Page 74 of Piece By Piece

The deadline was in a few days.

Jonathan Webb had sent a follow-up email again that morning.

Very professional, but firm and final.

The offer was structured.

The timeline was set, and the board needed an answer.

The money was significant.

The platform they wanted to build around the W. Elliott brand was ambitious and exactly the kind of thing Owen would have wanted for him.

Owen.

Everything always came back to Owen.

He opened the email for the umpteenth time and read it again.

Two-year creative residency, full creative control, Seattle headquarters, relocation required.

Relocation required.

Two words that meant leaving the shop, the island, the owl cookie jar, and the woman who had walked into his life like a force of nature.

He should tell her.

He knew he should tell her.

Every rational cell in his body said, tell her about the offer, have the conversation, figure it out together.

That’s what Liza would do.

Liza would have laid it all out on butcher paper with colored markers.

But Grant wasn’t Liza.

Grant was the man who solved things alone in the dark.

In silence.

He told himself he was protecting her, that he didn’t want to burden her with a decision that he hadn’t even made yet.

He told himself this was temporary, that he would figure it all out and then just explain it to her.

But the truth was uglier.

He was afraid.

Afraid that if he told her, she would ask him to stay.

Stay.

Afraid that he’d say yes.

Afraid that saying yes meant building something real that could be taken away in the way that Owen had been taken away.

The way that everything bright and good and loud had been taken away, leaving him again in nothing but quiet and puzzles.