“All I got out of him before he left was that he needed to find closure.”
“He left?”
Zen lets me go and rolls their eyes. “And this is why I didn’t want to tell you anything.”
“Is he coming back?”
They wince.
My heart thuds to the floor and makes a bigger mess than the mashed potato fight mixed with the powdered cheese incident.
“Can you give him my phone number?” I whisper. “I never did.”
“Are you—of course you’re not kidding me. Of course. You two are ridiculous.”
The Valentine’s Day skate sucks.
Everyone else has fun, but Emma and I work the hot cocoa booth with Devi for the small business owners’ association, both of us staring glumly at everyone on the midnight ice, the lake lit up with fairy lights. The only bright spots for us are Laney and Theo—Laney on the ice in a wheelchair that Theo’s pushing—and Mimi and Grandpa Harry.
“I figured out a better revenge than ruining Bean & Nugget,” Em tells me as things are shutting down. “But now Grey’s gone and we don’t know why and I can’t help anymore.”
“Would it make you feel better to do it?” I ask her.
She grins.
It’s an honest Emma grin that makes me feel a decade younger.
An then she shakes her head. “Not as much as it would help him, but I’ll consider it solo if he doesn’t come back.”
“You think he’ll come back?”
“I think I hope he does, since I’ve never seen you hung up on a man like this before.”
“We had a fling in Hawaii my last night there,” I whisper.
She gasps. “Oh my god, and you’re just now telling me this? Details, Sabrina. I need all of the details.”
It feels awkward at first—So, Em, I felt like an absolute heel after your wedding and needed to do some good deeds—but as her face lights up more and more as I tell her everything I remember from the time I met him to the time I ghosted him, I feel something breaking free inside of me.
The guilt.
The guilt is going away now that we can talk about it.
“He…was there to cause trouble at your wedding,” I tell her.
“Do you know what Chandler did to him?”
“I do.”
“Did Chandler deserve it?”
“You did not.”
She squeezes my hand. “I think my life will be a lot better in this new direction I’m heading.”
“If you want me to forget Grey because of what he was willing to do to you on your wedding day—”
“No. No. Guys who abandon grand revenge plans to give their grandmothers cafés and support their grandmothers dating old flames from seventy years ago are the good guys. And if he’d been the reason my wedding had broken up, but I still found out everything I know now, I’d still be grateful. The universe saved me. That’s the important thing.”
I fling my arms around my friend, my head barely hitting her boobs because she’s so much taller than me. “I love you, Em.”
“I love you more, Sabrina.”
“I’m glad you’re my Valentine.”
“Can I buy you a hot chocolate spiked with espresso?”
“You seriously know the way to a girl’s heart.”
Sunday morning, I wake up to a cryptic text from an unknown number. The right kind of justice isn’t easy. Back soon.
What does that mean? I text back, hope blossoming in my heart once more, but I don’t get a response.
“He’s probably forgetting to charge his phone,” Zen tells me when I charge into Bean & Nugget on my day off.
“Where. The fuck. Is he?”
“I could tell you, but Mimi just decided she’s done owning a café. The paperwork will get rolling in the morning to turn it over to you, so you’re going to be very busy very soon here.”
“For. The very. Last. Time. I. Do not. Want. The café. I want. To know. Where. The. Fuck. Is. Grey?”
“He’s staging a coup and buying out the company that bought out his research,” Mimi pipes up. “That’s my brilliant boy.”
I gape at her. “He’s moving back to San Diego?”
“It’s lovely this time of year,” she says. “Actually, it’s lovely every time of year.”
Fuck this.
Absolutely fuck this.
All of it.
From here to eternity.
I am fucking done with Super Vengeance Man.
34
Grey