Page 32 of No Match Found
He wasn’t wrong about the other stuff, though, and it was strangely validating to hear him acknowledge it. I walked a tightrope, trying to avoid losing my balance and falling into the ice queen side on the one hand and the overemotional pushover side on the other.
“Thanks,” I said, “but it happens to be an assumption from well before I was a CEO.”
Why was I saying this? I’d done my duty; I’d answered my question.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Still waters run deep. Only people who insist on playing in the shallows don’t know that.”
He said it so nonchalantly, but it hit me even harder thanbeautifulhad.
Was that why he was so curious about me? Because he thought I was deep?
It sounded like a compliment, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he wanted to know what freakish things I was hiding in those depths, like that hideous, toothy anglerfish I’d once seen on a documentary. The kind that drags its bait through the darkabyss, somehow surviving in the unfathomable bowels of the ocean.
I exhaled sharply. “Your turn.”
“My turn,” he agreed, not looking the least bit nervous.
I thought through the list of potential questions I’d come up with. I felt the same way as he did—hesitant to “waste” one and eager to know more abouthisdepths.
“Have you ever been too afraid to write the truth?” I asked.
A little twitch in his expression made me think my question had caught him off guard, but maybe I’d imagined it.
His lips turned down at the edges as he considered it. “No.”
I cocked a brow. “You mean not once in your career have you glossed over something or omitted it out of fear?”
“The truth is the one thing I’mnotafraid of.”
“Sometimes the truth hurts.” I thought of the last text I’d sent to Chase, asking him to tell me the truth about why he’d broken up with me. He’d been so vague and wishy-washy when he’d broken things off in person.
He told me the truth in that pithy text response, though, and I’d been hurting ever since. I’d wondered more times than I could count if I should’ve just left things as they’d been.
But it wasn’t in my nature. That same intensity that had driven him away is what made me ask for something concrete from him. I wanted information that would help me prevent future mistakes in dating.
Instead, the data I’d received had kept me away from dating altogether.
“Not as much as a lie hurts,” Grant said. “Not in the long run.”
Was he right? It wasn’t like I was advocatingagainstthe truth. I loved the truth in numbers. I lived for it. But numbers told the truth in patterns.
Words were personal.
“I should get back to work,” I said.
He uncrossed his arms and slid over to his typewriter. “Me too.”
True to his word, Grant didn’t bother me for the next two hours. He clacked away on The Truth Machine, which bothered me less than I’d anticipated.
More annoying was the way my mind and eyes wandered to him while I worked, wondering what he was writing, trying to decide what I’d ask him next—and anticipate what he’d ask me.
TEN
While Leo wasthe first to reach out, Jeff didn’t waste time once he responded. He seemed not at all put off by me taking initiative. In fact, he suggested we meet for dinner the following evening.
“Jeff’s hot to trot,” Grant commented when I ran the date and time by him.
We had to coordinate with Grant too, after all.
