Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMILY
We kissed.
And then his expression of loss mirrored the exact sensation in my own chest.
So I laughed. Because we had just sentenced our friendship to a lifetime of awkward.
My lawyer brain, the one I usually relied on to be my ruthless co-pilot, was obviously on hiatus. But, oh boy, it came screaming back now.
What have I done?
This was Finn.
One of the few humans on the planet whose presence was a non-negotiable clause in the contract of my life. He was my GIF-sending confidant. My reality check.
And we had just taken a stick of dynamite to the foundation of all of it because friends don’t kiss like that. Friends don’t look at each other the way he was looking at me right after… like I’d just rewritten the entire universe, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to read the new language.
And the more terrifying part? I wasn’t sure I did, either.
Thankfully, we took our own cars to the shop, or we might’ve done something to really torch the friendship and pulled over to go at it over on Colfax.
Finn hadn’t taken the same route as me, since I’d been home for a solid while and he still hadn’t shown.
And, being as I was all alone and all up in my head, I’d camped out on his sofa, pretending to work on a business plan for The Sweet Brief. In reality, I was staring at my screen while my stomach twisted into increasingly elaborate knots.
The front door clicked open and I rose from the couch so fast I nearly knocked my laptop onto the floor.
But there were two voices.
Finn came through, keys in his hand. And right behind him, with a six-pack of some craft beer he’d probably been told about by a client, was my brother.
“Hey, Em.” Elliott set the beer on the counter and gave me the one-armed hug he’d been giving me since I was twelve. “You look like you’ve been productive.”
I glanced to my laptop, which was open to a blank spreadsheet I’d titled Costs and then never touched. “Extremely.”
Finn busied himself with not looking at me.
So that’s how we’re playing it.
He’d brought my brother as a buffer. He’d driven around after kissing me, called Elliott, and showed up with a chaperone.
The man had engineered his own cock-block.
Elliott cracked open a beer for himself and one for me. Finn went with Gatorade.
We settled into the living room like everything was normal.
Finn in the chair, me on the couch, Elliott sprawled across the other end with the easy confidence of a guy who’d sprawled on Finn’s furniture since college.
“What is this?” Elliott held the bottle at arm’s length to read the label. “Sour cherry rose with—is that lavender?”
“It’s from that brewery in RiNo,” Finn said. “The one you said was ‘doing interesting things.’”
“I said that about their IPA. This tastes like someone made jelly in a bathtub.”
“You brought it,” I pointed out, taking a sip. It wasn’t that bad.
“A client gave it to me. I thought it’d be polite to share my offering.” Elliott took another sip and grimaced. “But it’s more like suffering.”
“New rule. If a client gives you beer, leave it in the car.” I set my bottle down and rose to grab my own Gatorade. One for Elliott, too.
“Newer rule,” Finn agreed. “If Elliott brings beer, make him prove it wasn’t brewed in a bathtub.”
“You two deserve each other,” Elliott said, which was the kind of thing he’d said a thousand times without it meaning anything.
Tonight, it landed differently.
Finn stared at me for half a second too long.
“Em,” Elliott said, pointing his terrible beer at me. “I talked to Mom.”
“You called her.”
He nodded. “Told her to knock it off with the ‘just a phase’ shit, and let you live your life.”
I set my drink down. “You used those words?”
“I told her that you’re building a company that means a lot to you. That you’re smart enough to know when a career isn’t working. And that if she can’t support you, she can at least say nothing.” He shrugged like this was nothing. “I said it nicer than that.”
“How’d she take it?” I tossed him a Gatorade and my aim was seriously solid.
“She asked if you were eating enough. She asked how long you’re staying with Finn.” He shrugged. “Then she deflected to my life and I quickly got off the phone.”
Elliott turned to me fully. “Are you about ready to head back to your place? Now that Finn’s mobile?”
“The listing agent suggested that I not live there while it’s being shown,” I said.
“So where are you going to—”
“The shop has an apartment upstairs,” I said. “That’s the plan.”
Finn made a noise. It was a polite noise. But it communicated volumes.
“What?” I asked.
“The apartment above the shop is not ready,” Finn said.
“I know it’s not—”
“Em. The only working outlet is in the hallway and you’re going to have to do something about the rats before you can even think about living there.”
“There aren’t rats.”
“But would it really surprise you if there were?” he asked.
“That’s so not the point.” It really wasn’t.
“This is giving me very strong Elliott-builds-a-deck energy,” Finn said.
Elliott groaned. “Do not.”
I grinned. “Oh, that’s my favorite kind of Elliott energy.”
“We’re not doing this.” Elliott pursed his lips, but he didn’t really mean it.
“Please tell me you remember the time,” I said, dramatically turning to Finn like he hadn’t been front-row for the disaster, “my brother watched exactly one episode of some home improvement show and decided he could build a full-blown deck off the back of the house.”
“Elliott, let’s revisit your tragic lumberjack phase, shall we?” Finn chimed in, grinning like a shark because he absolutely lived for this roast.
“I bought premium lumber, and drew up actual blueprints,” Elliott said, as if that were a valid legal defense. “On graph paper, no less.”
“You measured everything twice,” I added, dripping with fake awe. “Which he will still smugly insist is the highly responsible way to build a death trap.”
“It is the responsible way to do it,” Elliott grumbled.
“The responsible—and less disastrous—way to do it would’ve been to let us help,” I pointed out.
But no, Captain Do-It-Himself had entirely refused. Insisted that beautiful mess was exclusively his project.
“The responsible way to do it is to actually own a drill.” Finn snorted. “Or at least know what one looks like.”
“I had a screwdriver,” Elliott protested, as if that wasn’t the single most pathetic defense in the history of modern carpentry.
“A flathead,” Finn clarified “You were basically trying to build a square structure with a butter knife.”
“The minor detail you haters conveniently leave out is that the square structure I made was completely solid!” Elliott was in stitches.
“Oh, absolutely. That architectural marvel defied gravity for a solid eleven days before spontaneously folding in on itself,” I deadpanned.
“And when it tragically gave up the ghost, Mom scavenged the wreckage for a raised garden bed.” Elliott was desperately clinging to a silver lining.
“Honestly? Those strawberries your mom grew out of the soil of your shattered ego were delicious.” Finn smacked his fingers together in a loud, obnoxious chef’s kiss.
“The strawberries were top-tier,” Elliott admitted, which was as close to waving a white flag of surrender as he ever got.
Rehashing that absolute train wreck of a memory had me clutching my ribs. Finn snorted like an unhinged farm animal. And Elliott was wheezing for oxygen.
Once we finally stopped wheezing and wiped our eyes, Finn turned to me. He was totally relaxed and in his element. “Stay as long as you need, Em. Seriously. The guest room’s yours until the shop apartment has electricity and zero rodents.”
“I have a spare room, too,” Elliott offered. “It’s smaller, but the outlets work and I’m pretty sure there’s no wildlife.”
“Or,” Finn said, “you could always move in with your mom.”
The three of us looked at each other.
The laugh was unanimous.
“I’ll stay here,” I said. “I’ve already unpacked.”
“Sweet,” Finn said, and there was something in how he said it that had nothing to do with spare rooms and everything to do with the fact that three hours ago, we’d been all over each other.
Elliott didn’t catch it.
I caught all of it.
“Moving on,” Finn said. “Did you find me any kick-ass sponsorship gigs while I’m stuck not-playing?”
“You, my friend, are going to be the face of portable restrooms all across Denver.” Elliott held his hands wide as though helping Finn see the vision.
“I can be bought,” Finn agreed.
Elliott grinned and this was how it was supposed to be. The three of us with our history and a whole lot of future, too.
Elliott stretched his legs out, one ankle crossed over the other, and launched into a story about a new endorsement deal he was circling for one of his other clients—a kicker who’d just gotten engaged and was apparently a “perfect fit” for a line of men’s grooming products.
“A kicker,” Finn said flatly. “For grooming products? Can’t I have that one?”
“He’s photogenic.”
“He’s a kicker. He stands on the sideline for fifty-eight minutes and then jogs onto the field to punt.”
“He does have great hair,” I added.
“Every kicker has great hair. Their helmets are decorative.” Finn shook his head. “I need an agent who will get me grooming products.”
This was them—the back and forth that had been the soundtrack to their friendship.
They didn’t agree on anything except each other.
Finn caught me watching. His eyes went soft for a fraction of a second—the kind of look you would miss if you weren’t already staring—and then he turned back to Elliott and made a joke about kickers that I didn’t quite catch because my brain was still buffering.
This is what I’m risking.
Elliott got up to grab a bag of chips from the kitchen, and on his way back he stopped behind Finn’s chair and squeezed his shoulder. Didn’t say anything. Just the grip, a beat, and then let go. Then he sat back down and I clocked the shift the second it started.
The slight straightening. The still unopened chips set on the side table instead of held.
Brother off. Agent on.
“We’re gonna have to talk about next season,” Elliott said.
Finn clenched his teeth. I caught the subtle jump in his cheek.
“What about it?” Finn asked.
“Contract’s in a holding pattern until you’re cleared.
” Elliott’s tone was the calm, factual register he used when he was about to tell you something you didn’t want to hear followed by the reason it was going to be fine.
“But I’ve been talking to the front office.
They’re not moving on from you. You’re too valuable, the cap space is there, and frankly, Donaldson loves you.
Once you’re cleared, we close this. I’m not worried. ”
“If I’m cleared,” Finn said.
“When,” Elliott said. Not asking. Telling. “Not if.”
“You sound pretty sure about that.” Finn’s certainty was clearly still on the rocks.
“It’s my job to be sure about that.” Elliott angled forward, elbows on his knees. “Look. Here’s where we are. If you stay on track, you’re looking at individual drills by late spring, non-contact team work over the summer. Full clearance before training camp.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Finn said.
“It’s one if. Don’t re-injure it.” Elliott ticked off on his fingers. “You do the rehab. You build back the conditioning. We get a clean bill from the medical staff. And then I sit across from the front office and I get you a shit-ton of money. That’s the play.”
“What if I’m not the same when I get back out there?” Finn asked, swallowing hard. Too hard.
Asking that question cost him, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.
“Then we deal with that,” Elliott said. “But you’re not there yet. Right now, you’re here, and here is ahead of schedule. So stop skipping ahead to the bad ending and focus on the next thing so we get to the good part.”
Finn waited for a long beat. Then nodded. But it was the kind of nod you give when someone’s telling you what you want to hear and you can’t quite get there.
Elliott stayed another twenty minutes after that.
He tossed the beer, which was practically sacrilege, but it was that bad.
He asked me whether I’d filed the LLC yet.
He told Finn about a charity flag football game in the off-season that three of his other clients were doing and suggested Finn might want to make an appearance—
“Show your face, shake some hands, remind people you exist.”
“I’ll think about it,” Finn said.
Which we all knew meant he wouldn’t be participating.
At the door, Elliott turned back.
“Hey.” He looked at Finn. Then to me. Then back to Finn. “You good?”
“I’m good,” Finn said.
Elliott studied him for a second longer than normal. Then nodded, satisfied with whatever he found. “All right. Em, send me the business plan when you finish it. I want to be investor number one.”
“How do you know you’ll be investor number one?” I asked.
“Because I’m your brother and I know everything.” He pointed at Finn. “PT Tuesday. Don’t skip it.”
“Yes, Dad,” Finn said with a mock salute.
Elliott flipped him off with affection and let himself out.
The door clicked shut and our buffer was gone.