Page 53 of The Play

“No, how you’ve been in the worst mood I’ve seen since you hired me,” Darcy said steadily.

“I’ve not been,” Grant argued, even though he knew she was probably right. She’d been by his side for all those years, so if anybody would know, it would be Darcy.

She shot him a look. Okay, she did know.

“I’ll get over it,” Grant said, taking a sip of his drink, setting it into the side console, reaching for his bag for the laptop he’d stowed there. He could get some work done, in the next two hours, at least.

“No,” Darcy said and grabbed the bag and held it before he could use it as a deflection or a subject change. “No, you don’t get to do this. I know you don’t want to talk to me about it, but you need to.”

“Why? What does talking about it change?” Grant demanded, feeling his temper spike unexpectedly. Why was she pushing this?

Darcy didn’t let go of the bag, even as he tugged at it, and her brown eyes regarded him steadily. Sympathetically, even. And that stung, even worse, somehow, than his own self-pity.

“I’ve worked for you, for what, ten years? Eleven?” Darcy didn’t let him answer the question, just kept going. “In that time, we’ve done a lot together. You’ve worked like you were on fire, like the world might burn down if you didn’t, and it’s paid off. But never, not once, in those eleven years, have I seen you do something impulsive. When you bought the Condors, that was crazy.”

“A little,” Grant admitted. It had been. At least there was no danger in admitting that.

“I didn’t know why, why this, until Deacon showed up, and then it became really clear,” Darcy continued. “And for the first time, you slowed down a little. Made a friend. Let yourself get distracted.”

Grant didn’t know whether he was supposed to be apologizing or begging forgiveness or—

Then Darcy kept talking, inexorably, like she was afraid if she stopped, he wouldn’t keep listening. She wasn’t entirely wrong. “And it was the best thing you’ve done in eleven years. Made you seem human, for the first time. It’s good to have a life, Grant.”

“It can’t be with him,” Grant said.

“Says who? Cheryl? The commissioner? You’re a billionaire, Grant. You own an enormously successful business and a professional football team. You can do whatever you want, and if Deacon’s what you want, then you should just tell the world to fuck off.”

“It’s not that easy, or that simple. If it was . . .”

If it was, what would he even do about it?

Sure, he’d imagined it so many times, but he’d never felt like he was in a position to do anything about it.

“It’s exactly that simple. Did the NFL take Robert Kraft’s team when he got in trouble for getting happy endings to his massages? No, they did not. Did the NFL ever say a goddamn word about Al Davis and all his weird shit? They ignored him, at worst, and at best, celebrated his idiosyncrasies. I’ll sit through a hundred more shitty, passive-aggressive calls with Cheryl—a thousand—if it would mean you’d get what you want.” Darcy shot him an unamused look. “But I think you’re afraid of actually getting it. Business is easy—”

“Business is not easy,” Grant interrupted.

But Darcy wasn’t his best friend and his most trusted advisor for nothing. She never failed to give as good as she got.

“Business isn’t easy, fine, but it works by rules. You learned the rules. Same as programming. You learned the rules of what was possible, and then you could break the rules, think out of the box. But you had to learn the rules first. And there are no rules, no guidelines, no safety net, with Deacon. He’s a wild card, and you can’t control him. You could get really hurt. There’s no protection, no conservative path you can fall back to. You’re afraid. Yeah, maybe this boss thing, it’s a concern, but it shouldn’t be enough to stop you from working your Grant magic and turning the situation around to your advantage. Maybe for the rest of this season, you’re his boss. Maybe he continues working for the Condors, and you stay his boss. But you could work around that. I know you, and you’ve never taken no for an answer, not in your entire career. Why start now, with something you really care about?”

Grant couldn’t answer that question.

No—that wasn’t accurate. He could. There were a thousand reasons he couldn’t take the risk.

But maybe she was right. Maybe all those reasons were really excuses. Maybe he was afraid.

Deacon had always been the one who got away.

Grant had stuck him in that category, had gotten comfortable with that situation.

Had used Deacon and his lingering crush as an excuse for why he couldn’t date. For why he worked so much.

“I . . .I don’t know,” Grant answered.

Maybe he was afraid. But he didn’t just worry about his own reputation, his own security. He worried about every single employee under him, all of whom depended on him. And Deacon. He worried about Deacon. He’d come here, to Charleston, and spent nearly a billion dollars, to make sure that nobody could ever say shit about Deacon Harris again.

And to give everyone the opportunity to do that?

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