Chapter 17
FINN
It was hard to not be consumed by Daniel and Sophie, but I’d gotten a text message from Smith on Thursday morning asking if I’d made any headway with Marshall for Riggs.
I hadn’t. I hadn’t even thought about Marshall since dinner the week before, and I’d left the meal so mad at him I entertained the idea of skipping the next meal entirely.
I liked to think it would teach him a lesson about meddling in other people’s business, but I doubted that would be the realized outcome.
A career spent in finance meant I was logical about most things, at least about work-related things.
Relationships, I was clearly a lost cause.
I decided to ignore Smith’s message until I would have a better reply for him, but when I was on the way out of my office at lunch, I walked smack into the problem.
“Where are you headed?” Marshall asked me when the elevator doors opened.
I snaked my finger beneath the collar of my shirt, pulling it away from my neck.
“Lunch,” I answered.
“You have a lunch meeting.”
“No, I don’t.” My phone was already in my hand, and I swiped through to my calendar, ready to show Marshall that while he knew plenty about me, he wasn’t privy to the comings and goings of my work life. Unfortunately, there was a meeting in my calendar that did in fact block out my lunch hour.
“Are you sure?”
“Seems you’re right.” I waved my phone at him and shrugged. “Guess you and I will have to chat another time.”
I turned to head back to my office to deal with whatever this surprise meeting was, but Marshall cleared his throat in that annoyingly authoritative way he had, and it was enough to stop me in my tracks.
“What do you want, Marshall?”
“Your meeting is with me.”
“I doubt that.” But as the words left my mouth, so did the aforementioned doubt.
“If you won’t make time for me, I’ll make you make time for me,” he said flatly.
I spun on my heel and closed the space between us, stalking forward until Marshall had the decency to step back. His shoulders hit the wall, and he stared up at me, expression unreadable.
“You act like I’ve been avoiding you.”
“Haven’t you?”
“I don’t have any missed calls or texts, so no.”
He arched a brow at me, and the elevator door slid open again. “Lunch, Finn?” he asked.
He asked.
“Fine,” I grumbled, brushing past him and walking into the empty elevator car. “But only because I was already on my way to eat anyway.”
“Where were you going to go?”
He followed me in. The doors closed.
“Just the cafe in the building next door.”
“That’s perfect.”
Marshall shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the back wall of the elevator, staring at our reflection in the closed doors until we reached the lobby and they opened.
I walked out without checking to see if he would follow; I knew he would.
We walked in silence through the main lobby of my building and out onto the sidewalk.
It was a warm day, the sun beating down into the concrete with little to no mercy.
Sweat had broken out against my temples by the time we made it to the building next door, but I had no plans to say anything about it.
The thing with Marshall was you couldn’t show weakness or he would attack.
We stood shoulder to shoulder and ordered the same thing, pastrami on rye, and I didn’t argue with him when he pulled out his credit card to pay.
I found a small table in the back near the bathrooms and collapsed into one of the rickety chairs with a sigh.
Marshall was close behind with two bottles of water and a satisfied smile once he took his seat.
“I’ve actually been meaning to call you,” I told him, twisting the cap off and taking a large swallow. “I wanted to talk to you about Smith.”
“Don’t deflect.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not why I wanted to have lunch with you,” he countered.
“The meeting invite had no subject and no agenda, which means if I’m the one getting ambushed, the second time you’ve done this in a week by the way, I get to set the tone.”
Marshall looked almost impressed. He leaned back in his chair and gestured for me to speak my piece before folding his arms together in front of his chest. God, I hated him.
I hated how easy life was for him, hated the way he watched over the three of us like we were his own sons.
Marshall wasn’t even ten years older than me, but somehow he’d popped out of his mother’s womb with all the wizened learning of a man twice his age.
It would be easy to say Marshall was the one who held the four of us together, but I’d never do it out loud and give him all the credit.
He’d become insufferable.
“You need to offer him an olive branch,” I said.
“Over what?”
“Over what?” I mocked, and someone from the counter shouted our last name. Sighing, I let Marshall marinate with his behavior while I went to get our sandwiches from the other end of the cafe. When I returned and set both trays down, he didn’t look any more moved or impassioned than when I’d left.
“I wasn’t aware Smith was unhappy,” he said.
“You’re an absolute asshole about his boyfriend, and you don’t think he’s unhappy?”
Marshall opened his mouth to argue but said nothing because he had no ground to stand on and he knew it.
I yanked the toothpick out of one half of my sandwich and took a bite, chewing while he stewed over my question.
My brother ate a couple bites before setting his sandwich back in the plastic tray and carefully wiping some mustard off of his fingers.
“Riggs is a good person,” I said. “He’s a good man, and he adores Smith.’
“Does he now?”
“He does.” I leveled a sharp look at my brother, debating if Smith would pick me up from jail a second time if I were to climb over the table and wring our oldest brother’s neck.
“Did he tell you this?”
“He showed me,” I snapped, rolling my eyes before taking another bite of my sandwich.
Marshall had the decency to look reflective while I chewed, not saying anything.
“He’s a lot like you,” I went on. “And I think you’d get along really well with him if you could just get over your perception of him.”
“He has a lot of tattoos.”
“He’s a business owner.”
“A motorcycle,” Marshall argued.
“How is that any worse than a car?” I countered. “Which he also has, by the way. So Smith’s boyfriend technically owns more vehicles and businesses than you.”
Marshall shot an unimpressed look at me, but I’d known him long enough to tell I was winning. He was wearing down.
“I own my own business.”
“One car,” I reminded him. “I said businesses and vehicles. But it doesn’t matter. I have to admit it seems biased you’re worried about Riggs with Smith but not Lincoln with Hunter.”
“Why would I be worried about Lincoln?”
I liked Lincoln, and I liked him with my brother, but I wasn’t above using him to prove a point.
“He does sex work, for one. Which is fine, but the money isn’t consistent and if you’re trying to act like owning a tattoo shop is somehow less than that…” I trailed off, and Marshall frowned at his sandwich. “His car is also a piece of shit.”
Marshall chuckled.
“But Hunter loves him and he makes Hunter happy.”
“Silas likes him too.”
“Silas loves him,” I corrected. “And you met him through Silas, so you’re letting the fact that you knew him before color your opinion of him now. If you had met Riggs separate of Smith, the two of you would have driven me off the roof of a building.”
“How do you figure?” Marshall asked.
“He’s a lot like you, and I think that makes sense considering how Smith feels about you. Not that he’s trying to find a partner who is a copy of you, but I think he appreciates the things in his life that you represent.”
I picked a burnt corner of crust off my sandwich, ready for Marshall to have his come-to-Jesus moment because I was running out of ways to convince him Riggs Ember was the kind of man Smith deserved.
“What do I represent in your life?”
“Pardon me?” My attention snapped up, finding Marshall studying me with the same quiet kind of intensity I’d grown to hate about him.
“What do I represent in your life?” he asked again. “You used to tell me everything.”
“I used to tell Hunter everything.”
“Does he know what’s going on with you, at least?”
Hunter and Smith both knew about Neil and Annette, but I hadn’t told either of them about Sophie and Daniel.
I wasn’t ready to handle the judgment and I also wanted to make sure it was going to work before I even entertained the thought of socializing the idea.
It was one thing for Marshall to date someone almost half his age, for Hunter to get involved with a sex worker, for Smith to fall in love with Marshall’s worst nightmare.
It was another thing entirely for me to drop a bomb that I was involved—seriously—with a couple.
“There’s nothing going on with me,” I lied.
“I didn’t want to have lunch with you to be lied to.
” Marshall tugged at a frayed piece of plastic on the tip of his toothpick, fidgeting with it until the entire thing unraveled onto the table.
And wasn’t that the way of my brother, to needle and jab at something until it opened up and gave him what he wanted.
Marshall Covington, ever the control freak.
“I appreciate your concern, Marshall, but there’s really nothing for me to share with you right now.”
“I’m just worried you’re in over your head.”
I tried to see his side of it. Tried to imagine what it must have been like for him to be out and have seen me on a date with a married couple.
What the perception would have been, seeing the matching wedding rings—what a joke, by the way—and watching me lean over and kiss another man’s wife after he excused himself to use the bathroom.
I knew the optics were bad, but things with Neil and Annette were old news.
“I might have been before,” I told him truthfully. “But I’m not now.”
Resignation washed over Marshall’s face, and seeing the wind leave his sails took all the bravado right out of me.
“I promise I’m fine. It hasn’t always been fine, but it is right now. I’m good, and I’m getting better. Okay?”
Marshall swallowed, staring at me.
“I know your concern is well-meaning, but it’s overbearing.” I chased the confession with some water, the plastic bottle crinkling in my hand. “We’re not kids anymore, and we haven’t been for a very long time. If you want to make decisions about someone’s life, you’ve got Silas. Okay?”
Marshall leaned back in his chair, scratching his cheek and not taking his stare off me.
“Okay?” I repeated.
Finally.
Finally.
“Okay,” he agreed.
“I promise if there’s something you need to know, I’ll tell you.”
“Okay,” he said again.
“If you promise you’ll reach out to Smith and be very normal about it and try to get to know Riggs.”
That earned me an eye roll, which made Marshall look much younger than his face had any right to pretend to be.
“I’ll think about it,” he grumbled.
I checked the time on my phone and shot my brother a sweet smile.
“Well, this has been a treat, but you only blocked out an hour of my day and my calendar says this meeting is over.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to go,” Marshall said, reaching across the table and pushing my sandwich tray closer to me.
I glanced at him, the delicate way his brow knit together, the concern he was trying so desperately hard to not verbalize.
I hated when his kindness shone through because he made it impossible to stay mad at him.
For as much as my brother drove me up the wall with his overbearing dominance about everything in his life, I knew Marshall meant well.
He took his role as oldest brother seriously, and he tried very hard to be whatever the three of us needed him to be.
The only problem was what we needed him to be now wasn’t the same as what we needed twenty years ago, and he hadn’t figured out how to turn the old part of him off.
And I realized, with startling clarity, neither had I.
“Will you call Smith?” I asked.
“I’ll call.”
“Okay.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on with you?” he asked me back.
“No,” I said quickly, toasted rye crunching beneath my fingers. Marshall winced, and I course corrected as best I could. “Not yet. Not now.”
He licked his lips, pulling them between his teeth and nodding his agreement or maybe his concession. They felt the same.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay.”
And we finished our lunch.