Chapter 34
FINN
Itexted Hunter to let him know about Marshall, and I texted Andrew for good measure because I was a horrible brother and I hadn’t really talked to him since the day he taught me to surf.
We made plans for him to come up to LA in a few weeks and join the rest of us for dinner.
I also dropped a suggestion to Hunter that we maybe think about having a little get-together with all the significant others.
He asked if mine were included in the group, but thankfully Daniel and Sophie arrived before I had to answer him.
I turned my phone on silent and set it down on the counter.
It was only the second time the two of them had been in my house and Sophie eyed it with the same level of wonder she had the first time.
The three of us ended up in the kitchen, and I poured Sophie and Daniel some wine, straight whiskey for myself because I didn’t have the interest in mixing something fancier.
I had put a chicken in the oven when I got home from work, and it was almost roasted by the time Sophie had nearly finished her first glass of wine.
“Can we talk about the elephant in the room, please?” she asked with a tight smile.
“Unfortunately, I think you’re going to need to be more specific.”
I leaned against the counter and tried to melt the ice in my whiskey with sight alone. I could feel Sophie watching me and I could see Daniel watching her, and it took all my belief in their love for me to not brace myself for bad news.
“Daniel and I are getting married in four months.”
“I know.”
“He told me on the way over he asked you to be one of our witnesses,” she said.
I nodded, and one of the ice cubes clinked against the edge of the glass. I smiled, daring a look at her. She rubbed the stem of her wine glass between the pads of her pointer fingers, eyes on me.
“Is that an issue?” I asked her.
“No. I just…”
The oven timer dinged, and I turned away from both of them, busying myself with getting the chicken out, carving it, and then getting plates out of the cabinet. The two of them sat on one side of my counter and I stood on the other, our plates mirrors of each other.
“What happens after?” Sophie finally asked.
“I think that’s my line.”
“She’s being serious,” Daniel said.
I glanced at him. “So am I.”
Without anything else to say, I used the edge of my fork to cut a roasted potato into smaller pieces.
I appreciated the discussion they were after, but they had eight years of history behind them and even though they were feeling secure in their relationship, I didn’t feel secure in the conversation.
It wasn’t my place, having known them and loved them for a handful of weeks, to step in and make demands—or even requests—about what their future looked like, and I told them as much.
“It’s not just our future now,” Daniel said back. “It’s yours too. Ours as in the three of us, not just the two of us.”
“You have eight years. You’re engaged,” I reminded them. “What we have is nowhere near that serious.”
Sophie drained the rest of the wine in her glass and shoved it toward me for a refill. “Isn’t it? This feels serious, Finn.”
Letting out a long breath, I refilled her wine and returned her glass to her. She didn’t move to drink it, and I wondered if I was being too hard on them, expecting too much.
“I need you two to drive here,” I said softly, biting the tip of my tongue with my canine teeth until it hurt. “I can’t make demands.”
“Do it anyway,” she said sharply.
It was obvious the two of them were not going to let me off the hook, so I gave Sophie what she wanted.
“What is there to say, Soph? I don’t know what a future looks like because we have separate lives. The two of you have your house, and I have my house. You have your ring and your wedding date and your honeymoon, and I have the two of you, but the playing field is not equal here.”
“Those are not all facts,” she shot back.
“Which of those is an opinion?”
“That the playing field isn’t equal.”
I scoffed, an irritated heat building at the base of my spine. “Would you call off the wedding if I asked you to?”
“No,” Daniel answered before she could.
“But if she asked?”
“No,” he said again. “I wouldn’t call it off because it’s not what she truly wants and I know it’s not what you want either.
You love that we’re getting married, Finn.
I know you well enough to know that. And your name is going to be on that marriage license right next to ours and that has got to count for something. ”
Sophie and I both stared at Daniel, watching quietly as he flicked invisible dust off the side of his nose, shoulders heaving with every breath.
“It counts,” he said again.
“I know,” I agreed quietly. “But I still don’t know what the future looks like.”
“What if we get a new house?” Sophie asked. “Something the three of us can build together?”
Since meeting them, I’d spent nights alone in my house, in my bed, wondering what a future would look like for the three of us.
It was easy to stumble on basic and unimportant things like who gets stuck sleeping in the middle of the bed, how will three people share a bathroom with only two vanities.
None of the protests that my subconscious gave me on those long, lonely nights were real and Sophie had just proven it.
“You would sell your house?”
“Would you sell yours?” she asked me.
I thought first of my office, the color it had been and the color it was.
I’d owned the house for nearly a decade, making sure the money from the Covington finances had gone to good use as soon as I could.
I loved my house because I had made it a home, and there were memories in the corners I didn’t want to see sometimes, but the thought of walking away and starting over…
“Yes,” I answered.
“Yes,” Daniel said back to me.
“Of course,” Sophie said. She slid her arm over the top of the counter, ring knocking against the marble as she wiggled her fingers. I took her hand and brought it to my mouth, kissing her ring the same way Daniel often did.
“Is this okay?”
She nodded.
It felt appropriate to pay some respect to the commitment between them that existed before they’d known me. If their love hadn’t been planted, I wouldn’t have it now, and I had to be grateful for that.
“The house is unimportant,” I said.
“I know.”
“The optics are…the optics are more important. Different.”
I let go of her hand in favor of finishing my whiskey.
“How so?” Daniel asked.
“Everyone knows the two of you. If people see us together, two of us at a time, they’ll think you’re cheating.”
“Does it matter what other people think?”
“A bit, yeah.” I laughed under my breath and shrugged helplessly. “Doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s anyone’s business, to be honest. But we can make those decisions as we go. There are people who can know, some who already do,” Sophie said.
“I am sorry about that, by the way.” I stepped away from the island, folded my arms in front of my chest, and leaned against the far counter. The oven was still warm against my hip, the handle digging into the outside of my thigh. “I never want you to look unprofessional because of me.”
“I was there too,” Daniel reminded, cheeks red.
“Your brother took it all in stride,” Sophie promised. “He said he and his fiancé have almost gotten caught in compromising situations before too.”
“Wait, his what?”
I pushed myself back toward the island, coming around and grabbing her chair, turning her so I could notch my body into the space between her thighs. Daniel scooted closer from behind, draping his arms over her shoulders so his fingertips grazed the top of her breasts.
“Silas, right? That’s his name?” she asked.
“Silas is his boyfriend.”
Sophie squinted and shook her head. “I’m certain he said fiancé, and I’m certain he’s said it more than once.”
“That absolute piece of shit,” I grumbled, even though I didn’t really mean it. “The audacity of him to lord over us while keeping a secret like that.”
“Ask him about it on Friday,” Daniel suggested.
“Oh, I’m going to.”
Marshall Covington, the brother I held in highest regard, the man I unofficially viewed as the true patriarch of our messed up little family had a secret fiancé in the wings?
How dare he. I wondered if Hunter knew. There was no way he didn’t because there was no way Lincoln didn’t know, and when Lincoln and Silas weren’t fucking their respective Covington brothers, they were joined at the hip.
“Can we get back to the original elephant?” Sophie tapped her fingernails against the underside of my chin and I fought a shiver.
“We’ll figure out the houses,” I repeated our earlier agreement.
“Maybe we can spend some nights here, some nights there.”
I noticed the way she didn’t call it their house and my house, and the earlier tension at the base of my spine evaporated into nothing more than helpless want for the two of them.
“You’ll witness,” Daniel said.
“And you’ll take off the third week in September to come on a trip with us,” Sophie said, leaning her head back so Daniel could kiss her temple.
The two of them had clearly talked through this whole conversation on the way over, or maybe even some point before, I wasn’t sure.
And this was what I’d signed up for, wasn’t it?
I knew what it meant to come into an established relationship, and I understood there were still decisions that had to be made together before my opinion even entered the mix.
I also knew that wouldn’t be forever.
“I can’t come on your honeymoon with you,” I muttered.
“Of course you will,” she said simply.
“Of course you will,” Daniel repeated.
The two of them watched me with matching looks in their eyes.
It was a dangerous kind of hope, the kind that spoke of uncharted territory and uncertain futures guided by not much more than dreams and wants.
I knew the same emotions were reflected back when they looked at me, and there was no way I could tell either of them no.
I didn’t want to tell either of them no.
With Sophie and Daniel in front of me, I was on the brink of seeing everything I’d wanted for myself realized. I’d been told for so many years I was too much, that I wanted too hard, loved too deeply, and now here were the two of them saying everything I’d been told was a lie.
I swallowed hard, leaned in, and kissed the corner of Sophie’s mouth, Daniel’s lower lip.
“Of course I will,” I promised.
Daniel stretched forward, flinging himself over Sophie’s shoulders to wrap one of his hands around the base of my neck. He yanked our foreheads together, Sophie smashed against my cheek as she slid one of her hands around my waist to hold me up in front of them.
“That’s enough elephants for tonight,” I said under my breath, and when Sophie laughed, it sounded so delightful I had to shake myself out of their hold or risk losing my mind entirely.
“Hopefully for a while,” I said.
She reached across the counter and hooked her finger around the edge of my plate, dragging it toward the empty stool to Daniel’s left. She did the same to my silverware and my drink, angling her head to the place she’d decided I was supposed to sit. And so I did.
The three of us finished the dinner I’d cooked, watched a cartoon on my couch, and then fell into bed, naked and warm and wanting.