewrite history, Grayson. You never believed in AIM. You never even used it.”
“I don’t have to use diapers or chemotherapy to believe in them.” He seems so genuine, like when they’d mapped out the plan for going public. They were on his couch, the catered meal from the oyster bar around the corner untouched, including the two bottles of wine. They’d gotten so immersed in what AIM could become. His shoulders hunch, nearly imperceptibly. “Be logical, Mallory. Let’s say I’d done what you were trying to force me to do at the outing, suddenly invested a substantial amount of money in AIM so you could use that as your reason for canceling the direct listing. What then? The media wouldn’t have stopped digging until it found our every skeleton. I had to preserve AIM, even if it made you hate me. You would have done the same thing.”
Her head swims, and all she can think is he’s right. That’s partly how he had been able to thaw the heart she’d spent a lifetime hardening. He accepts her for who she is.
Her mother had said that love was being able to forgive when we get it wrong, and Mallory might have done just that. She’d been falling in love with him, and maybe that would have meant she would have forgiven him for undermining her. For being that selfish. She’d been that selfish with Ilena and Aubrey. He’s right that a version of her might have done the same thing. But she wouldn’t. Not anymore.
“I probably would have,” Mallory admits. “Once. And that’s something I have to live with. But what I don’t have to live with is you.” Mallory brushes past him and opens the door to her office. “Goodbye, Grayson.”
“You’ll miss me more than you realize.”
“Maybe. But it’s better not to have someone than to have a shitty version of them.”
She is a strong, independent woman who will squeal at mice because they’re terrifying and will ask for help changing a tire because she pays a fortune for manicures, and she never needed a romantic relationship before and she doesn’t need one now. But wanting is an entirely different thing. She wants love. Grayson has shown her that. He’s also shown her that she doesn’t want it with him.
She stares into those eyes she still sees herself in, knowing she’ll work to change that. “And one last piece of advice. Carry a damn EpiPen.”
She doesn’t watch him go. She moves to her window and stands in the reflection of the sun off the glass, hoping for a brief flash of déjà vu, so she can know if her alternate self is okay—and thank her. Harley too.
Footsteps softened by the expensive carpet resound, and her throat swells. She turns. Sees Ilena. And Aubrey. Mallory wants to grab her and hug her and say she’s sorry, so very sorry.
“Mallory,” Ilena says pointedly, as if she knows Mallory is about to break. “It certainly is an emotional morning for all of us.” She gestures to the clock on the wall. “The opening bell, it’s almost time. After everything, it’s almost time.”
Mallory and Ilena hold each other’s gaze as if they were holding hands.
“No!” Aubrey cries. “Not today.”
Mallory scans Ilena’s face, but the creases on her forehead make it clear that she’s not following either.
“This.” Aubrey jabs a finger at each of them. “You have entire conversations in a single look, and I get it, I know you’ve been friends for a really long time, but you invited me to that table, and I sat there, shaking and doubting myself every second I was with the two of you then and every second since, and Mallory fighting with Grayson and Jonah moving out and my nerves over all of it may have sent us into our own worlds for the past week, but we’re not doing this today, on the day AIM goes public, because this is ours. All of ours. And I want in. All the way.”
Ilena’s face crumples. “Oh, Aubrey, did we do that, did we make you feel that way?”
“No,” Aubrey says, “and yes. And ever since Ethan, things have been, well, we’ve all been distant? Strained? I can’t do itanymore.” Her lower lip trembles as she faces Mallory. “I know you never liked him.”
“Well, I—”
