Chapter Fifteen #2
I smirked, watching him as he effortlessly took over the mess I’d created and began turning it into a masterpiece.
It was frustrating, how good he looked — even half-asleep, bossing me around.
Maybe more so with the whole bossing me around part.
The easy way he moved around the galley reminded me of all the late nights we used to spend just like this, cleaning up after service, stealing kisses between washing dishes and checking on guests.
I swallowed hard against those memories, shoving them down as I picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite, the crunch of it so satisfying I moaned.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, shaking the bacon at him before I took another bite. “Nicole is going to cream her pants when you throw this on a bed of cheese and sandwich it between two slices of sourdough.”
“Is that what that little moan was? You creaming yours?”
I narrowed my gaze, taking one last bite of the bacon before throwing the last of it at him. “Shut up.”
He laughed as it bounced off his nose and hit the floor.
“I heard about the, uh, discovery Leah made while unpacking today,” Finn said, arching a brow at me. He held up the ball of mozzarella I’d pulled out with a frown.
“They want it fried. Cheese fries, grilled cheese, mozz sticks…”
“They don’t want to shit tomorrow. Got it.”
I chuckled. “Maybe it helps with the whole toy situation. I can’t imagine anything that big coming near my ass, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.”
“What exactly is the appropriate size for things coming near your ass?” Finn asked with a smirk. “Just so I can pocket that information away.”
“That’s for me to know and you to lie awake at night dreaming of.”
“I’ll never sleep again.”
He smiled with the comment, seasoning the potatoes as my stomach did a little flip.
Was he flirting with me?
That felt like flirting.
I told myself not to read too much into it.
After the fight last night and the pancakes this morning, I had no idea where the hell we stood.
Throw in that little ass slap, and I was more than just a little confused.
But whatever we were now felt better than what we had been the first day we walked onto this boat — so I’d take it, no questions asked.
I ran out to check on the guests, laughing when they cheered at my announcement that Finn was awake and creating a cheesy paradise for them. When I slid back into the galley, I found Finn staring at what he’d assembled so far with a frown like he was making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
He was twisting a ring on his right pinky finger.
My breath stalled out at the sight.
His grandma’s ring.
He’d told me about it one morning as we had coffee on the dock in Greece, our feet swinging beneath us as we watched the sun rise higher over the diamond blue water.
“I don’t know any other guys who wear a pinky ring,” I say, nodding to the simple gold band gleaming from where he holds his coffee mug.
“Ah,” he says, smiling down at it. He wears his exhaustion on his face and somehow it makes me even more attracted to him. I wish we could spend the day snuggled in a hotel bed. “Me granny’s.”
“Really?” I reach out for his hand, and he lets me inspect the ring closer. “That’s so sweet.”
“She left it to me when she passed, along with her best cookware. She didn’t have much in the end, since she’d moved in with us, but… she knew I’d appreciate the little she did have.”
“It’s really nice that you honor her memory by wearing it.”
He cracks his neck, growing quiet before he takes a sip of his coffee. “One day, I hope I can do more.”
I hadn’t understood what he meant by that then, and our radios had gone off in the next instant, our captain calling a crew meeting.
Now, I knew he meant the restaurant he’d yet to tell me about at that time.
His words battled through the fog of the alcohol from the night before, though I struggled to remember it all clearly.
I didn’t want to ruin what we had.
I thought if I had a grand plan… you’d come with me.
If I were a more confident woman, maybe I would have. Maybe Gisella would have if she were in my spot then. But Finn had triggered me, even if it wasn’t his intention. He’d made me feel the way my father did, like my career wasn’t important, like my dreams weren’t valid.
And worst of all, him leaving me in the end confirmed my deepest fear.
That I wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough to stay for, to change course for, to be honest with, to fully let in.
Staring at this man in the galley now, I wondered if it had been his fears ruling him that night, too. I wondered if love, or lack thereof, wasn’t to blame.
Love never stood a chance against bad timing and two scared kids trying to figure out who they were.
Finn startled a bit when he realized I was back. “They good?”
I smiled. “They’re fine. Drunk and hungry, but fine.” I edged closer, placing my hands on the opposite side of the stainless-steel island where he worked. “I love that you still wear that.”
He followed my gaze to his ring, flexing his hand before he curled it into a fist.
“Never take it off.”
“Finn.” I waited until he looked at me again. “What happened to the restaurant?”
His hands stilled where he was working, his eyes searching mine for a long moment. “Put my trust in the wrong eejit, didn’t I?”
“What does that mean?”
He sighed, cracking his neck before he was back to work. He seemed to do everything with a little more gusto, frustration rolling off him in plumes. “It means I thought I had a proper partner. Turned out I’d hitched my wagon to a bloody crook.”
He poured the dipping sauce he’d been making for the grilled cheeses into a ramekin — some sort of maple glaze — then tossed the silver mixing bowl into the sink without care. The clang of it made me flinch.
Finn rested his hands on the edge of the sink for a moment, smoothing out his breaths.
“Everything was perfect, Em,” he said softly, shaking his head.
“It feels impossibly hard when you open a new restaurant. There are a thousand ways you could fail… a shit location where no one can find you, a menu that tries too hard to impress everyone and ends up impressing no one, staff that’s either incompetent or just couldn’t give a shite, margins so razor-thin you’re bleeding out before you even open the doors.
.. but everything worked out for us.” He hummed a little laugh like he still couldn’t believe it.
“The location was great, the community was welcoming, the reviews were glowing, the staff keen to make it a success. We struggled in the first couple of months, but before we knew it, every table was filled for dinner every single night of the week. We had a waitlist.” His nostrils flared.
“It was too good to be true. I knew it, but I thought maybe…”
His voice faded, and he pushed away from the sink, getting back to work on finalizing all the dishes. It smelled amazing in the galley, all the cheese and garlic and onions and bacon. Even with pain etched into his face, he worked like it wasn’t work at all.
“So, this business partner…”
“Ronan,” Finn said, and his jaw tightened with the name.
“He was a family friend, lad I knew since we were in nappies. He came into a big sum of money when his grandparents passed. We ran into each other at a bar a couple months before I left for that charter I met you on, and as we were catching up, I told him my plans for the restaurant.” Finn shook his head.
“He knew what Granny meant to me, what this was all about. He told me he’d look into things and see if he could help.
“I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it was like a sign from the universe.
Then, about a month before our season was up, he called and said he was ready to go into it with me as a partner — fifty-fifty.
He said he believed in the restaurant. He made me believe in it.
” His eyes found mine. “And then he bled us dry. By the time I clocked it, there wasn’t a prayer of saving the place.
I tried, but it was hopeless. We went under so fast I didn’t have time to abandon ship even if I wanted to. ”
“You never would have anyway.”
He swallowed.
“I’m so sorry, Finn.” My chest cracked with the words. I couldn’t imagine working so hard for something like that, for a dream so hard to accomplish, and then to have it all disappear in an instant…
“Thank you,” he whispered. “It just… Jaysus, Ember, it really fucked me up.” His voice broke a bit with that, and the vulnerability of it made my throat tighten. “I’ve never felt such shame in all my life.”
“There’s nothing for you to feel ashamed of,” I said with a frown. “You did everything you could. You would have made your grandmother so proud. You—”
“Should’ve seen the signs plain as day,” he finished for me, eyes hitting mine. “Now I don’t trust me own bleeding shadow, don’t trust me judgement at all anymore — on anything. On anyone.”
“Not even Gisella?”
Oh, God.
My eyes widened at the words I couldn’t believe I’d let slip out, but Finn didn’t seem fazed by them at all. He just finished plating the midnight snacks, one of his shoulders inching up a bit.
That was all the answer I got before it was time to take the food out to the guests.
Finn helped me, both of us plastering on wide smiles and Finn even doing a little bow to the applause from the group when we delivered the trays.
It was a performance worthy of an Oscar from him, considering the topic of conversation before.
The guests dove in, moaning their appreciation as I got them each situated with bottles of water before Finn and I retreated back to the galley.
The tension was still right where we’d left it.
Wordlessly, we both began cleaning up, Finn focusing on wiping all the surfaces down while I got started on the dishes. He eventually joined me, taking over drying after I washed and rinsed.