Chapter 5 #2
“I… both, I guess.” My hands twisted together in my lap.
The words were right there, had been locked away for years, and suddenly they wanted out.
“I’d have the classics. Dark chocolate caramels and hazelnut pralines.
” I swallowed, my pulse picking up speed.
“But I’d also want to experiment. I have this recipe I’ve been working on for a spicy margarita truffle with tequila-infused ganache and a chili-lime salt rim. It’s so good.”
Oh God, I’m really doing this. I’m saying it out loud.
My voice gained momentum, the vision becoming clearer with every word.
“I’d call it—” I bit my lip, the lawyer in me frantically filing an injunction against this level of earnestness. But I was already in too deep, so I took a breath and just said it. “I’d call it The Sweet Brief.”
I winced, waiting for the joke about how ridiculous it sounded.
But his expression didn’t change.
“I know, I know, it’s a silly pun,” I rushed ahead before I could second-guess myself. “But I’d want the space to be cozy, you know? Dark-blue walls, comfortable armchairs, and the scent of chocolate everywhere.”
Finn didn’t interrupt. Didn’t snort. Didn’t check his phone. He just… listened. Like this actually mattered.
My cheeks heated from part embarrassment, part something else I couldn’t quite name.
“You’ve really thought about this,” he said, his voice gentle and certain.
Yeah. I really had.
For years.
And with that, something inside me shifted. The crushing weight of my career, the guilt and the burnout. It didn’t disappear, but it eased. Just for a second. A tiny crack of light broke through the bars of the cage I’d built.
For the first time, maybe ever, someone had looked at the most secret, whimsical part of me and hadn’t seen it as a silly fantasy. He’d seen it as a possibility. He’d seen me.
For the first time in a very long time, I sensed within me the unmistakable, terrifying flutter of hope.
“Em?” Finn asked.
“Uh-huh?”
“You deserve your dark blue chocolate shop,” he assured. “Don’t be the bad guy when you can be the chocolate lady.”
I let that sit. Nodded. And went back to work.
I made it about forty-five minutes before my phone lit up.
Finn had drifted off on the sectional, one arm over his face, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of someone whose meds had finally won.
Angela. Of course it was Angela.
Angela: checking in. Maya says you’ve gone quiet. that’s never good
Maya: I said “concerning” not “never good”
Angela: same thing
Emily: I’m fine. still at Finn’s keeping him company
Angela: we know where you are. that’s why we’re asking
I glanced briefly to the light fixture. Then typed.
Emily: work is a lot right now
Maya: how much is a lot
Emily: I defended a client last week and now five hundred people don’t have jobs
Angela: oh
Emily: yeah
Maya: are you okay
Emily: no. also I might have told Finn something I’ve never told anyone
Angela: …
Maya: …
Angela: what???????
Maya: what was it
Emily: that I want to quit and open a chocolate shop
Angela: say more words
Emily: I’ve had this idea for years. a shop. I even have a name. The Sweet Brief. it just came out of me tonight and he didn’t laugh.
Maya: he didn’t laugh
Emily: he asked follow-up questions
A longer pause this time.
Angela: Emily Ann. you’ve been holding that for HOW long
Emily: a while
Angela: years?
Emily: let’s move on
Maya: we’re not moving on. I’m just also sitting here thinking about how you told Finn before you told us
Emily: it just came out
Maya: uh huh
Angela: so how are things with Finn?
Emily: fine. good. normal. he’s recovering and I’m helping
Maya: you said that very fast
Emily: I typed it at a normal speed
Angela: something happened
Not a question. A statement. The woman had a gift for it.
Emily: no
Angela: Emily.
Emily: nothing happened
Maya: but something almost happened?
I glanced to Finn sleeping, put my phone beside my laptop. Stared at nothing. Then picked it back up.
Emily: gotta get back to work
Angela:
Maya:
I put my phone down again and looked to where Finn slept.
He did not weigh in.
* * *
FINN
The Stallions weren’t playing Thursday night so Sloan had texted asking if he could bring a few of the guys over to watch the other teams.
This was a pity-watch party, that much was clear. I said yes anyway.
Sloan showed first with pizza. Briggs arrived with a twelve-pack of Coors and the giant pretzel bag, because Briggs always brought the giant pretzel bag. Keller rolled in late without any offerings.
“Bro,” Sloan said, scanning me in my slides, soft shorts, and glasses. “You look like a sad substitute teacher.”
“Thank you, I was aiming for unemployed gym coach. Glad I overshot.”
“Hey guys,” Emily came out of the kitchen with a bowl of chips and settled onto the far end of the sectional, tucking her feet up, completely at ease.
Sloan’s gaze drifted from me to her and then back to me, his eyebrows raising.
“Don’t,” I warned. “Elliott has her keeping me alive. Make it weird and I’ll let her poison your pizza.”
Keller, tight end, turned to Emily with the expression of a man learning algebra. “Wait. You’re, like… living here?”
“Some thoughts are inside thoughts,” Sloan said.
“It’s cool,” Emily said, without looking up from the chip bowl. “And it’s temporary.”
“She’s a hostage,” I clarified. “We’re waiting on the ransom.”
“But she’s Elliott’s sister,” Keller said, apparently still running his math. “Is Elliott paying the ransom?”
“Keller,” Sloan sighed. “Stop with the interrogation or we’ll all get kicked out.”
“I’m just establishing the operational logistics, bro.” Keller shrugged.
Briggs handed Emily the pretzel bag first.
She took a handful without comment.
We watched the game.
Emily watched the way people who actually understood what was happening watched. As in, she focused on the game and when they went to commercial break she focused on the food.
In the second quarter, the defense shifted into a coverage I recognized before the play developed, and I opened my mouth to call it.
She beat me.
“The safety’s sitting on the sticks,” she said. “Slant’s open.”
The receiver took it inside for eight yards.
Sloan turned and looked at her. Then at me. Then back at her.
“Elliott’s sister,” she reminded him, reaching for another pretzel. “I was forced to learn the playbook.”
Keller eyed her funny. “You’re like… a hot football wizard.”
“Don’t ever let Elliott hear you call her hot,” Sloan said. “It won’t only be Finn’s junk we’ve got to worry about.”
“My junk is off limits for this conversation.” I glowered at Sloan but didn’t really mean it.
“Yes, Keller,” Emily said. “I’m a wizard. Don’t ask me to do a magic trick. But I will take your compliment and put it in my pocket because Elliott has more than implied that I am not hot enough for Finn. So I’m going to let him know you called me ‘hot.’”
“Please don’t tell Elliott I called you hot,” Keller said, recognition dawning that he didn’t want to end up in PT with Trent and a shitty ice machine. “But can I just ask one more thing?”
“Statistically, you’re going to ask multiple things,” Sloan said.
“Emily, why do you keep checking Finn out?” Keller asked anyway, with the confidence of a man dropping a bombshell. He gestured between Emily and me.
“What the fuck is actually wrong with you?” Briggs asked.
“I’m assessing his physical deterioration, Keller. It’s medical.” Emily studied him a beat with that particular stillness she got when she was done being the subject and was about to become the attorney.
“Here we go,” I said under my breath.
“You know what you are, Keller?” Emily said, with the measured calm of someone who literally won arguments for a living. “You’re a piece of agricultural equipment.”
That took Keller back. “A what now?”
“A combine harvester. You’re enormous. You’re useful. And you process everything that goes in front of you without any consideration for whether this is the right time to be doing that.”
Sloan made a sound that was extremely close to choking on a pretzel.
“That’s…” Keller considered it. “...actually accurate.”
“Do me,” Briggs muted the commercials.
Emily turned and studied him. Briggs paused under the assessment the way people held still for doctors.
“Load-bearing wall,” she said, finally. “Everything else in the room functions because you’re there. Without you? Everything falls apart.”
Briggs gave her the nod again. A slightly more serious one this time. He seemed satisfied.
“Sloan,” Keller said immediately, pointing. “Do Sloan.”
Emily clocked Sloan for approximately one beat. “A golden retriever who read a book about emotional intelligence.”
Sloan opened his mouth.
Closed it.
“That is extremely fair,” he said. “I’m going to text it to Maya right now.”
“Now Finn,” Keller said, swinging around to face her. “Do Finn.”
The room went quiet in a different way.
“Pass.” Emily didn’t look my way. Instead, she watched the prescription drug commercial on the TV.
Keller crossed his arms. “You can’t pass—”
“I pass,” she said, pleasantly. “Here, have some chips.” She held out the bowl in Keller’s direction.
Keller took a chip. Then he looked at me.
I looked at the TV.
Briggs unmuted the TV.
Thank fuck, the game came back on.
At halftime, Sloan stretched and asked, “You start PT soon?”
“Two days,” I said. “Facility. The real torture begins.”
“Good,” he said. “Don’t cry in front of Trent. He feeds on tears.”
The second half played out. The guys’ commentary swirled. Emily called two more plays correctly and got a fist bump from Briggs on the second one, which was more than he’d given Sloan all night.
When the final whistle blew and the guys shuffled out, Sloan clapped me on the shoulder. “I know she’s here to take care of you, but you better take care of her, too.”
The door clicked shut. Emily started stacking empty bottles. On the TV, the postgame highlights were already running. Guys who’d played tonight. Still moving. Still in it.
In two days I’d be front and center with Trent and his clipboard and his stopwatch and his two-rep maximum.
The guys would be on the practice field. Running the same slant-and-go we’d just watched on TV, planting hard to sell the inside fake before releasing upfield. Running the same route I’d run so many times it lived in my legs.
Drake catching the timing. Sloan holding the line. All of it happening forty yards from where I’d be lying flat on a mat, doing two prescribed movements and calling it a session.
There was a window in that side room where you could see the field.
I hadn’t thought about the window until right then.
Emily came back from the kitchen and stopped. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me the way she’d been looking at me all week—taking in more than she let on.
She sat back down on her end of the couch.
“You good?” she asked.
“Ask me again in about six weeks,” I said, dreading the damn window to where I was supposed to be.
She nodded slowly and didn’t push it.
Which was, truthfully, what I needed most.