Chapter 14
FINN
“Finn,” Andrew greeted me after opening the door. “I have to say I’m surprised to see you.”
“You gave me your address and told me to come down,” I countered dryly.
“You know what I meant.”
It was true, I did know what he meant.
“Hunter suggested it,” I said.
“Why on earth?” He stepped out of the way to let me in, and I followed him through a short hallway and into a small living room. I had taken Hunter’s advice and gone home after leaving his apartment. I’d showered and changed into clean clothes and, for good measure, I’d brushed my teeth twice.
“Because I’m on the verge of an emotional breakdown probably and I won’t talk to him or Smith about it.”
Andrew let out a low laugh and gestured toward a brown upholstered chair that Smith would have also loved. It matched the house, and I had the fleeting thought that Sophie would have known the name of it. Probably even the designer.
“What about Marshall?”
“He’s never been voted best brother to pour your heart out to when we hold the annual awards.”
I sat down and smoothed my hands over the wooden arms of the chair before dropping them into my lap. This was a horrible idea, and I shouldn’t have come. I hated Hunter for recommending it, and I hated myself for going along with it.
“And me?”
“Most likely to appear out of thin air and turn everybody’s lives upside down,” I told him. “Did you not get the certificate in the mail?”
Andrew chuckled and rapped his knuckles on the counter as he walked into the kitchen.
“What do you drink, Finn?” he asked.
“Normally whiskey. But I had enough last night to hold me over a bit.”
“Beer?”
“Sure.”
My newest brother took two beers from the fridge and used a wall mounted bottle opener to pop the tops, then he joined me in a matching chair. We tapped the necks of the bottles together before taking a drink, and I turned my stare toward his ceiling.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said.
“Why?”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Finn, you’re my brother,” he said simply.
I turned toward him, and he shrugged a shoulder toward his ear like he’d just told me the sky was blue or the grass was green.
“Well.” My voice cracked. “When you put it like that.”
Andrew chuckled again and stretched out, crossing his legs at the ankles. “So, what’s up?”
More than spilling my guts, I wanted to know about the man to my left, this mysterious half-brother who had come into our lives a year ago.
Andrew had searched out Hunter to make contact, and he’d come up to meet us for dinner, and we’d seen him again at the party celebrating Hunter making partner, but other than that, he stayed scarce.
There was, of course, the group chat I avoided like the plague, but with two hours between us, it might as well have been two thousand miles.
“Do you want the short story or the long story?” I asked.
“I don’t think you drove all this way to give me the short story.”
He had a point.
“I don’t think I want to give either, if we’re being honest. Hunter thought you might be someone subjective for me to spill my guts to, but I really don’t want to talk about it at all.” I paused, rinsed my mouth out with some beer. “But I don’t want to think about it either and if I’m alone—”
“You’ll think about it,” Andrew finished for me.
I nodded.
Andrew tipped up his beer and poured all the contents straight down his throat like a frat boy.
“Let’s go do something then,” he said, jerking his chin toward me. “Finish your beer.”
Pounding half a Corona wasn’t going to kill me, so I finished the rest of my drink and passed him the empty bottle and he tossed them both into the recycle.
“What size are you?” he asked when I stood.
I smoothed my hands over my stomach. “Why?”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
“What?”
“The beach.”
Andrew gestured vaguely toward the back of the house. “It’s right there and you’re right here, and it’s something to do that isn’t sit here and pretend everything in your life is okay.”
Everything in my life was okay.
The problem was the okayness was too new of a revelation for me to trust.
“I’m a thirty-four.”
Andrew plucked at his hip and nodded agreeably. “Perfect, come on.”
I was a captive audience as I followed him down a hallway toward what I assumed were the bedrooms. His place was small but didn’t feel cramped, and there were three doors in the hall, two of them open and one closed..
His bedroom, a bathroom, and what I assumed would be a guest room.
It could have been an office, an art supply room, a computer room.
I realized, listening to Andrew rifle around in drawers, I didn’t know a single thing about him beyond the fact we shared the same father and his mother was infinitely more deserving of love than mine had been.
He returned and tossed a pair of neon swim trunks in my direction, mouth pulling up into an amused grin.
“Bathroom’s here,” he said, thumbing toward the door to my left.
“What’s this one?” I asked, mimicking the gesture to the closed door on my right.
“Art room.”
I raised a brow.
“I paint,” he said simply.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, and before I could formulate a normal response, Andrew disappeared back into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Painting seemed like a perfectly normal hobby, just not one I would have associated with the Covington bloodline.
Though Smith and Marshall’s artistic capabilities were not to be undersold, maybe it made more sense.
Maybe Hunter and I, with the law and with finance, were the outliers here.
Frowning at the possibility, I went into the bathroom and changed into the obscenely bright swim trunks, then sent a mirror selfie to Hunter.
I hope you’re happy. This was a horrible idea.
Hunter
Where ARE you???
San Diego
He typed a series of replies, deleted them, typed and deleted some more. I watched the dots appear and vanish, appear and vanish. Finally a message.
Have fun.
“Fuck off,” I said to my phone, stacking it neatly on top of my jeans. I slipped my t-shirt back on and found Andrew in the living room again, dressed much the same. From the back, he looked like Hunter.
He reminded me of all of us.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
He turned and pulled a pair of sunglasses off the top of his head and down onto his nose. “Do you surf?”
“Absolutely not.”
Andrew—my brother—grinned at me.
“Do you want to learn?”
Four hours later, I collapsed on the sand, my head landing on a towel and the rest of me splaying out helplessly. My bones were gelatin and even though I was certain I was on dry land, my body hadn’t gotten the memo. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the waves pushing and pulling at me.
Andrew had been right.
Surfing, or failing at it, had been the perfect distraction and an amazing way to spend the last half of a Saturday afternoon. He sat down beside me with a laugh, legs bent at the knee and arms outstretched.
“You are not great at surfing,” he said.
“And you were? The first time you tried?”
“I mean, better than…” he trailed off with a laugh, and I shoved sand at him. “I don’t think I would have kept at it if it had been that hard for me.”
“I should have stayed in LA and drank.”
“I know you don’t mean that.”
My expression fell and I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.”
I opened my eyes and shielded them with my hand so I could see his face.
Andrew looked mostly unbothered, save for a few worry lines around the corner of his mouth.
He’d done a great job trying to teach me how to surf.
We’d started with what he said were the basics—mostly paddling, getting used to the feel of the board riding the waves.
It took a couple of hours, but I did stand up once, only for the wave I’d been eyeing to immediately take me out.
Falling off a surfboard, even in shallow water, was disorienting, but I wasn’t one to take failure at face value, so I tried again.
Andrew managed to get two more hours out of me before my legs gave up.
My core hurt like I’d done seven thousand hours of planks, and I knew the drive back to LA was going to be agony.
Andrew had offered to let me stay at his house, but I did find that by the end of the day, I was looking forward to being home.
Spending the day with him at the beach hadn’t fixed anything, but I felt marginally more equipped to face things upon my return.
We enjoyed some quiet conversation on the beach together, not talking about anything important or groundbreaking, which I appreciated.
When the sun began to sink quicker toward the horizon, we called it a day and carried his surfboards back to his house.
He gave me a spare towel, so I took a quick shower before getting dressed again and checking my phone.
I had a text from Hunter making fun of the swim trunks again and letting me know he was relieved I wouldn’t get lost at sea. I responded to him with four middle finger emojis. I also had a message from Daniel, which I had hoped for but not expected.
Daniel
When are we going on that date?
Tell me when.
And also from Sophie.
Sophie
I hope you had a good rest of your day, Finn.
I miss you already, which feels silly to say.
It’s not silly. I miss you too.
I missed both of them, but it hadn’t come up with Daniel.
I’d told them how I didn’t want to be a plaything passed between them and the separate messages—to me—were proof they took that warning to heart.
Sophie and Daniel were both engaging me on their own accord, with their own wants in mind.
I wasn’t daft enough to think they weren’t next to each other on the couch when they sent them or that they hadn’t let the other know about it.
That was to be expected, but that did nothing to take away how much I appreciated the act of it.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay the night?” Andrew asked when he caught up to me in the hallway after my shower. I shoved my wet hair back from my face and slid my phone into the pocket of my jeans.
“I’m sure, but thank you. And thank you for today. You really didn’t have to.”
“I meant what I said earlier, Finn.”
“We’re brothers,” I muttered, and he nodded.
I laced up my sneakers and wiggled my toes. “I put the trunks in the hamper you had in the bathroom. And the towels.”
“Perfect.”
An awkward silence drifted into the space between us, and I broke it by laughing even more awkwardly.
“I’m not good at this,” I said by way of apology.
“You don’t have to be good at everything.”
“Food for thought,” I countered, holding out my hand for a shake because I didn’t know what else to do. Andrew rolled his eyes at me and wrapped me up into a quick hug that ended almost as soon as it started. We broke apart and there was relief on his face that I felt in my bones.
“Come to LA sometime?” I asked.
“Tell me when,” he said, and another stab of familiarity sliced through me.
“Okay,” I told him. “I will.”
“You sure?” he teased, opening the front door. The sky outside was orange and blue, the day quickly fading.
“Very sure, Andrew. Very sure.”