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Fuck.I shook my head. “I tried, but she didn’t want to hear it. After that, the contract tied her to me in such a way that it didn’t seem fair to force the conversation on her. And then, of course, she’s been so sick. There’s no way I could bring it up to her while she was going through all of that.”
“You want my advice?”
“Yes.” I really, really did.
“Tell her how you feel.”
I grimaced. Talking about my feelings wasn’t exactly a strength of mine.
“Trust me, Grayson. Underneath the tough, punk rock persona, Stef is an extremely kind, sensitive girl. She’ll listen if you ask her to. And something tells me she actually wants to hear it from you.” She eyed me for a moment, making me feel two feet tall. “At least give it some thought. Okay?”
I nodded. I could at least do that.
CHAPTER 27
Grayson
You’d think that having only myself and Stef in the house again would make me pretty happy. And it kind of did. Except that now all I could think about was the conversation with Lucy. The guilt took up all the space in my mind. Even when I was holed up in my office, trying to force myself to focus.
And something tells me she actually wants to hear it from you.
If Lucy was right, thennotapologizing was even shitter than putting Stef in the position of having to listen to me. Fuck, I was just no good at this sort of thing. Give me spreadsheets, cost evaluations, market trends to analyze any day. But navigating the complex terrain of emotions and personal relationships? That was like asking me to decode an alien language without a Rosetta Stone.
Get over yourself. This is no more than Stef deserves.
It was time.
I stood up and made my way to the living room. Stef was where I’d expected her to be, on the recliner, Patti in her lap while she read a book on her eReader.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She smiled, but then took one look at my face and her smile faded.
“I need to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Um, okay.”
I sat down on the other recliner, facing her. Her expression was guarded and there was tension in her shoulders.
“I have something to say that I’ve wanted to say for a very long time.”Here goes. “I know I hurt you. Really badly. You didn’t deserve any of what I said to you. It was beyond fucked up. I understand if you can’t forgive me. I just want to say that I am deeply, deeply sorry for the pain I caused you.”
Her eyes were locked on mine, bright and intense. I felt raw and exposed, not knowing what she would say. “I…I thought we were just having a bit of fun, you know? Just working off some energy. I never knew you were there to check out the band.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Then why... why did you think that about me?”
Everything between us rested on this moment. I couldn’t fuck it up. It was time for the whole, dirty truth. “I’ve thought about this a lot since that night and I think maybe I know why. It’s just very hard to admit, even to myself.” I cleared my throat. “I thought you were unlike any person I’d ever met. Wild and funny and so completely yourself—nothing fake about you. I took you home,and it was all great, then the next morning when we—” My voice trailed off as I struggled to find the words for what I wanted to say next.
“Go on.”
“Pretty much every interaction in my life is, um…transactional, I guess you could say. My whole life, I’ve been surrounded by people who only want something from me. My father, for example, has always seen me as a means to an end - a way to carry on the family legacy and grow the business. He’s never cared about me as a person, only as a tool to achieve his goals.”
“Which you’ve been very good at.”
I gave her a rueful smile. “You could say that. And my mother is the same. As long as I’m contributing to her social status, that’s all she cares about. The truth is, I’m not a charismatic guy, never the life of the party. So, I’m, uh, not used to people choosing me for me, I guess.”
Stef stared at me for a long time, her expression unreadable. Then she said, “Well, that’s fucking depressing.”