“You don’t know?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I tried talking to him about it, but he just said it was complicated. I thought maybe he wanted to stay in the city because of you, but clearly that’s not the case. You haven’t talked to him?”
“No. I thought he was here.”
“He was. For several days of intense heartbreak recovery. He cried a lot.” She shot me with a glare that went straight to my gut and twisted it, hard. The thought of Ellison in tears over me nearly broke me. “But then he said he had to go back to the city. Something about honor and ‘a deal’s a deal’? He packed up his things and took off.”
I stood up. “Then I need to get back home and find him. Thank you.”
She narrowed her eyes and gave me a thousand-watt smile. “If you’d really like to show your gratitude, you could donate to our program. Ellison would be very appreciative.”
Marcel barked out a laugh and produced a checkbook from his messenger bag, then handed it to me to fill out.
When I gave the check to Gigi, her eyes widened in shock. “My god. You really were grateful. Th-thank you very much for your generosity.” Then she looked up from the check. “Did you want a portion of this to go toward the Blackwood Scholarship fund?”
“You don’t need to fund a scholarship in my name,” I said, standing up. “Use it however you see fit.”
She blinked in surprise, and then her eyes danced like she knew something I didn’t. “The Blackwood Scholarship fund was established over ten years ago, Mr. Blackwood. It was my brother’s pet project and one of the reasons we started this school in the first place. Half of our students are here on a Blackwood Scholarship.”
The sound of Marcel’s sigh faded as the room around me wobbled and dipped.
I sat back down in a graceless heap.
24
Ellison
“It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It had been ten days since I’d left the Hamptons. Ten days of accepting my new reality and getting to experience all the punishment of my decisions and little of the reward. Ten days of coming to terms with the fact Grey Blackwood wasn’t the honorable man I’d thought he was.
“Dude, your sister is on line one,” my assistant, Skyla, said through the intercom on the conference table phone. “She said she tried you on your cell first.”
I pulled out my phone and looked at it. Sure enough, two missed calls and a text. My head was in the clouds these days. I was overlooking stuff left and right. After slipping my phone back into my pocket, I picked up the conference room phone’s handset. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another few minutes, and people were still trickling in and helping themselves to coffee on the sideboard.
“Hey.”
“Yeah, so, ah… we just got a huge donation from BGP.”
“Awesome,” I said, reaching for my pen and flipping it through my fingers. “I’ll process it when I get home tonight.” It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. A few friends had invited me out for a drink, but I kept putting them off. Pretty sure going out with someone this mopey was about as exciting as staying home to iron clothes.
“Grey Blackwood is a specimen of a man,” she said with a sigh.
I sat up. “Wait. BGP like Blackwood Giving Program?”
“That’s the one.”
My heart tripped over itself, ramping up to a speed it hadn’t seen in approximately ten days. “He was there? He went to Warrington? What for? No, wait, never mind.” It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. “Define huge,” I prompted in a low voice. Maybe I cared a little.
“Like, I’ve never seen this many digits on one check before.” The smile in her voice was obvious. “It’s… pretty amazing.”
“And did… did he say anything? Was it… did he say how he wanted it spent or… how he was doing?” I was pathetic, but my sister already knew that. She’d been the one to greet my sorry ass when I’d finally turned up in Vermont and promptly burst into tears on her doorstep.
“Nope.” She paused. “But I did mention putting some of it toward the Blackwood Scholarship fund.”
I groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“Oh, but I did. And Ells? I think you’re going to need to get in touch with him and thank him personally.”
“Hah! Yeah right. Like that’s going to happen. No. No way. This one’s on you, sis. Not happening on my end. Nope.”
I couldn’t even wrap my head around seeing Grey right now. He would be all… corporate and stoic like he’d been when I’d first seen him in this same damned conference room a couple of weeks before.
Like that guy who’d just walked in. Broad-shouldered and wearing a perfectly tailored suit. Blond hair styled just so and blue-green eyes that…
I blinked. “Oh shit,” I whispered, staring at the vision in front of me. “I’ve finally had a psychotic break.”
“What do you mean?” my sister asked through the phone.
I blinked again, but Grey Blackwood’s image was still there. My heartbreak and anger had finally combusted together to form an actual hallucination.
“I think I need medical help,” I pleaded in a whisper. “He’s here.”
Before she could ask who, I continued. “Grey. Grey is here. Grey.” I couldn’t stop saying his name. I loved the way it felt on my tongue. Saying it out loud made it real.
He pinned me with his stare, and I dropped the handset with a clatter. The noise got everyone’s attention, and the room went silent.
“Wh-what are you, um…” I swallowed and glanced around, desperate for someone to tell me what the hell was happening right now. “What are you doing here?” Was that a little squeaky? Too squeaky?
Somehow, my squeaky voice seemed to make him relax. His shoulders dropped away from his ears just a little, but his eyes grew even more intense.
He took several slow steps toward me. “I’m here for you.”
“Pfft,” I swallowed again. Had my throat ever been this dry before? No. Surely not. “That’s… pfft.”
The corner of his lip curved up, which made me mad. And suddenly I remembered how very fucking angry I was.
“Get out,” I said, finding my voice. “You don’t have a right to be here anymore.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But I need to talk to you.”
I shook my head a little frantically. “Pfft. No. No way. Not happening. Pfft.” Why did I feel like a broken record?
He took another step forward and dropped to his knees right in front of me. He reached for the arms of my chair and swiveled it until he was kneeling between my knees. I glanced nervously at my coworkers, who stared in shock at the unexpected scene.
Grey put his hands on my thighs and moved them up to my hips and then around my waist. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said in a rough voice. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”