Now he had… a really nice apartment and a better job, but no one to share it with.
The tradeoff was starting to feel less and less like a good one, even though his old job had disappeared from under him.
He needed to work to give Hope the best chance in life. She deserved that. He just wished he didn’t have to do it so far away from the people he loved.
“Hey,” Grant spoke up before Hope could respond. “You know I’m gonna make this up to you, right?”
“Okay, daddy,” Hope said.
Like she didn’t believe him. Like she was just… disappointed. Not mad.
Like her mother.
It was evenworsecoming from his daughter.
“I’m serious.” Grant paused to decidehowhe was going to make it up to her, and then remembered something she’d said years ago.
“You always wanted snow at Christmas, right? Well, this year, I’m gonna give you snow, okay?”
“In California?” Hope asked, as incredulous as Grant would have expected her to be.
“No, I’m gonna take us all somewhere really nice, where it snows, and we’re gonna have a real tree and hot chocolate by the fire and a snowball fight. Seriously. This is a promise.”
Grant didn’t promise things lightly. It was his policy to never break a promise, no matter what it took to make them happen.
He’d get Hope snow for Christmas. He had to.
She deserved a better father than him. She deserved the world and the moon and all the stars. But this was something hecoulddo, and he was going to.
“Really?” Hope asked, her tone changing a little. She sounded as though she almost believed him.
“Really. Ineverbreak a promise.”
“I know,” Hope said. “I love you, daddy.”
A weight lifted off Grant’s shoulders. He was forgiven. He might not get to see his little girl for another few weeks yet, but at least she didn’t hate him for this.
“I love you too, sweetheart. You wanna tell me about your day?” he asked.
If he couldn’t see her, at least he could talk to her. He talked to her almost every day, but he’d been letting that slip lately, too.
He needed help. He couldn’t manage his job and his life on his own. Pretty much everyone else at his level had a PA.
Grant had held out against it, not wanting to admit to needing anything, but this incident was forcing his hand. A PA would have gotten him a flight.
He smiled as he listened to Hope describe what she and her friends had done at school, laughing whenever she did, glowing with joy at getting to talk to her.
Accepting help would give him more of this, so he needed to accept some help.
