When we're outside the multi-story GameSetMatch building, I take a deep breath. "You ready?"

"I've got all the emails, the legalese Aaron's attorney gave us, a highlighted contract, and their Super Soulmate Simon. Battle ready is an understatement."

"I have a feeling they're not going to roll over easily." At this point, I'm not convinced they'll roll over at all.

"I'd be disappointed if they did." She glances at me before grabbing the handle to enter. "Game face on."

I swirl my hand over my face in an extravagant fashion. "Done." If only my insides would stop rioting. I've been trying to pretend Tayla didn't crush my last shred of hope in the hotel room earlier. A year in Scotland is a long time, but having her tell me the timeline is flexible by years is a knife to my heart.

We wait for the elevator in silence until Tayla turns to me. "I'll do most of the talking, but if I forget something, jump in."

"Sure, yeah." I nod and shove my hands into my pant pockets.

Will they even honor the appointment when they realize Tayla and I have shown up unexpectedly? There's a chance we won't get to talk to anyone. Though if that happens, Aaron's lawyer gave us a nice official sounding letter about legal action for false advertising and a bunch of other mumbo jumbo. Sounded good on paper. Don't have a clue what any of it means.

Tayla presses the button for GameSetMatch's floor, and the elevator rises. My palms begin to sweat, and I slide them along the sides of my jeans. Why am I nervous about confronting them for being the shittiest company in the world?

"Nervous?" Tayla glances at my hands and then meets my gaze for a beat.

"Is that weird?" Shouldn't I be energized to finally confront them? To tell them to go fuck themselves?

"They've popped into your life at random points for six years. I think I'd feel weird if I was you."

Except, now that she's said that, I'm wondering whether I'm really nervous about saying goodbye to her tomorrow morning. If the queasiness in my stomach is related to this being our last joint venture. Once we've confronted them, what tie do we have? One more night in a shared hotel room.

After that, an ocean between us.

The elevator chimes. We stand for an extra beat staring at each other while the doors slide open. My heart is in my throat, aching to be released one more time. Stay, Tay. Don't go.

"You can't look at me like that," she whispers. "You shouldn't look at me like that." She bites her lip and leaves me to exit the elevator behind her.

She's already at the reception desk when I make it through the main set of doors. Left me in the dust of my own longing. Probably deserve it.

I stop for a moment and take in the large reception area. Hearts hang from the ceiling like some high school dance gone wrong. All the photos littering the walls are happy couples, each with some sort of plaque below them. The urge to read through them seizes me, but I squash it. Are any of them real?

When I wander up behind Tayla who is already talking, the receptionist raises his eyebrows in question.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"We're here together." I gesture toward Tayla.

He gives me a baffled look and then transfers it to Tayla. "You're not here to be matched?"

"Oh." Tayla laughs lightly. "I've already been matched. But...so has he. Four times in fact. Can you imagine that?" She leans her elbows on the high counter and bats her eyes at him. "Why would a company that guarantees with a ninety-nine percent accuracy rate match anyone four times?"

"Right." He takes a deep breath. "So, that's above my pay grade. I'll see who I can get to assist you."

"To be clear," I say from behind Tayla. "We're not leaving until someone assists us."

"Have a seat." He motions to the white oversized chairs behind us.

I sink into one, and Tayla leaves a seat between us.

"Looks like Cupid threw up in here," I observe, taking in the abundance of hearts, red, white, pink, and other floral arrangements. Does the floor have actual rose petals? Nope. Just a petal pattern.

Tayla laughs. "The décor did give me a moment of hesitation when I arrived."

"Only a moment?"

She sighs. "Desperate times and all that." Her purse is on her lap, and she drags it closer to her chest.

"I never asked you why." I stare at my feet instead of looking at her.

"Why what?" She arches an eyebrow.

"Why you felt desperate enough to chuck all your money away."

She tucks her dark hair behind her ears and doesn't answer right away. "Dean and Ruby are happy. They met like this. I'd tried other methods. Dated other people. No one seemed to fit with me, or I didn't fit with them." With a sigh, she makes eye contact. "I'm not saying this to be an asshole, but no one was you, Si. What we had...I couldn't seem to find it again."

Earlier I said I wouldn't push her if she truly didn't want anything to do with me but dropping a comment like that in my lap is practically begging me to persuade her we can work. She thought my one attempt at a reconciliation was weak. Maybe it was. I was afraid of being a Jada—or truthfully, my mother—someone who didn't know when to let go. What's the right thing to do? Forge ahead or bow out?

"Excuse me," the male receptionist has returned. "Michael and Jessica will see you in the conference room. Before we go there, you'll need to be searched by security and go through our metal detectors."

Metal detectors and security? I have a feeling we aren't the first unsatisfied customers they've encountered.

Tayla and I exchange a glance before rising to our feet and following him. Instead of taking the opaque glass double doors in front of us, the receptionist holds open a heavy metal door to the right. We climb a steep set of stairs to another floor, and he uses his key to unlock the entrance. At the top of the stairs, we pass our things through a metal detector and scanner. On the other side, two guards pat us down before a waiting woman indicates for us to follow her.

We wind our way through hallways of closed offices. Who works here?

At the end of the latest hallway, a large glass conference room sits with the city on display through the windows. Even from a distance, the view is stunning, and I wonder whether they picked this place to meet in the hopes the landscape would be distracting and impressive. A company in New York wouldn't get this kind of Central Park view without paying some hefty money to either purchase or rent part of this building. I might not live here, but some things transcend state lines.

The people I'm assuming are Jessica and Michael are standing on the other side of the conference table, manilla folders open in front of them. She's dressed in a figure-hugging red dress that would give Donna from Suits a run for her money. If she's Donna, he must be Harvey. The suit he's wearing oozes money.

The receptionist opens the conference room door, and we're ushered in.

"Tayla," the woman says, a smile slicing across her face. "I'm Jessica, and this is Michael." She gestures to the man beside her. "We're the owners and developers of GameSetMatch. We understand you've been unhappy with your service."

Jessica's voice is like being transported back in time. I rock back on my heels and cock my head. Is it possible?

"You," I say, a frown marring my forehead. "You're the one who called me so many times when I was matched with Jada."

Her frown matches mine. "I'm sorry. Do we know each other?"

"Simon Buchannan." I wait to see whether my name will ring any bells, but she continues to look at me as though I'm the one being an idiot. "I've been matched four times by GameSetMatch."

Michael glances at Jessica. "We are aware of a few glitches in the system. You're one of them."

"That might explain the first three." I forge on. "But I should have been out of our system for the fourth."

"Why do you think that?" Jessica asks, her frown still creasing her forehead.

I wish she'd stop speaking. Hearing her voice grates on my nerves. Whether she'll admit it or not, I'm positive she's the person who he called me several times both in the run to my breakup with Tayla and afterwards to get me to at least give Jada a chance. If I could shake or slap my past self, we might not be in this position right now.

"After my third match, I called and asked to be removed from your database."

She stares at me. "And you were told..."

"That I'd be removed."

"Ah," she says. "We have our receptionists better trained now. Did you read the terms and conditions when you signed up for your online dating site?"

My stomach drops. Does anyone read all the terms and conditions? Those things are usually pages of legal jargon. When was the last time I read every line of the terms and conditions before I signed on the dotted line? Plus, Aaron and I were drinking the night I filled out my profile. "No."

"Well, if you had," she opens a folder to her right and removes a highlighted page, "you'd have seen this clause in part four, sub-section thirty-four, letter ii." She slides the page across the table to me.

"The terms and conditions on a free dating website are that expansive?" Tayla's tone has all my disbelief encased in it.

"Of course." Her answering tone borders on scathing. "Nothing is free. Seems a bit naïve for a veterinarian and a nurse to believe otherwise."

"So, you lure men into a dating database you created to prop up a pool for an exclusive service directed at women?" Tayla draws her purse closer to her body as though they might try to snatch more money out of it.

Michael tilts his head back and forth in a gentle motion. "More or less. I'm sure you didn't come here to talk about how our service works. You're unhappy with the outcome, correct? But we have photographic proof of you meeting your match." He nods at me. "Several times in the last few weeks."

I suppress a sigh. Either they employed spies or Jada sent the photos in as 'proof' I was still philandering around. Did she photograph all my dates or girlfriends for the last six years? There's no way she'd have known Tayla was also my match.

"Doesn't matter," Tayla says, reaching into her purse. "You breached your contract."

"How?" Michael slides photos of us across the table. "The only breach appears to be yours from our side of the table. We agreed to return fifty percent of our matching fee if your match made no contact."

"You matched me with an ex-boyfriend."

"Who you appear to have a very strong connection with. You're trying to pretend he's not standing here for some reason I can't understand, and every time he looks at you, he's got his heart in his eyes." She sweeps her hand back and forth between us. "Coming here to tell us we got it wrong, when we clearly got it right, is foolish." Jessica sighs.

"You've matched him four times." Tayla counters. "It's not possible to have four soulmates."

Michael purses his lips. "It's possible to have multiple matches, sure. We don't offer that service, but yes, you can be matched with multiple people."

"Your slogan—" Tayla begins.

"Is branding. Effective marketing, and actually true. Ninety-nine percent of our matches are successful. We don't claim they all end in marriage. More and more people are opting for alternative relationships that don't require cohabitating or an arbitrary piece of paper to legalize their commitment to each other," Michael explains.

"Sounds like spin," I say. "I went on three dates with Jada. What column did that get slotted into for your company statistics?"

"We have to have benchmarks and criteria in order to create statistics. There's nothing wrong with that." Jessica shrugs. "We don't hide those results from people. They're included on page one hundred and forty of our company story."

"Oh, my God," Tayla says. "You counted that in the 'win' column."

"What is it you were hoping to get out of coming here today?" Jessica asks.

"The truth," Tayla says. "You're scamming people."

"Ah, so you think you already know the truth?" Jessica cocks an eyebrow. "What if I told you most people come here looking for a guarantee, and we provide as close to a guarantee as you can get? Our complex algorithms match people successfully every day."

"But if you're counting success as three dates, it's a faulty measure," I say even as I internally cringe at her use of guarantee. Isn't that what I hoped for when I had that crisis of faith in my own feelings? There are no guarantees. Life is what you make of it. Took me a while, but I get that now. I glance at Tayla. She can leave America hating me, but I won't have her leave thinking I didn't try hard enough again. My resolve hardens.

"What's your real issue, Miss Murphy? Is it that you were matched with an old flame or that it didn't work out this time?" Michael asks.

"Both," Tayla says, straightening.

"We can offer you a second match as compensation. We've done that for..." He flips through the pages in front of him. "Here it is. We did that for Sherri Smith and Jennifer Espinoza when their matches with Mr. Buchannan weren't successful."

Tayla and I exchange a look of confusion. "What?" I ask.

They sat across the table from us and acted as though GameSetMatch had done them equally wrong. Sure, they didn't get a refund, but it wasn't quite the one and done situation they allowed us to believe either. Our whole argument is built on GameSetMatch being deceptive liars who don't give people a second chance.

"Sherri Smith was matched a second time. Also unsuccessful, but she rejected him. We have her listed as married now, so she must have found someone on her own. Jennifer Espinoza was also offered a second match, but she opted not to meet him."

"Did they tell you that?" I mutter to Tayla almost under my breath.

"No," she whispers back.

"What about Jada?" I counter.

Michael lifts a thick file from beside him on the right and slides it across to me. "She's refused all interventions on our part. I think you'll find a rather colorful documentation of your dating history for the last six years, including a copy of the personal protective order you issued."

"You knew she was still keeping track of me and didn't tell me?" I'm not opening that file. Nothing good will come from seeing it laid out across this table. My relationships have been short but plentiful. To think she's been spying on me, albeit from a distance, causes my stomach to roll.

"Emails are filtered and sorted based on subject line. We didn't realize the file was that large until Miss Murphy was matched with you. At that point, we offered her the fifty percent reduction if you made no contact."

In other words, they created a folder for all Jada's craziness and filtered it there to avoid dealing with her anymore. They didn't have a problem digging into it when Tayla asked for her money back, though.

My head hurts from all this new information coming at me all at once, and I rub my temples.

"I want my refund," Tayla says.

Have we abandoned the other women? I think we have.

"Or?" Jessica asks, eyebrows raised. "You must have come here thinking you had something on us. We've explained Mr. Buchannan's involvement, the history with his other matches, and our position on branding and statistics. Nothing is hidden."

"But you make the information hard to access."

"The book outlining our company policy, statistics, and branding is a free eBook. Anyone can read it." Michael takes back Jada's file when it's clear I'm not touching it.

"But does anyone read it? You're cherry picking what to tell your clients," I say.

"Of course we are," Jessica says, exasperated. "What company doesn't select their most flattering statistics for advertising and promotion purposes? The fact is: our system works." She gestures between the two of us. "Tell me you two aren't the least bit compatible. Mr. Buchannan, if you'd given any of those other women even a little bit of a chance, they'd have been compatible too."

I turn and stare at Tayla because I've made myself clear. For me, she's it. There is no one else in the world I'd rather spend the rest of my life with. But if she'd rather have her money back than admit we're compatible, I'm not going to hold her back.

Tayla takes a deep, shuddering breath, and I hold mine while I wait to see what she'll say.

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