Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EMILY
The night before the grand opening, Dallas, Finn, and I were at the shop late.
It’d been days since Elliott walked out.
Finn and I? We were fine.
That was the strange part. We didn’t mention the word fling. Didn’t pretend the other wasn’t shaken.
And we didn’t stop. We didn’t pull apart. We just kept going, knowing what it was costing.
What it was costing was Elliott.
I was running a final inventory on the truffle case while Finn wrestled a shelving unit against the back wall because he’d decided at nine p.m. that the angle was two degrees off.
It wasn’t. But correcting furniture gave him something to do with his hands and a project that wasn’t ruminating over why Elliott was still silent.
For three days, Elliott’s only communication with Finn had been through his office staff.
Finn’s phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen. Then he went still—the shelving unit frozen mid-tilt.
“Elliott, hey,” he answered.
I stopped counting.
“Yeah, no, that makes sense. I’m here at Em’s shop. We’re gonna be here for a bit. Come by? Yeah. Okay. No. Uh-huh. That works.”
He hung up and pursed his lips. “Elliott’s stopping by. Seattle stuff.”
“You really think you’ll go there?”
He shook his head. “I won’t have to. But it gives Elliott leverage to negotiate with the Stallions.”
“That’s good, then.”
He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
He went back to the shelving unit. I went back to the truffles. We waited.
When the bell above the door chimed, Elliott walked in with a folder under his arm and stopped just inside the door.
I tried to see the store from his perspective.
Fresh and new and not all in the various stages of creating. The dark-blue walls. The glass case. He’d never seen the whole thing come together.
“Hey, big brother.” I forced an awkward side-hug. He stood there like a plank of wood.
“Seattle is quietly looking at their cap space for March.” All business, directed at Finn. “They want to know your rehab timeline before they put you on their free-agency board.”
“I’ll call Dr. Evans in the morning,” Finn said. “He’s been clearing me for pool work and upper-body lifting. Passing a team physical is months away, but I’ll call him.”
“Good.” Elliott closed the folder and slipped it to him. “I marked anything that was especially interesting, but you can take a look whenever you have time.”
“Sure.” Finn took the folder, flipping through it.
Dallas pushed through from the kitchen. She froze, taking in the three of us in one sweeping glance.
Without a word, she slowly reversed course, backing silently through the doorway and letting the door swing shut in her face.
Elliott didn’t speak right away. He just stood there, looking like a man held together entirely by spite and three days of black coffee.
“I haven’t slept,” he said finally. His voice was deadpan, but it scraped at the edges.
“Because every time I close my eyes, I see my best friend’s junk and my sister in his jersey.”
He dropped his head into his hands, his fingers digging hard into his scalp as he pulled a sharp breath in through his teeth.
“I am traumatized,” he muttered into his palms. “I have been trying to figure out how the fuck I missed it.”
Finn didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.
Elliott lifted his head. The comedy drained out of his face, and what was left was harder to look at.
“I need to ask you something,” he said to Finn. “And I need you to answer me without a football metaphor, without a punchline, and without that face you make when you think charm is going to get you out of trouble.”
Finn clenched his teeth. He nodded.
“Is this a fling?”
“No.”
“Is this because she’s convenient? Because she was living in your house and you were bored and injured and she was there?”
Something dangerous crossed Finn’s face. “Don’t do that.”
“Answer the question.”
“Emily is the least convenient thing that’s ever happened to me,” Finn said, and his voice dropped to a register I’d never heard before. “And I didn’t fall in love with her, Elliott. I just stopped being able to pretend I wasn’t already there.”
The shop stayed very still.
“You love me?” I asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said, like it should’ve been obvious. “And you love me, too. Otherwise, you’d have moved out a long time ago.”
Elliott looked at me. “Is that true?”
“Of course it is,” I said.
Of course it is.
Of course it is? That was my big moment? Four words, no eye contact, delivered in front of my brother like I was confirming a calendar invite?
“I can’t be your agent and your brother-in-law,” he said to Finn. “That’s a conflict of interest.”
“Nobody said anything about in-laws,” Finn replied at the same time I said, “Hold on, now. What—”
“I’m saying it,” Elliott held up his hands. “Because I see where this is going, even if you two are still pretending you don’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know what the rules are for this. I don’t think any of us do.”
“We don’t,” I agreed.
“Then I guess we figure it out.” He looked between us. “But Finn—”
“I know,” Finn said.
“You don’t know. I haven’t said it yet,” he said.
“You were going to say that if I hurt her, you’ll end me.”
That did sound like something Elliott would say.
“I was going to say that if you hurt her, she’ll end you herself. She doesn’t need me for that.” He looked at me. “She never did.”
My throat went so tight I couldn’t talk.
He let out a long, slow breath. The rigid set of his shoulders dropped. He rocked back on his heels, shoved his hands into his pockets, and took a sudden, intense interest in the ceiling tiles.
“You open tomorrow?” Elliott asked, like there hadn’t just been declarations of love between me and his best friend.
“At ten,” I managed.
He nodded. “I’ll try to stop by.”
“Sounds good,” I replied.
The bell chimed behind him when he left.
Finn picked up the shelving unit and tilted it two degrees to the right.
“That’s exactly where it was before,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “But now it’s right.”
“I have a question,” I said when he kept working on the damn shelf.
“Ask away.”
“You meant that,” I said.
“That’s not a question.” He was still messing with the shelf.
I didn’t reply.
He set the shelf down. Looked at me. “Yeah, Em. I meant it.”
“You said it to Elliott.”
“I said it in front of Elliott. There’s a difference.”
He was silent. Then he crossed the distance between us and stopped close enough that I could smell his cologne.
“I’m saying it to you right now,” he said. “I’ll keep saying it to you, if you want.”
My pulse tripped over itself. “Maybe not tonight.”
He rocked back on one foot. “No?”
“Not because I don’t want to hear it.” I pressed my hand flat against his chest, steadying myself.
“Because when you say it to me—just me—I don’t want it to be in the middle of an Elliott crisis and a grand opening and a shelf that doesn’t need fixing.
I want it to be the only thing happening in the room. ”
He studied my face for a long time. Then the corner of his mouth lifted.
“Noted, counselor.”
“Good.” Okay, this was good.
“For the record, though,” he said, heading back to the shelf. “The shelf absolutely needed to be fixed.”