Chapter 31
FINN
The gravel on the estate driveway is still dark with early morning dew when I pull in. I park the Jeep next to my Ferrari and sit there for a minute doing nothing at all, which is new for me.
I drove here from Darcy's with all four windows down.
No music. Just the town going by at barely seven in the morning, the bakery lights on, the bay flat and silver at the end of the side streets, and me grinning at none of it in particular.
Four hours of sleep and I wouldn't trade back one of them.
I don't have a plan for what comes next. What I have is a decision that showed up sometime in the night, already whole. I don't want to leave Mattichogue. Not on Merritt's schedule, anyway.
I'll extend my stay here. I'll run my company from the guesthouse with two bars of signal if that's what it takes. I'll fly out when I have to, and if their investors need a man standing on that mountain year-round, I'll find them a man, or a structure, or a miracle.
Because I want to stay. That's the whole decision. I want to stay here, right where I am, and I have never wanted that at any other time in my life.
Because of Darcy.
The details of how I can make all of this work are unsolved. Right now, I'm just a man sitting in the quiet of the morning with every next step unwritten, feeling better than I can remember feeling. I get out of the Jeep.
My phone rings before I reach the crush pad. I glance at the display and heave out a breath.
Merritt's lead partner doesn't waste Mondays on small talk. "Finn. Good news doesn't wait for Tuesday, so here it is."
The syndicate closed Friday. Oversubscribed.
The hospitality money came in heavier than they modeled, and it didn't come in for the land.
It came in for me, he says, for the Bardot Adventures brand, for the whole program—both parcels, phase one funded through the lodge, phase two term sheets already drafted.
He says a number with a B in it and doesn't slow down for it.
Every brand expansion dream I have ever dared to sketch on napkins for two years, assembled overnight and set on a table with my name on the chair.
"One thing hasn't changed," he says. "This only works with you on the ground. As in, personally. Living it, not visiting it. The investors aren't buying a resort, Finn. They're buying the man who jumps first and always lands on his feet. You knew that going in."
I did know that. I knew it the way you know the forecast for a range you're not climbing until next season.
"The window on this deal has moved," he says.
"The other buyer forced our hand and we let it close the financing early, so now the clock is ours, but it's still a clock.
Be here tomorrow. We walk the Breckenridge parcel with the full partnership Wednesday morning.
" A beat barely passes. "And Finn? Come ready to say yes. "
A few weeks ago, this would have been the best news I could've hoped for. Now, I hear myself saying the things a man in my position says. That the numbers are strong. That the deal structure is impressive. That I'll be on a plane tomorrow.
My voice handles all of it fine. My voice knows this job. Underneath it, in the part of me that isn't talking, one flat sentence keeps repeating: This is the rest of your life, calling to schedule itself.
The call ends and I'm standing in the gravel with the sun coming up over the vines, and the decision I drove in with hasn't gone anywhere, even though I've just numbly committed to showing up in Colorado tomorrow. The two halves of me don't fit inside the same man anymore.
I put the phone in my pocket on a low curse. I've hauled loads of gear and supplies that made my spine shorter. Nothing has ever ridden in a pocket like this.
I should be over the moon about this. This is the call I've been building toward for half my life, the one that proves the held-back Bardot boy built something real. Every number came back bigger than the dream. Except now the dream, delivered at last, might as well be addressed to someone else.
I spend the morning sulking around the estate being useless in a way I hope looks productive.
I unload a pallet nobody asked me to unload.
I inventory stock in the equipment shed for a count nobody needs.
I stand between the rows of grapes for a while with a digital tablet I never write on.
Around noon my mother leaves a sandwich at my elbow and goes without saying anything, which I realize does not come easily to her.
Colton clocks me from the barn door twice and both times decides the vines need him more.
By early afternoon the whole property has quietly agreed to route around me.
Smart of them. I wouldn't talk to me either.
The sandwich is still in my hand, untouched, when I give up and walk into the main house looking for the one Bardot who can't walk away from me.
Evan is set up in the sunroom the way he's been set up for more than two weeks, leg in its cast on the ottoman, laptop balanced on the good knee, new label proofs spread across the cushions in some order only he understands.
"How's the leg feeling?"
"Still broken. Thanks for checking." He looks up, and whatever is on my face makes him close the laptop. "You've been a thundercloud since breakfast. Mom thinks it's her weak coffee. I told her no coffee is that bad, but honestly, hers might be. Sit."
I drop into the chair next to him. For a while I don't say anything, and Evan, to his eternal credit, lets me not.
"The Colorado partners called this morning," I finally say. "The syndicate closed. All of it. Both parcels, the lodge, the whole build. Bigger than I ever put on paper."
Evan raises his eyebrows. "How much bigger?"
I give him a look. "There's a B in it."
He whistles low, then sits with that. "Finn, that's—shit, that's amazing! That's everything you've been talking about since I was in high school."
I nod, but there's no joy in it. "There's a condition.
Their investors aren't backing the brand.
They're backing me. On the ground, in Colorado, running the build.
Being the face of the resort. Years of it.
" The word takes up the whole sunroom. "They want me out there tomorrow.
In person, with the full partnership. I told them I'd be there. "
"Tomorrow," Evan says. "That's quick."
"Just for the meeting. They want it to end in a yes, and they're not being subtle about it."
He's quiet for a second, and then, because he is twenty-five and constitutionally unable to leave a silence alone, he leans in with a grin.
"Okay, but look at the upside. You get the deal of a lifetime.
You get to escape to a life of adventure in a gorgeous Colorado mountain town, which even I have to envy. I'm seeing nothing but green lights."
"What about Darcy?"
He sits back, studying me. "What about her, man? I thought you weren't getting serious. What happened to my big brother whose life philosophy could be summed up as, 'Love is for losers'?" He grins. "As I recall, you've even got a million-dollar bet riding on staying unattached and single."
"The bet is the last thing on my mind right now."
It comes out flatter than I mean it to, and the grin dies on his face, and I watch him decide not to make the next joke, which from Evan is practically a formal apology.
I don't say the true part. I could wire that million to guys back at The Retreat tonight and never miss it.
Which is saying a lot since I was the asshole who invented that damn bet.
My idea, my title, my rules, drawn up at a time when I didn't realize that winning the pot was actually losing at the best part of living.
Falling in love isn't for losers. It's the bravest thing anyone can do.
I've already lost that bet, and losing the million dollars I wagered would be the cheapest thing I have to forfeit.
Evan stares at me. "Look, I'm not the sensible Bardot brother. That's Colton. He's the one you should be coming to for advice. But I do have eyes in my head, and it's obvious to everyone that you feel something for Darcy. So, why not make this work for everyone? Ask her to come with you."
"To Breckenridge tomorrow?"
"To the meeting, to the ground-breaking of the resort when the time comes—to all of it. Ask her to be with you, Finn."
For one insane moment, I actually consider it. Selfishly. Desperately. But then I shake my head.
"I can't ask that of her. She has a classroom full of kids who need her more than any resort needs me.
She has her mother here. She has a reading program she's finally going to build, a life she made for herself in a town that would fight me in the street for taking her out of it.
I can't ask her to pack that up because a room full of investors likes the way I jump off things.
" The next part comes slower. "When I try to picture getting on that plane to Colorado for good, the picture won't come.
I've boarded flights my whole life the way other people board elevators. I can't see this one."
Evan doesn't say anything for a long moment. The sunroom is warm and smells like my mother's lemon trees, and my brother looks at me like he's meeting a slightly different person than the one he grew up behind.
"I've never seen you want two things at once," he says finally. "My whole life, you were always looking for the next mountain, the next adrenaline rush. The next everything, full stop. This is new."
"It's new," I agree.
I have never once, in thirty-two years, emptied the whole pack for another person.
Deals, yes. Stories, the good ones, polished.
Never the full weight. It turns out it's lighter the moment it's out, and I don't know what to do with that either, so I just sit there in my mother's sunroom, feeling lighter and no less lost.
Evan shifts his cast on the ottoman and asks the only question there is. "So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
All I do know is that I have between now and tomorrow to figure it out.