Chapter Nine #3
But the funniest thing to Finn’s mind was that as he nodded at the faces he recognized, they nodded back.
This was the kind of thing that would make his father pack them all up and get them on the road again. The minute anyone knew their names or felt comfortable enough with them to say hello? That meant they were on the move.
If he stopped to think about it too much, it was likely that Finn was never going to come to any kind of good terms with the fact that his father had settled here, where everybody knew him.
When he made sure that while he was with his other, secret family, no one could really get to know them.
He’d kept them nomadic and had insisted they keep to themselves.
Meanwhile there had been all of this that they could have been a part of.
It wasn’t the first time Finn thought if he could, he’d like to find his father—preferably still alive, despite all indications otherwise—and impart a few choice words. Or maybe not so many words, if he was really honest with himself.
But that, of course, would involve interacting with that waste of a man.
And Finn had no intention of ever doing that again.
When he stopped thinking about what his father would do in a crowd of so many people who greeted him like a friend, Finn allowed himself to actually enjoy it.
Especially when he came across Cat and Helena with a group of women that it took him only a moment to identify as the wives of the Carey brothers.
Though he frowned as they said hello. “Are you all wearing the same T-shirt?” he asked.
They all beamed, with Cat’s smile probably being the widest.
The T-shirts were green with CBSG in varsity lettering, made to look like some kind of athletic wear. Like a sports team.
“We’re the Carey Brothers Support Group,” Cat told him merrily. “It’s a club closed to new members, unfortunately, though I feel like we can all appreciate it. Except maybe our husbands.”
“They seemed distinctly less appreciative, actually,” said the woman next to her. Sierra, Finn remembered. Boone Carey’s wife.
“Ryder wouldn’t dare comment,” said the one Finn had seen at the wedding with two sets of twins. Rosie. “He knows better.”
“Wilder, of course, commented extensively,” Cat said, with a wave of her hand. “But it didn’t do him any good.”
Kendall, who looked even more pregnant now, laughed when everyone looked at her. “You know that Harlan just sighed.”
Finn decided that he probably needed to get to know those Carey brothers a little better. Since they could inspire a whole support group from their wives—especially when all of said wives always looked deeply pleased with their husbands when he’d seen them together.
He stayed and talked with them a while, then made his way inside. It was crowded and happy and he could see his in-laws running around getting the orders out, taking to-go requests, and soothing frayed customer nerves since folks really didn’t like waiting in line.
But none of that seemed to amount to much when he saw Kitty come out from the kitchen. She walked out holding giant pizzas, one in each hand, and slid them on the counter for one of her sisters to take to a waiting table. When she was done transferring the pies, she looked up and smiled at him.
“Hi,” was all she said.
And Finn had to remind himself that he really couldn’t vault over the counter and kiss her hello the way he wanted to. Not in the middle of the summer dinner rush like this.
So he did the next best thing he could think of. He angled himself over the counter, hooked a hand on the back of her neck, and kissed her silly.
She tasted like flour, something sweet, and everything Kitty.
She melted against him, kissing him as if she couldn’t help herself. Melting into him until he very nearly forgot where they were.
When he pulled back, her eyes were dreamy and he thought that if he wasn’t already married to her, he would have taken it upon himself to remedy that, and quick.
She breathed a little heavy for a moment and he watched her fight to get her bearings. Then she nodded, solemnly. She looked around at the crowd behind him and her ears turned a little bit pink. Then she looked back at him.
“That was a good move,” she said, though her breath was still a little ragged. “It’s a good thing to really sell it.”
Kitty had already filled him in on her plan, which he had to admit had a certain small-town angle that he admired.
She didn’t go, and wouldn’t go, tell her landlords things had changed for her.
She wanted them to hear about it through the grapevine so it felt inevitable.
And so they wouldn’t connect it to the conversation Kitty’d had with Izzy Milan.
And normally Finn found it adorable that she seemed to think that she was some mastermind here. That they could fool everybody and play this like a game. Play them like a game.
But he’d stood in a pretty field on a mountainside and seen the future, and he wasn’t in the mood.
“It wasn’t a move,” he told her. “Sometimes a man feels like kissing his wife, Kitty.”
“Especially in public,” she agreed. She didn’t actually wink at him, but he felt as if she had.
And he didn’t like it.
Finn thought about that farm again. He realized that it was more than just envisioning the plants that he would grow for her. It was all the other things he wanted to grow.
This relationship. Their own family.
He had gone from being infatuated with this woman from afar, to marrying her because she wanted a fake husband, to this.
Or maybe, he acknowledged a little ruefully, he hadn’t gone all that far at all. Maybe he’d pretty much been right here all along, just waiting for an excuse to tell her how he felt.
How he really felt.
Either way, he knew what he was doing now.
It had all become astonishingly clear to him today.
He leaned over the counter again so he could put his face directly in hers, like they were entirely alone in this restaurant. To him, they were. He couldn’t see anything but her.
“Here’s the thing,” he told her, keeping his eyes intent on hers.
“I’m going to buy a farm here, Kitty. I don’t think I’m going anywhere.
I like it here. I like you, too.” She blinked.
He didn’t. He reached over and tilted up her chin.
“And while we’re on the topic of that? I can tell you right now that I don’t want a divorce, either. Not in a year. Probably not ever.”