Chapter 3
SOPHIE
Ifrowned at a paint stain on the top of my sneaker, hip pressed against the paint-covered counter.
Running out for an extra gallon in the middle of the home renovation from hell hadn’t been on the agenda, but not much about moving to Los Angeles had gone according to plan.
I’d been in California for four weeks, and Daniel and I had spent that whole time renovating the house that was meant to be our marital home, though calling it that sounded silly at this point in our relationship.
We’d been together for almost eight years, but this was the first time we’d spent more than seven nights together, and even those rare occurrences where we’d managed a week-long vacation had been few and far between.
When I was much younger, middle school age, my plans had been different.
It was always married by my early twenties, babies by the middle, six figures before thirty.
I’d never subscribed to the idea I couldn’t do both, that I couldn’t have a successful job and a family, even though my mother had believed it so hard she’d walked away from one for the other.
I wanted a different life for myself, and I’d planned it out more than once in near excruciating detail.
I’d almost done it right.
I’d gotten a scholarship for design, which was great.
I’d attended an amazing college that kept me local to Portland, and my senior year I’d snagged one of three coveted internships with one of the most reputable firms in the city.
The internship sent me to a conference in Los Angeles four months before graduation, and that was when I met Daniel.
He was different.
Even back then, he was different, so softspoken and reserved, so eager to please. I’d literally walked right into him in a crowded hallway while trying to find the bathroom. He was there for a sales conference, and he had eyes the color of whiskey. In hindsight, I’d never stood a chance.
He practically begged me to let him take me to dinner that night, and there was something about the adorable way he smiled that made it impossible to say no.
He says he fell in love with me that night, but I think he fell in love with me when I smashed into his chest so hard looking for a bathroom I left a lipstick smear on his collar.
I’d been resigned to enjoying a few more days with a gorgeously subservient, tanned Californian before heading back to Portland, but Daniel, as usual, had other plans.
He texted daily, then he started to call, then we started to FaceTime.
I was ready to graduate, and he asked if he could come watch. He showed up with that smile and those eyes, and a bouquet of flowers the size of his head.
“The same shade of lipstick you were wearing the day we met,” he whispered into my ear.
My friends loved him immediately, and my dad didn’t hate him, which was a win considering my dad didn’t like anyone who wasn’t me or my little sister.
Daniel fit in with my friends like he’d always been there, and later that night from his favorite place—between my legs—he asked me to consider being his girlfriend.
Again, I never stood a chance against that man.
My mid-twenties came and went with no marriage and no babies, but I had Daniel down in Los Angeles and a six-figure career up in Portland.
We made long distance work in the ways that made sense for us.
We started open and remained that way for almost ten years.
It wasn’t something either of us had put too much thought into, but for his introversion, Daniel was nothing if not practical.
“I don’t want you to be left wanting,” he’d told me, so many years before. “I want you to always be taken care of.”
“No one takes care of me like you,” I’d said.
We were in bed together when it came up, his body hot and sweaty between my legs, his fingers dancing across my cheek.
“You really think you’d be okay knowing I’m with other people when you’re not here?” I asked.
He smiled, a little lust drunk as he slid his cock into me. “I think I’d be more than okay with it.”
It was the most forward thing he’d said to me, and then he brought us both off whispering in my ear about what it would be like when we went our separate ways and took other lovers.
Back then, I’d been as in love with the freedom of our relationship as I’d been with Daniel.
Things between us had changed over the years, for the better in all ways, and that was how we’d lived our lives.
Then, four months ago, I’d unexpectedly lost my job.
The firm closed with no warning, and the jarring quake to the foundation I’d built my life on sent me spiraling.
Daniel had caught the first flight to Portland and he’d held me so well on my couch while I cried over the loss of something that had been so important to me.
To my identity.
It wasn’t like losing my job meant I was losing design, but I’d been at the firm since college. It was all I knew, and the thought of finding something new and starting over at thirty terrified me.
The night before he returned to Los Angeles, Daniel made two proposals. One that ended with a ring on my finger and another with an order for packing boxes and bubble wrap.
“Move to Los Angeles,” he’d begged, same endearing tone he’d used the first time he asked me to dinner.
It was the bigger of the two asks, but it made sense.
We’d been together eight years, and neither of us had any complaints about the state of our relationship.
We had good lives and were deeply in love, but could that really go on forever with so many miles between us?
We had a talk about the future and what we wanted it to look like, and that settled it.
Daniel hadn’t been wrong either. Los Angeles would offer more opportunities for me than Portland would, though I was loath to leave my friends.
Thankfully, they understood; they wanted this next step for me.
They threw me a massive going away party and then… I was gone.
I found a job within the first month, making almost double the salary I’d been getting in Portland.
Daniel and I started house hunting immediately.
His small one-bedroom apartment was not going to be sustainable for us, considering we’d spent the past decade building separate lives.
The housing market was tight and as an interior designer, I had strong opinions about what I wanted in a property.
Thankfully, we found a place in Brentwood that we could easily afford, that only needed some minor renovations.
Most of the updates were cosmetic, so we’d moved in and agreed to build as we went.
We’d spent most of the weekend on the bedroom, and Daniel had me so distracted with his mouth I’d done bad math on the square footage and not ordered enough paint.
Leaving the bedroom half-finished had me going crazy, so I decided to take a half day at work, go home, change into my dirty housework clothes, get some more paint, and finish it up before he got home for dinner.
Unfortunately, even after so many years in the business, the wait for paint never got shorter.
I looked from my dirty sneakers to the machine shaking the paint can around, wondering if I could will it to rattle faster.
Behind me, someone made the most miserable sound I’d ever heard come out of another person.
I glanced over my shoulder to find an obscenely tall man staring at the wall of paint swatches like he would rather papercut himself with every available option than make a decision.
He had on a pair of worn jeans that hugged every sharp line of his legs like they’d been cut just for him, paired with a slightly stretched-out white t-shirt that looked like it was definitely meant to be worn under something a little more professional.
His hair was light brown, a little too long but in the way that made it look grabbable, not overgrown.
Some scruff around his jawline that made him look a little too rugged for a man who also had on a five-hundred dollar pair of sneakers.
“Everything all right?” I asked because I couldn’t help myself. And not because he was attractive, but because it was my literal job and I was the kind of woman who could never turn that part of me off.
He startled a little, not much more than a quick twitch of his shoulders before he threw me a weary glance from the corner of his eye.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Picking paint?”
He rubbed his lips together, then turned a little more toward me, giving me my first real look at his face, which was just as nice to look at as the rest of him.
He had eyes like Daniel, darker, but more like pools than they had any right to be.
Swirling and deep, easy to get lost in. I looked at the paint on my shoe again.
“In theory.”
“Have you narrowed it down?”
The man shrugged, almost helpless but mostly tired, a feeling I was intimately familiar with so I knew it well. It was the same response I’d given Daniel after we’d gotten home the day I lost my last job.
“I need something to cover Sulking Room Pink,” he said, rubbing one long finger across the edge of his lower lip.
“That’s not impossible.” I took a step toward him, not because I wanted to be close to him, but because I wanted to get a better look at the chips. “Any colors you want to stay away from?”
“Sulking Room Pink,” he answered.
I laughed, reaching for a dark purple. “This one is nice. It looks a lot richer on a big wall, though. It can be a lot.”
“I don’t mind a lot.” He took the chip out of my hand and stared at it, a little blankly.
“I’m Sophie, by the way.”
His eyebrows went up, and he looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time, like our conversation somehow hadn’t happened or he’d been talking to a wall.
“Sophie,” I said a second time, pointing at the center of my chest. I pointed next at the color in his hand. “Pelt.”
“Finn,” he answered, tapping the edge of the sample against his sternum. I followed the motion, accidentally watched the way his throat worked when he swallowed, looked back at the wall.
“This is probably not best for a small room,” I warned. “It’s…”
“A lot,” he finished for me, the barest hint of a smile flashing on his mouth before disappearing. “It’s not a small room.”
“Could be a contender then. If not, there’s others.”
Finn gave me a dangerously slow onceover that had my toes curling. Behind me, the man working the paint desk cleared his throat and set my can down on the counter with a heavy thud.
“Studio Green,” he announced, and Finn cocked his head to the side before looking back at the paint samples.
“This one,” I said, snatching it out of the sleeve and handing it to him.
He compared the green against the purple I’d suggested before sliding the chip back into its holder.
“You have a type,” he mused.
“Do I?”
“Dark and broody, I’d say.” He tapped Pelt against the side of his hand, and I found myself unsure if he was talking about the paint or not. Daniel wasn’t dark or broody, and I felt a correction was necessary.
“Layered and thoughtful.”
“I’ve never heard paint described that way.”
“I’m an interior designer,” I said. “It’s sort of my job to talk about paint that way.”
Finn groaned, dropping his head back and staring up at the ceiling. “Unbelievable.”
“What do you have against interior designers?”
“Not a thing,” he said, angling his head toward the paint counter.
We both moved that way and he ordered two gallons of Pelt which went onto the mixer next.
I pulled my paint closer to me, fingers slipping around the metal handle.
“Just two of my brothers are architects so the whole dramatic buildings are dramatic thing gets old sometimes.”
I laughed at the way he changed the inflection of his voice when he talked about his brothers’ work. “I take it you didn’t follow in those footsteps then?”
Finn placed his hand over his heart. “I’m a numbers man, through and through.”
“Not an artistic bone in your body?”
He huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Not a single one. Our father didn’t feel it necessary to share that skillset with me.”
“Maybe it’s from your mother, you don’t know.”
“We have different mothers,” he said simply. “So unless Dad was out working his way through an architecture convention, seems unlikely.”
I bit back an uncomfortable sound, not sure what to say and certainly not sure how to address the flippant way this absolute stranger talked about his parentage.
“Just ignore me,” he said, waving himself off. “I’m not my best self today.”
“We don’t always have to be.”
Finn looked at me again, like really looked at me in a way that most soon-to-be-married women should not enjoy being looked at. But I wasn’t most soon-to-be-married women, was I?
“Can I get your phone number?” I asked, wishing I had come from anywhere besides home, that I’d been wearing anything besides home renovation clothes.
My brown hair had looked presentable for work, but I’d twisted it into a bun with a pencil before running out the door.
A few strands had come loose and fallen into my face, and I blew a breath out and up, trying to settle them back into place.
Finn’s dark eyes scanned my face, swirling as my hair fluttered and settled. He clenched his jaw and opened his mouth, letting it hang a moment before any sound came out.
“I’m not…” he started to say and stopped himself, stare shifting toward something over my shoulder. “I might not answer if you call.”
“I can text.”
“I might leave you on read.”
I bit the corner of my lip, worrying it before saying back to him. “I can be persistent, if I need to be.”
Finn’s chin trembled, not like he was about to cry but more like there was an unsustainable tension in his jaw that threatened to break him. Another feeling I knew better than I would have liked.
“You might,” he said softly.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”