5. This isn’t my place
Chapter 5
This isn’t my place
Skye
I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d expected Phin to pull out of his bags. Maybe caviar? Quail’s eggs? Lobster rolls? But what he grabbed was a couple of sandwiches, a thermos with reasonably warm soup, and some apples and oranges. Everything looked good, but after our interactions with his family, I didn’t want to assume anything.
“You only brought food for you though. Maybe I should eat some of the canned stuff and replace it after.”
He met my gaze. “You’re stuck here because you came to help me. You’re not replacing anything. And I brought lots. If we run out, I’ll buy more in town. Or if we can’t get out, I’ll grab some rocks to get into the cans.”
He flexed his arms, and yeah, the man was built. I forced my mind away from imagining what those arms would look like if they weren’t covered up with layers of clothing.
We each settled on one of the couches in the big room. The fireplace cast enough light in front of it for us to see each other, but the rest of the room was in dark shadows. Kind of spooky. I shuffled a little closer to the fireplace before I took one sandwich and an apple. He went to the kitchen with his flashlight and came back with a couple of spoons and bowls. Carefully pouring out the soup, he passed me a bowl. I wanted to say no, but there was still heat in the soup and it felt good just to hold it. I had my gloves off as the room got a few degrees warmer, but the soup would help heat me up from the inside.
“Instead of mutilating what could be our last food source, it might be easier to search for a can opener in the daylight.”
He dropped his head back. “What do you want to bet there’s an electric can opener in a cupboard and that’s all they’ve got?”
I wasn’t sure why he said they , instead of we . I opened up the wrapper on the sandwich, now that I’d finished the excellent soup. The bread was crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, with turkey and a pile of vegetables. If it was as good as the soup, I was going to be a happy woman.
“So there’s no genny here for power outages?” It wasn’t completely unheard of for a summer thunderstorm to bring down the power lines.
He looked around the room, as if a generator might suddenly appear behind a couch. “I have no idea.”
Had he really become a guy who paid people to do everything for him? “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to know a bit about your property for when something goes wrong and there aren’t any employees around to take care of it.”
His brows lowered. “This isn’t my place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve only been here maybe three times.”
I stopped chewing. “This year?”
He shook his head. “Ever.”
What the… “Why?”
He looked around with a frown. “I loved the cottage when we were kids. When we came to an actual fucking cottage. This—this is Lina’s place. Not mine.”
His face was partially shadowed, but he sounded sincere.
“Really? Your family is here a lot in the summer.”
His jaw clenched. “Has anyone seen me?”
I bit into the apple. Because of the way we’d lost our cottage, I both hated hearing about the Collinses, and wanted to know, kind of like picking at a scab. Depending on which way I was teeter-tottering, I might have missed something. I shrugged, since I didn’t have an answer.
“Okay then, answer this. Why did your family sell your cottage?”
Just like the first time he asked, I reacted with a jerk. This time, instead of spinning a tow truck into a hydro pole, I flung my apple and almost hit his head.
The apple went past him into the dark. “Okay, I won’t ask again. Sorry.”
He had good reason to be concerned, but I wasn’t that upset about it. Not anymore. Not enough to hurt a Collins, though it had been touch-and-go when it happened. “How the actual fuck can you ask me that?”
He paused with a juice bottle halfway to his mouth. “Because I don’t know?”
I sat bolt upright, no longer feeling the cold. “You don’t know? YOU DON’T KNOW ?”
He flinched, but I was just getting started.
“You don’t know about the code violations that were filed against our cottage and our business by your family? If one of our tow trucks showed up anywhere near here, there was a complaint. If the grass was too long, a complaint. Disputed property line. Anything and everything. Claims the building didn’t meet code, and that spilled over to the garage as well. Business dropped off.”
I’d been a teenager and didn’t understand all the details, just that our former allies, the Collinses, were doing their best to destroy us.
“My dad got a lawyer, but our local law firm couldn’t compare to the lawyers your family has. Finally, he had to sell because we owed so much in legal fees.”
Phin looked stricken. “No way.”
“Oh, most definitely yes way. And then both cottages were torn down and this”—I waved at the shadows around us—“was built.”
“Fuck. How the hell could she…” His voice trailed off. “When did this happen?”
“Twelve years ago. I was fourteen, and I remember it very clearly.”
“ Fuck ,” he repeated, more forcefully. “I’d like to say Lina wouldn’t do that, but she would. Without a thought.”
I shrugged. He could blame it on his stepmother if he wanted. But the whole family came and enjoyed the place. They no longer associated with plebians like us, but they’d all been here. Except maybe Phin.
“I would have been sixteen—” He stopped and then swore. Impressively.
I unzipped my jacket, the room feeling another degree or two warmer. It was a big fireplace but the room was huge too. Floor-to-ceiling windows, and I wasn’t sure how well they were insulated.
Phin sighed. “It’s my fault.”
“What is?”
He waved a hand at me. “You losing your cottage. But I swear, I had no idea what she’d do.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out the she he meant. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t like Lina. I didn’t like it when she started dating my dad. I was sixteen, and I’d been drafted to play major junior, so I wasn’t around much. But I was pissed that my dad was dating. Lina tried to make friends and offered to take us to Europe that summer when I wasn’t in hockey camp, but I said I preferred to spend summer here, at the cottage.”
I went back through my memories, trying to remember what was going on before the pressure on Dad to sell our property started. I’d been focused on Quin, but I didn’t think Phin had been around much.
He sighed. “I said it mostly because I knew there wasn’t room for her up here, and it wasn’t something she’d like.”
I looked around the shadowy spaces of this huge room. Yeah, Lina Collins wasn’t going to sleep on a lumpy futon. “She forced us to sell so she could build this huge place only because you said you wanted to be here? Even though you didn’t?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to scare her off. Have something that she wasn’t a part of. I had no idea what my being a brat would do.”
I’d been angry at the Collins family, and also hurt because we’d shared a lot over those summers hanging out together. I’d mostly played with Quin, who I had a crush on, but Phin and my brothers had been close and we’d done things together. Every summer, for as long as I could remember, it had been the five of us.
It made sense that the boys hadn’t initially been the ones to want to push us out, but Quin had broken my heart when he’d started avoiding me, blocked my number, and ended what had been a years-long friendship.
“She forced us out to build something big enough for everyone, and then you never come to the cottage she built.”
“I still don’t like her. I’m polite, and I don’t make a fuss when we have family events, but I avoid her as much as I can.” He looked around the dark spaces where the fireplace didn’t send light. “Even if I didn’t, this isn’t the kind of thing I’d want as a vacation home. I don’t know how the hell anyone relaxes here.”
“It’s very luxurious,” I noted.
He shrugged. “It’s…meant for showing off. Not my thing.”
While I’d sure as hell love to have the kind of money this place came with, it wasn’t comfortable. “It’s not somewhere you can wear a ratty T-shirt and belch your beer.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. “Exactly. Remember that time Riley got his hands on some beer and we all got drunk?”
“You three did. You wouldn’t share with Quin and me.”
“You’d have been what, twelve?”
“Okay, that would have been wrong. But you guys weren’t that old either.”
“Riley must have been sixteen. He was learning to drive that summer. If your dad had caught us…”
“Quin wanted to tell.”
“Yeah, I can believe that. How did you stop him?”
“I told him it would be better to blackmail you guys in future.”
Phin chuckled. “And did you?”
“I made Riley drive me around that winter once he got his license.”
Phin shifted on the couch. “I loved coming up here for the summers. I’d forgotten a lot of those stupid things we did. But they were fun. A lot more fun than this place is now.”
“That’s why we were all so pissed at you. It’s like you forgot us.”
“I’m sorry. Things changed so much with my family, and I didn’t fit in. I avoided a lot.”
“But Quin fits in.”
His lips tightened. “Quin is a big fan of Lina. A fan of being rich too.” Sounded like he wasn’t close to his brother anymore.
“And doesn’t want to be with the poor people.”
Phin focused on me. “What did he do?”
“Nothing that bad. He just cut me—us off.”
“Were the two of you…”
I was glad of the dark, since I felt the blush on my cheeks. “I had a crush on him back then. He was different than the other guys I knew. From the big city of Toronto, and only here for the summer. But we hadn’t kissed or anything. I thought maybe…but I was completely wrong.”
“What an ass.”
“He’s allowed to choose his friends.”
Phin scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Fuck. We really were horrible. I disappeared, because I ignored everyone for hockey. Lina took your cottage, and Quin cut you off. No wonder you hate us.”
“Hate’s a strong word.”
“Yeah, but the way you looked at me when you stopped to tow me?”
I couldn’t really argue with that. “Okay. There might be a picture of your face in the garage that we’ve used as a dart board.”
“What, seriously?” Someone sounded upset about that.
“We were pissed. And not very mature.”
“At least I can apologize now.”
The anger inside was thawing along with my fingers. “I appreciate the apology, and the explanation. It was hard on my brothers too. We were all pretty tight.”
“I got caught up in hockey. Part of that was because I was angry about Dad and Lina, and I escaped into something she wasn’t involved in. I wanted to succeed without her. But the bad part is that I cut out more than my family.”
It didn’t excuse him, but I could understand. I hadn’t had that many interactions with Lina Collins, but if she’d wanted to marry my dad, I’d have done some shit too. “So you’re not close to your family?”
He shook his head. “I mostly avoided them, till I started playing in Toronto. Now, we do the holidays together, but again, hockey keeps me busy. It’s a good excuse.”
“That’s too bad. I always thought your dad was a good guy.”
“He is, but he’s Lina obsessed. He won’t hear anything against her, so it’s easier to keep my distance.”
I had to readjust my brain a bit. But something didn’t make sense. “So if you don’t like this, um, cottage, why did you come here today?”
“There’s a big Christmas party on the twenty-fifth, and I don’t want to be there. Plus, I have this sore shoulder and wanted to rest it for a bit. I didn’t tell the family where I was going, just that I wasn’t going to be there. If I stayed at my home in the city, someone would come over to convince me to attend. There aren’t a lot of places I can go in Toronto where someone might not recognize me. The family won’t be coming here, not with the big party, so it seemed like a safe retreat.”
“You don’t like parties?”
“Lina’s been playing matchmaker and thinks her friend’s daughter would be perfect for me. Since, as we know, Lina will go to great lengths to get what she wants, I figured it would be better to hide out till I’m playing again and have that excuse to be absent. Hopefully by summer she’ll have something else to keep her busy.”
Maybe Quin would keep the woman company instead. The idea didn’t hurt. I’d realized that the Quin I’d crushed on as a teen was not the man he was now. I’d be happy to hear he’d gone bald or got caught doing something stupid on a video that went viral, but mostly I’d put him in a box marked Past Mistakes and forgot about him. “Maybe you should find someone yourself. Keep her from getting ideas.”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“Why not? You don’t want to settle down?”
He’d opened his lightweight coat, and the blue cashmere sweater underneath hugged his body. He had a good chest, I could admit. Probably all the hockey players did. Didn’t have to mean anything.
“This is going to sound really clichéd, but I haven’t found anyone yet.”
“You’re looking?” That surprised me. In my head, he just wanted to live it up as a single guy, but what did I know?
“Yeah. I am. Some of my teammates have found their partners these past few months, and I can see how much happier they are. My own family isn’t close, and it would be nice to have someone.”
A few hours ago, I’d have pitied anyone who ended up with the asshole Phin Collins. Now, well, there might be an almost decent guy in there. Maybe a little thoughtless and self-centered, but not self-entitled.
“It’s good to know someone has your back.” I’d happily throttle my brothers half the time, but if one of us got in trouble, I knew they’d be with me.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I’d take Riley and Oscar over this place, any day.”