Stir (The Sizzle TV Series Book 5)

Chapter 23 – Finn

Rusty’s Pub is a bar of sorts. Sully got me started coming here months ago, long before I moved into the city. No idea how he found it or why he keeps coming back. The food is solidly middleweight, though the beer selection is acceptable. Today he’s taken a booth toward the back, instead of his usual post at the bar, two bottles already on the table in front of him.

“Ordering for me now?” I ask, sliding into the seat across from him.

“Consider it an olive branch.”

I raise my eyebrows but don’t say anything, sipping beer instead. He wants to talk; I’m going to let him. That’s the whole point of coming here tonight.

Sully rolls his bottle between his palms and sighs. He’s a big guy, all shoulders and biceps from the days he worked construction. These days, he mostly just bosses people around, though I know for a fact there are plenty of times he’ll still get out there swinging hammers with his crew when they can’t get enough help or when there is more work to do than men to do it. God knows he’s called me in on enough days like that.

Sully looks defeated. Sully doesn’t do defeated.

“I’m sorry for doubting you the other day when you told us about,” he glances around and lowers his voice, “your relationship.”

“You can say it out loud, you know.” I can’t deny the word makes me a little twitchy. “Please don’t tell me you called me here to talk about our feelings.”

“Fuck you, Finn,” he says easily. Just like that, we’re on even ground again, though I have a hunch there’s more going on here than just Sully owning up to his shit. “Look. You have to know I only want the best for you.”

“You’re not my fucking father, Sullivan.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not trying to be. But you’ve had some trouble staying in one place the last few years.” He keeps talking when I start to protest. “And all I’m saying is, that’s going to make it hard to be in any relationship. Let alone… something more complicated than the norm.”

I glare at the beer in my hand, already almost empty. Sully signals for another round.

I don’t like to hear it, but yeah, maybe he’s got a point. Nothing that didn’t cross my mind the first time I met Natalie. She’s long-term all the way; Nic, too. For all his rules and insane expectations of himself, he’s got commitment written all over him.

I’m just the stray they’ve picked up along the way.

“I care about you, you asshole. I couldn’t keep that bitch Susan from getting her claws into you. The least I can do is try to look out for you now.”

“I’m a grown man, Sully. You don’t have to do that.”

“You’re still my little brother.”

“Shit.”

“Shut up. You know what I mean.”

We both look hard somewhere else until the server drops off our drinks.

“There’s something else,” he says. “Callie’s looking for somebody to take over Hale House, or at least the day-to-day of it.”

“She’s leaving?”

“Not leaving, but she wants to free up her time. Now that Lee and West have moved in, she wants to spend more time with them. She’ll still keep running the place, but she needs a manager.”

Guess that’s not so surprising. If I had Nic and Natalie under one roof, I’d never want to leave either.

Wait. What?

“Whatever the hell you’re thinking,” says Sully, a bemused smirk on his face, “it’s not that bad. Hale House needs a manager. You already know how things are run. Hell, I think you already know all the employees, except maybe a couple of the new interns.”

“What, me? She wants me to come back?”

Sully levels a look at me over his beer and sets it down slowly.

“You’re family,” he says simply, like that’s all there is to it. “She trusts you. And it would be steady work. No more gig work, no more long stretches between jobs.”

“You, of all people, know that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I say, pointing a finger at him. Sully shakes his head.

“It’s not for everybody.” He stares off over my shoulder so long I think maybe he’s going to drop it, long enough that I turn to see what he’s looking at so intently.

There’s a handsome guy behind the bar, leaning over to smile at an adorable redheaded chick. They make a stunning pair.

“Who’s that?” I ask, turning back to look at Sully.

“Hmm? Nobody I know.”

He’s lying. His cheeks are pink. Later for that, though.

“Why don’t you take the management job, then?” I ask, though I suspect I already know the answer. I just want to hear where his head’s at.

“I’m good. My team’s finally running the way I want it. No need to mess with success.”

“You were the one who brought up stability.”

“We’re doing just fine.” He frowns at me. “I’m not hurting for money.”

“And you’d hate working for somebody else,” I say. “Even Callie.”

A hint of a smile. “There’s that, too.”

“Then why would you think it’s any different for me?”

“You answer to a boss, don’t you?”

Boss man. I’d never be able to use that term again, not now that it’s applied to Nic.

“Only when I want to,” I say, shoving that thought away.

“Like when you’re sleeping with him?” Sully arches a brow.

“Careful.”

“Did he force you into anything, Finn?”

I choke on my beer.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m serious. He’s your employer. Doesn’t matter if it’s a short-term job. Doesn’t matter if you knew him before you took the job. Did he force you?”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Answer the question.”

“No.” I wipe the beer off the table and glare at Sully, throwing the wet napkins at him. “Jesus Christ, no. I’m with him—with them—because I want to be.”

Sully puts his hands up, but he looks relieved.

“Did you really think that… that he… that I?—?”

“I didn’t know what the fuck to think, dude,” he says. “You’ve never once even hinted that you might be into men. What was I supposed to think?”

“I knew that was it, you actually have a problem?—”

“Let me stop you right there,” he says, leaning forward, enunciating each word slowly. “I do not have a problem with you dating men. Or women. Or both, or at the same time. I’m bisexual.”

That takes a minute. Sully just waits.

“Excuse me?” I say brilliantly.

“I am bisexual,” he says, using the same measured tone. “I am attracted to both men and women.”

Smartass. “Since when?”

“High school,” he says. “Maybe before that. As long as I can remember, pretty much.”

My mouth falls open. Sully shrugs, looking away.

“You and Callie had other things to deal with at the time,” he says, more gently now. “I wasn’t going to bring my drama while you were going through all that.”

“Hang on. Does Callie know?”

He swallows his drink. “She does. I told her after she started dating Lee and West.”

Well, that stings. Juvenile to think of it that way now, but I was always closer to Sully than my sister. Something dawns on me.

“Weren’t you and West pretty tight in high school, too?”

Sully closes his eyes.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Keep your voice down,” he says, eyes still shut. “It wasn’t a thing. We weren’t together.”

“But you did?—”

Sully opens his eyes to glare at me.

“Fuck’s sake,” I say. I huff out a laugh. “I can’t believe you all got mad at me for keeping secrets. Jesus.”

Sully laughs too, the tension in his broad shoulders finally easing some.

We order food and stick to small talk until it arrives, processing our heavy shit. I’m still pissed and weirded the fuck out. Turns out I’m the only Hale who hasn’t fucked around with Weston. And that thought gets shoved out of my brain, never to be reexamined again.

Gross.

“You really don’t want to come back to work at Hale House?” he asks.

I could. Easy money, steady work. Home turf. Probably even get my old apartment back over the garage. Get back out of the city.

No more hearing Nic through the walls. No more ten-minute trips to Natalie’s place.

It would be a commitment, and somehow, that word doesn’t put me off the way it used to. But less of Nic and Natalie is not an option for me.

“I really don’t,” I say finally.

I don’t know where something like this can go, between me and her and him, but I’m not done with it yet. I want to see where we can take it. If there’s even the smallest chance they’re feeling like me… I’m not going anywhere.

I know a situation like this is unlikely. I realize lightning basically struck for Callie and her men. It’s probably not forever for me.

But what if it is? What if we could have that, too? Waking up to them every day, that tangled mess of limbs. His eyes, her smile. To get to come home to them every night.

What if we could have that?

If there’s even the smallest chance, I can’t let it get away. The decision feels already made, like I chose this weeks ago, before we even began this thing. My gut, my head, and maybe even something else.

I’m staying.

I don’t have the words to say that to my cousin, though, so I keep it to myself. He’s looking over at the bar again anyway.

“So who is she?”

“Who?” he asks, jerking his eyes guiltily away from the pair at the bar, his cheeks pink.

“The redhead at the bar you’ve been staring at all night. I didn’t realize you were into her. We could have sat up there.”

Sully clears his throat. “Not her.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s not the redhead,” he says, his voice rough and quiet. “It’s him.”

I glance over my shoulder again.

“The bartender?”

Sully nods once. I run my tongue over my teeth.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

The bartender whispers in the ear of the redhead. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t even once glanced our way.

“That’s rough,” I say. Because what else do you say to your cousin-slash-brother who apparently has a big bisexual crush on a straight man?

Sully rubs his forehead and looks back at the table. “Yeah.”

“The bar down the street from my place has a pool table.”

“Yeah,” he says again. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”