Chapter 8
SOPHIE
The unspoken history between Daniel and Finn was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.
They moved around each other like they’d shared space more than once, but both of them flinched if the other got too close.
The table between us felt more like a hindrance than a help, and for once I wasn’t sure how to move things forward.
“Respectfully, I don’t think we can table it,” I said. Two sets of eyes turned on me, one piercing blue and the other a familiar, rich brown. “Or if we can, I don’t want to.”
“Yeah.” Daniel leaned back and scrubbed a hand down his face. “That’s fair.”
Across from us, Finn took a substantial swallow of wine, his gaze flickering toward the bottle, to Daniel, to me.
“The day I met you, I told you I wasn’t my best self,” Finn said carefully.
“And I told you I could be persistent.”
Finn sighed and turned himself toward Daniel. “The day I met you, I didn’t tell you I wasn’t my best self, but—”
“You weren’t,” Daniel said gently.
Finn shook his head and stared at his wine, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel’s hold on his facial expression begin to crack.
My future husband—in his heart—was a caretaker and a pleaser.
It was one of the things that made him such a phenomenal lover and breathtaking partner.
He put me above himself in most cases, put everyone around him on a pedestal he should have claimed for himself.
I knew him well enough to know he looked at Finn and wanted to fix him.
“I’m still not, but I’m more myself than I was before, and maybe this is…” Finn trailed off, took a drink, and looked everywhere but at Daniel. “Maybe this is an opportunity for us to have a second chance at meeting for the first time.”
Oh.
I’d been right about this man, but also so very wrong.
I’d looked at Finn when we were at the paint store, shoulder to shoulder with chips in hand, and I thought I’d had a read on him.
It was easy to tell he had some baggage in hand, that he was guarded and wary, but self-aware enough to recognize both things about himself.
He’d warned me about it, and it hadn’t scared me then. It didn’t scare me now.
But Daniel?
“I don’t think we can just pretend there’s no history between us,” he said.
“I didn’t…” Finn stopped himself, again. Drank some more wine, forced himself to look my fiancé in the eye before he said, “No, you’re right. That is exactly what I meant.”
Daniel let out an exhale that almost sounded like it very much wanted to be a laugh. “I know.”
“Okay.” Finn tapped his hands against the table, held his right one out for Daniel like he wanted a handshake. “My name is Finn Covington.”
“Daniel Boyd.” They shook hands, then Daniel returned his to my thigh.
“I hear you’re engaged?” Finn swallowed hard, his blue stare flickering toward mine.
“This is Sophie,” Daniel said, smiling in my direction. He squeezed my leg and I held my hand out for Finn. He took it gently in his, and leaned close enough to brush his lips across my knuckles.
“It’s very good to meet you.” He glanced up at me, lips still warm against my fingers. “You look like someone I just met last weekend. She helped me pick the new paint color for my office.”
“Did she do good?”
Finn pulled away, let go of my hand. “It looks better than the last color,” he said.
“Sulking Room Pink is a little pretentious.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, flashing a quick smile before returning to himself again.
“So, like I said…Finn Covington. I’m thirty-six, I’ve got four, maybe five brothers, maybe more.
I work in finance, it’s horribly boring, and my last relationship was a married couple who thought fucking me and fucking with me would be the thing that saved them from divorce. ”
He finished the rest of his wine and shoved the glass toward the center of the table, his shoulders heaving with a deep inhale.
Without a word, Daniel grabbed the bottle and dumped the rest of the contents into Finn’s glass.
Finn gave him a grateful smile, another thing I imagined Daniel had—at some point—become familiar with.
“I loved them both, in my own way. Maybe more than I should have. And because of that, I was not good at breaking it off when I needed to. When they came back to me, I let them. When they left, I let them. When they came back again, together or separately…” He went quiet again, swallowing the rest of the sentence off with some more wine.
I wanted to tell Finn he hadn’t done anything wrong, but I didn’t know him. Maybe he had. I was in Portland; Daniel had been the one here. Daniel was the one who knew him, who’d apparently been through some part of this with him.
“And I was in the middle of that?” Daniel guessed.
“It was wrong of me to use you.”
“You didn’t use—”
Finn cut him off, “I did. Maybe not in a harmful way, but I certainly was seeking something from you that I wasn’t getting from them.”
Daniel sucked his tongue across the front of his teeth and shrugged one shoulder up toward his ear. “I disagree with the definition, but I won’t tell you how to feel about your own actions.”
“I would be happy for another chance with you,” Finn said, almost under his breath. He made a quiet sound with his mouth before looking at me. “But I need to understand what the two of you want…what you’re offering.”
Finn picked his words with so much thought and care, it was impossible to not see why Daniel had tried to start something up with him before.
Seeing the two of them together, feeling how badly they both wanted to touch each other even with whatever hurt had grown between them, it made me wish Daniel and had talked about our other relationships more often… or more plainly.
“I told you we’re not new to this,” I said, stepping in. I covered Daniel’s hand with my own, taking as much strength and fortitude from him as I could manage. “But we are new to doing it when we live under the same roof. I do expect there to be some trial and error, and if that’s too much—”
“It’s not,” Finn interrupted, not meeting my stare. “I just need to be clear on the rules.”
“We’ve never done this together for anything more than sex,” I told him.
“Is that what you’re asking from me? Because I’ll be honest—”
“No,” Daniel said quickly.
Finn scratched his throat and looked up, stare darting from side to side as he took in every inch of Daniel’s expression.
“I don’t want to just be sex for you,” Daniel said, quieter.
“For what it’s worth, with you, it wasn’t just sex before either.”
A loaded silence settled over the three of us, and I took a healthy swallow of my wine.
We were going to need another bottle at least to get through this conversation.
The night had already gone so far off the rails, though I didn’t know what I expected when I’d asked Finn to come over.
I’d planned to introduce him to Daniel. We’d have some wine; we’d sit on the couch together.
I’d at least thought we’d get to some kissing or some foreplay, but the more we talked, the further away that last part felt for us.
“It’s okay if I was,” Daniel said.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think you were, at least. I didn’t want…never mind.”
“What?” Daniel prompted.
“I didn’t know how to let you be more,” Finn said. “I didn’t have anything else to give you.”
“And now?” I asked.
Finn finished his second glass of wine and stared longingly at the empty bottle.
“I’m trying to get back to myself,” Finn answered. “I think I have a better understanding now of what I want, but that doesn’t mean I trust it.”
“And what do you want?”
He groaned, rolling his eyes in a way that took ten years off his face. I wanted to crawl over the table and take his face into my hands and kiss him for how attractive it made him to not worry so much about everything besides himself. He was so much like Daniel, no wonder they’d found each other.
No wonder I’d wanted him for myself.
“I don’t think I’ve had enough wine for that truth,” Finn grumbled.
“You can’t hide in a bottle forever,” I said.
“I haven’t tried forever. Only the last six or eight months.”
Daniel snorted out a laugh, going limp in his chair and staring up at the exposed wood beams of our ceiling.
“Good to see you haven’t changed entirely,” he said. “You still have that sense of humor.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”
The two of them laughed together, sharing some private joke that would never be meant for me, and instead of being jealous, I loved that for them. I loved that Daniel had that and loved that Finn had that, and I wanted them both to have more of it—and I wanted them to have it together.
I just wanted.
“Do you still prefer a Manhattan?” Daniel asked, grabbing the empty wine bottle and Finn’s empty wine glass. He stood, and I watched Finn watch him move.
“Yeah. Yes.”
“I’ll make you one.”
Daniel left without another word, and I stared at Finn until he’d had enough of watching Daniel go. When he turned back to me, his expression was borderline sheepish. He’d drawn his shoulders in like he wanted to curl in on himself and disappear, and that simply would not do.
“More than you bargained for?” he asked, finally looking at me head on.
“Maybe, but nothing I’m scared of. This happens at work all the time.”
“Interior designer you said?”
I nodded, biting the inside of my lip. “I don’t mean to pry, but you said your last name is Covington?”
He nodded.
“And at the paint store you told me you had two brothers who were architects?”
“Marshall and Smith,” he said.
I knew both of them, not personally, but from their work. Marshall more than Smith. He had an expansive portfolio and was well known for his work in the corporate space. My own work was much more residential, but the community wasn’t so small.
“Marshall’s boyfriend too. Silas Ayres.” Finn rolled his eyes again when mine lit up in recognition. “Silas works for Cory Callahan.”
It was inconceivable to me that the man sitting across from me had a familiar acquaintance with some of the most well-known architects and designers in Los Angeles. It wasn’t something that would do me any good unless I wanted to change lanes entirely, but the proximity was still impressive.
“Is there anyone you don’t know?”
“You,” Finn said quickly.
“I think that’s about to change, don’t you?”
Daniel returned from the kitchen before Finn could reply, and he set a perfectly garnished Manhattan down in front of Finn.
“Extra cherries,” Daniel mumbled under his breath.
It would be borderline impossible to not pry Daniel for details later. The urge to crack him open like a nut later to learn all of the secrets between him and Finn was nearly tangible. I knew better, and I wouldn’t do it, but oh, how I wanted to know what the two of them had been through together.
“I think we’re okay for now,” I said carefully, grabbing my wine and standing. “Maybe we can go sit on the couch? Something a little less formal?”
Finn traced his finger along the rim of his glass, a quick crescent moon shape. Back and forth and back and forth, like he was playing through every possible scenario and outcome of what a yes answer and a no answer would get him.
“Okay,” he finally agreed, unfolding himself from the chair and standing to his full height.
Finn was…impressively tall. Lanky, but not scrawny.
I fought back another wave of curiosity about what he and Daniel would look like together with fewer clothes on, less alcohol in their system, more want.
“Lead the way,” he said.
So I did.