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I shook my head. “She was different. I said that from day one.” My eyes narrowed. “You both know she’s the girl who had the potential of changing me.”
Holden nodded.
So did Grayson.
“And now she really has.” I drained several sips.
“When did it start?” Holden asked. “When did you find out that it was her?”
“The night we all went to the bar to celebrate month end, I walked her home, and I kissed her.” Jesus, that felt like years ago at this point. “That’s when she figured it out and she went into the system and found my name under BostonLifer.” I explained how she wanted me to hear it from Love, so she set up a temporary membership and reached out to me through the app. “You remember when I told you Love was back and she wanted to meet up?” I nodded at Grayson. “I just never told you that meeting took place.”
“Dude.” Grayson sighed. “That’s some shit right there.”
I rubbed my hand over my scruff. “You should have seen my face when she came up to me at the bar and told me who she was.”
“I can’t imagine,” Holden replied.
“I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Love is Drake,” Grayson said.
“Or that Easton is dating one of our directors, putting the entire rollout at risk,” Holden said. “As your best friend, I’m high-fiving the hell out of you. As one of your partners, this scenario scares the shit out of me.”
“I get it.” My chair felt too tight, too closed in, so I picked up my drink and walked over to the windows. “That’s why, since the discovery, we decided to take things slow. To not tell you guys until we had a better idea of where things stood between us. To, in a way, put the company first.” I glanced out the glass beside me, searching for Fenway Park in the distance. “But we’ve been seeing each other ever since that night, and things have been amazing.”
“The woman who got away is now back,” Holden said softly.
When I connected my stare with Holden’s, I said, “My heart was fucking breaking for her when you told me the news in your office today. It shattered again in the conference room. And when I went to her office right before she left, I told her, as long as it was okay, I was going to talk to you guys and tell you everything.”
“To plead her case,” Holden said.
“Listen, I know it’s not going to change anything. But Drake is more than just our director. She’s a woman who I believe would do anything for our company. I can speak about her character. I can speak about her morals and ethics because she’s the woman I love.”
“Goddamn it,” Grayson groaned. “This is a lot.”
“A lot because Holden warned us not to date anyone at the company. And a lot because Love and Drake are the same woman. And a lot because Drake is getting wrongly accused—”
“We have no choice, Easton,” Holden began. “These are the steps we have to take to protect Hooked. You know that. Hell, I’m positive even Drake knows that.” He adjusted himself in his seat. “We’d be fools if we didn’t do our due diligence. This isn’t about something minor that we can easily see past. We’re talking about a major competitor that’salready international that could take more than half of our business. An email with her name on it and a whopping accusation that I can’t even stomach.”
My back straightened against the glass. “Half of our business?” I exhaled, the tension still unbearable in my chest. “It can’t be half. Besides, they don’t have the anonymity that we do. Your personal profile on Faceframe will become your dating profile, and users don’t want potential dates to have that much access to their information—”
“That’s a moot point,” Holden said. “We’re not arguing over the percent we could potentially lose. We’re arguing over their design and how they gained our data.”
“It wasn’t her.” I ground my teeth together. “Someone restored her old email address and sent that email to make her take the fall.”
“Buddy, you know I’d fight like hell for her, and I want nothing more than to clear her name. But I need to see it with my own eyes. I need to be assured, and we won’t have that proof until the forensic data analyst wraps up their findings,” Holden said.
“That’ll prove whether she sent them the data, but it won’t prove if she really sent the email or not,” Grayson added.
“There has to be another way,” I said, pounding my fist on the glass.
“I can tell you one thing,” Holden shot back. “If she’s innocent, I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back here.”
I shook my head. “This is so fucked.”
All I wanted to do was show them that Drake wasn’t guilty of this.
I wanted to take down Faceframe.
And I wanted to walk down the hallway and see Drake sitting behind her desk.
