Chapter 6
FINN
Sophie had texted me. Only once, which felt…restrained. The message was short and simple, and that might have been the problem.
Hi, it’s Sophie.
I’d read the three words a thousand times, never able to settle on an answer.
A return greeting probably would have sufficed, but then what would happen to the conversation?
The whole thing already felt so contrived and forced.
At least I’d told her I might not reply so I didn’t feel terribly horrible for following through on that.
Besides, she said she would be persistent, and a single text message was quite the opposite of that.
It had been nearly a week since I’d met her, three days since she texted me.
I loosened the knot of my tie and closed the lid of my laptop, pushing my chair back from my desk to stretch my legs.
With a sigh, I shifted my attention from debating the merits of answering her message against sending one to my brothers bailing on our weekly dinner.
I imagined either of them would get me a reply.
One would be interesting and the other…probably less.
“I’ll text her back after dinner,” I told myself, locking up my office and heading down to my car.
Cunningham’s wasn’t a far drive from work so most weeks I stayed in the office late on Fridays and went straight there to meet my brothers for dinner and drinks.
I’d been waiting months for one of them to be the first to bail on our standing date, but boyfriends aside, they’d all kept the schedule.
What did that say about me that I was the only Covington brother—not counting Andrew, who barely counted in the first place—who didn’t have something good to come home to and yet I was the only one who never wanted to leave the house. Laughable, all things considered.
I spent the drive to Cunningham’s trying to get myself together.
Smith already knew the truth about my mental state, but I hadn’t said much to Hunter about it, and Marshall was entirely in the dark.
Hunter would be upset if he found out I’d been keeping things from him, but I really didn’t want to interfere in his unnecessarily long honeymoon period with Lincoln Summers.
I would tell him the rest of the story eventually, maybe after I was over it.
Which, at this rate, would be never.
I arrived at the restaurant first, parked my BMW in the same spot I always parked in, and sat down against the wall in the same booth we always sat in.
I ordered myself the same drink as always, a Manhattan, and I ate the boozy cherry first, tossing the steel pick onto the table until it was time for a second round.
The unanswered message from Sophie burned a hole in my pocket, and I was seconds away from giving in and texting her back when Marshall slipped into his normal seat opposite me.
“Oh good,” he said, undoing the top button on his shirt and settling in. “You’re here.”
“Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know, Finn.” Marshall flagged down a waiter and ordered himself a glass of wine. “I feel like you’re not yourself lately. For a while now, maybe.”
I swished some of my drink around before swallowing it, smiling through the sharp forward burn of the liquor. “What makes you say that?”
“There’s…” My brother grimaced. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
I scratched the back of my neck, a few annoying beads of sweat prickling on my hairline. I was thirty-five years old, nearly thirty-six, and getting an inquisition from my forty year-old brother shouldn’t have made me so unsettled, and yet…
“Maybe save it for later,” I suggested, glancing at my watch. “Unless it’s a conversation for all of us to have together, in which case, it feels more like an intervention and you should probably wait for backup.”
Marshall pursed his lips, expression unreadable.
“Do you need an intervention?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
“I asked Smith and Hunter to come a little late,” he said. “I told them there was something I had to talk to you about.”
“And they agreed?”
I clenched my jaw, feeling more than fucking betrayed by both of my brothers because neither of them had even bothered to give me a heads up I was walking into a fucking trap. I’d have words with both of them when this was done, that was for sure.
“Finn.”
“Not an intervention, then.” I cracked a smile when the waiter returned with Marshall’s red wine, and out of habit, we clinked our glasses together and each took a swallow. Both of us drank more than would have been considered socially polite, but neither of us called out the other over it.
“I saw you a few months ago.” Marshall paused and frowned. “Nearly a year, actually. I’d just started dating Silas.”
I didn’t want to think about anything further back than five days ago. Five days had been my commitment to getting over Neil and Annette. Five days, I’d made it, and I didn’t want to revisit the past with my dear brother about what my life had been like before.
“We’ve seen each other every week and then some for most of our lives, Marshall. What’s your point?”
“You were out with friends, I think at least. A couple wearing wedding rings and when the man left you and his wife alone—”
“Oh, for fuck sake.” I pressed my shoulders against the back of the booth and scrubbed a hand down my face.
“Are you having an affair with a married woman, Finn?”
“No.”
“Were you?” he pressed.
“No.” I blinked hard, fighting back tears I was sure had no right to exist. Not now and not anymore.
In my pocket, my phone gave two quick vibrations against my thigh, then another set, and one more. Three incoming text messages, and if any of them were from my two other brothers warning me of Marshall’s planned ambush, it was already too little and too late.
“What was it, then?” Marshall asked.
“Honestly?”
“Always.” He gave me the most endearing look, the most infuriating thoughtful and paternal look.
It made me want to throw up in my mouth because who had appointed him our father figure, just because he was the oldest, the most levelheaded, the most responsible?
The rest of us had done plenty good for ourselves.
When had we decided that Marshall fucking Covington was the unofficial leader of our lives? The one we were beholden to?
“None of your fucking business,” I said.
I finished the rest of my drink and slammed the glass down on the table, then slid out of the booth.
“Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom,” I snapped. “Unless I needed your permission for that too?”
“Finn.”
I waved Marshall off dismissively and headed for the bathroom, bypassing it entirely in favor of the back door that led to a small alleyway off the side of the restaurant.
It was more like a dead end, narrow and confined with not much more than a dumpster and some dying street lights, but it was the air I needed, not the ambiance.
In my heart, I knew Marshall meant well.
I also knew Marshall was a control freak dominant and that might have been great for Silas, but that wasn’t what I’d signed up for just on account of being born with half the same genes as him.
Leaning against the wall, I fished my phone out of my pocket.
If the messages were from Smith or Hunter, I decided I was going to leave.
I’d deal with all of them another time, when they felt like being reasonable adults who could express their concerns about me in a productive way. Not whatever the fuck this was.
The messages weren’t from my brothers, and it was somehow better and worse all at the same time. All three were from Sophie. I frowned at her name on my screen until it went black, then I swiped it open and tapped into the thread before I thought better of it.
Sophie
You weren’t kidding about leaving me on read.
Hope your paint turned out well.
Here’s mine.
Beneath the words was a picture of a bedroom that looked like it had walked right out of the kind of design magazine that would run a feature on Silas.
I hated that I knew Sophie’s walls and ceiling being the same color meant she’d color-washed the room in that same lush green she’d picked up from the paint store on Monday.
I equally hated I knew her bedroom set was made from white oak and not birch because Smith had spent an hour one afternoon explaining the difference in the grains and the color striations to me.
What I hated more than all of that, though, was the way each of the two matching nightstands was stacked and well lived around, making it very clear she shared that bed with someone frequently, if not permanently.
Do you have a boyfriend?
Fuck it.
There was no real point in beating around the bush with her over this.
I wasn’t too arrogant or proud to admit my limits, and the wounds from Neil and Annette, while in the past, were still too fresh for me to get involved with anything that had any possibility of ending poorly.
Not that I’d ever looked at Sophie as a long-term thing, but texting and potentially flirting with a woman in a committed relationship was a hard limit for me.
These days, at least.
No.
I was in the middle of typing out a reply telling her that her bedroom had determined that was a lie, but another message popped through before I could.
I have a fiancé.
I deleted everything I’d started to write her, my heart in my stomach.
Bye, Sophie.
Finn.
It’s not like that.
My phone was on its way back into my pocket when it started to vibrate again, this time the incessant hum of an incoming call, not a text message. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know it was her. I didn’t need to lie to myself about how badly I wanted to answer either.
“I can’t do it,” I said instead of hello. “I won’t.”