Chapter 17 Tricked
"What are you doing here?" Cassie's voice was barely controlled, fury and pain warring in her tone.
"Working," Jenna said simply. "Mr. O'Malley needed an assistant, and I needed a job. It's amazing how small the world can be, isn't it?"
The lies were so smooth, so perfectly constructed, that Greyson felt sick. This wasn't coincidence. This was orchestration, manipulation on a level that spoke of planning and patience and a cruelty that took his breath away.
"You planned this," he said, his voice hoarse with realization. "All of it."
Jenna's smile was radiant with triumph. "I prefer to think of it as providing a service. Cassie deserves to know what kind of man she was falling for. The kind who runs when things get difficult. The kind who finds comfort in the arms of other women when his girlfriend is in the hospital."
"That's not true—" Greyson started, but Cassie cut him off.
"Isn't it?" Her voice was like broken glass, sharp and cutting. "Because it looks like you moved on pretty quickly from whatever crisis of conscience you were having."
She looked between them—Greyson, disheveled and guilty, and Jenna, composed and victorious—and something died in her eyes. The trust, the hope, the love that had sustained them both through the darkness of their respective pasts.
"Two weeks..." Cassie said quietly. "I've been calling you. I've been worried sick, thinking something had happened to you."
"Cassie—"
"I've been telling myself that you just needed space, that you were dealing with something and you'd come back to me when you were ready." Her voice broke slightly, but she pushed through. "And this whole time, you've been here. With her. With the same woman who destroyed my life once before."
The parallel was devastating in its clarity. Jake had chosen Jenna over Cassie, had thrown away their future for a woman who cared nothing for him beyond what he could provide. And now, from Cassie's perspective, Greyson had done the same thing.
"It's not what you think," he said finally, the words sounding pathetic even to his own ears.
"Isn't it?" Cassie's laugh was bitter. "Because it looks like you decided to follow Jake's playbook pretty closely. Even down to choosing the same woman."
"I never chose her. I was—"
"You were what? Confused? Overwhelmed? Lonely?" Cassie's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Join the club, Greyson. The difference is that when I was scared, when I was overwhelmed, I called you. I reached out. I fought for us."
Her words were like daggers, each one finding its mark with surgical precision. Greyson felt the weight of his failures crushing down on him, the realization that he'd destroyed the best thing in his life through his own cowardice and someone else's manipulation.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, but the words felt empty, inadequate.
"So am I." Cassie turned toward the door, her movements slow and deliberate. "I'm sorry I believed you when you said you'd changed. I'm sorry I thought you were different from Jake. I'm sorry I fell in love with another man who was too weak to love me back."
The comparison to Jake hit like a knife to the heart. Greyson shot to his feet, desperation making him reckless. "Don't say that. I'm nothing like him."
Cassie paused in the doorway, her back still turned to him. "Aren't you? He cheated on me with a woman who was supposed to be my friend. You kissed a woman who knew exactly what buttons to push, who knew exactly what to say to make you feel better about abandoning me."
She turned back to face him, and in her eyes Greyson saw the death of her trust, the end of her faith in him. "The only difference is that Jake had the decency to lie to my face. You just disappeared."
"Cassie—"
"We're done, Greyson." Her voice was steady now, final. "Whatever this was, whatever we had, it's over. I won't wait around for you to decide whether or not I'm worth fighting for. I won't be the woman who begs a man to choose her."
She left him standing in his office, surrounded by the wreckage of his own making. The coffee Jenna had brought him sat cooling on his desk, and the taste of her kiss still lingered on his lips like poison.
Jenna was gone too, having slipped away during the confrontation like the skilled manipulator she was. Her work was done. The seed of doubt and betrayal had been planted, watered with perfectly timed words and a kiss that had destroyed everything Greyson had ever wanted.
His phone buzzed with a text from Liam: "Meagan says you're an idiot. I agree. Cassie is crying. Fix it." As Greyson stared at the empty doorway where the woman he loved had stood just moments before, he realized that some things couldn't be fixed. Some betrayals couldn't be undone. Some trust, once broken, could never be repaired.
He'd set out to protect her from his own darkness, and instead, he'd become the very thing she needed protection from. He'd become the man who'd broken her heart, who'd chosen his own fear over her love, who'd proven that sometimes the people we trust most are the ones who hurt us deepest.
Another memory flashed—Meagan's face the night he'd come home high, blood on his shirt from one of Logan's jobs. The disappointment in her eyes. The way she'd looked at him like he was a stranger. The way Cassie had looked at him tonight.
In the end, Logan had been right. Greyson was a ghost haunting the edges of other people's lives, too afraid to truly live, too selfish to truly love. His real estate empire was just another mask, another way to hide from the truth of what he'd been, what he'd done.
The chapel had been a sanctuary of whispered prayers and stained glass shadows. His office had become a graveyard of broken promises and shattered dreams. Somewhere in the space between protection and betrayal, Greyson had lost the only thing that had ever mattered to him.
The coward's path, he realized, was the loneliest road of all... all the money in the world, all the legitimate success, couldn't wash the blood from his hands or the regret from his heart.
In the silence of his empty office, surrounded by the trappings of his hollow success, Greyson finally understood what Logan had been trying to tell him. Some people were meant to be ghosts. Some people were too broken, too damaged, too dangerous to deserve love.
Some betrayals, even the ones born of manipulation and desperation, could never be forgiven.
The lights of the city twinkled below him like stars, cold and distant and utterly indifferent to his pain. Somewhere out there, Cassie was crying. Somewhere out there, his family was disappointed in him again. Somewhere out there, the consequences of his choices were rippling outward like stones thrown into still water. Here, in his tower of glass and steel, Greyson sat alone with his ghosts, finally understanding that some people were meant to haunt the world rather than live in it.
The ghost that Logan had seen so clearly was all that remained.
Greyson went home after spending some time in the Church. He drove home, flashing back to the night he and Cassie made love. When he felt normal.