Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
FINN
I never expected Sam to want to meet anywhere other than the Sweet Cinnamon Café in Eaglewood. Not when meeting here gives him a perfect line of sight to Jamie, the café’s barista, our friend, and Sam’s love that he refuses to act on.
I’m not entirely sure I’ll have his full attention, but I’m thinking that may actually make this conversation easier.
“So, you’re thinking of selling Southwick Construction?” he asks, his gaze firmly planted on the redhead behind the counter.
“Highly considering it, especially after the offer your guy shot my way last week.”
Last month, Sam came into a ridiculous amount of money.
Like, an insane amount. He sold his company that designed sports equipment and became a millionaire overnight.
When I mentioned in conversation one day that I was thinking about selling my company, he told me that he’d been looking into construction and saw a lot of promise in the industry.
The next day, his associate—some guy called Clarke—sent me an email with a seven-million-dollar offer.
“You went a little high there, don’t you think?”
“Do you think I did?” Sam counters, a smug smirk on his face.
“My company is not worth seven mil, Sam.”
“You’re right, it’s not. It’s worth ten, but thankfully you qualify for the friends and family discount.”
I pause bringing my coffee cup to my mouth. “That’s not how it works, Dumbass.”
“It’s how it works with me. Now, tell me what has you contemplating.”
I chug the rest of my coffee to delay any reply I could possibly give.
Sam has become a very good friend over the past few months.
From what I hear, he used to be a real piece of work—always starting fights, always complaining about everything.
But he left Eaglewood a few years ago and only came back shortly before I met Gus and Bash.
When he came back, according to Bash, he came back different, calmer.
The Sam I know has always had a good sense of humor and a fresh outlook on life.
He’s a lot like Bash but with a maturity that Bash occasionally lacks.
Jamie motions to me from behind the counter, asking me if I want another coffee. I offer a stiff nod and turn back to Sam.
“My mom.”
He leans back in his seat. “What about her?”
“I don’t think she’s really on board with the whole thing.”
“Does she need to be?”
I want to say yes. I want to say that of course she does because she’s my mother and she raised me; gave me a chance to live and thrive outside of the foster system that could have separated me from my sister. What stops me are the words that Dad told me after I picked them up from the airport.
“The one thing I think you need to hear is that sometimes it really doesn’t matter what your mother and I think. Even if we don’t agree with the choice you’ve made, we will always be proud of you for making the decision yourself and going after what you want.”
Something tells me that Sam will say the same thing.
“I don’t know,” is my final answer, but we both know that my mind is kind of one-track right now.
He has a soft smile across his lips and it concerns me.
Jamie brings over another cinnamon latte and takes the empty cup. His gaze lingers on Sam for a beat longer than normal, and if I didn’t have the same look of longing in my eyes when I look at Oakleigh, I would roll them at how pathetic it is.
After Jamie heads back to the counter, Sam asks, “Is that why you’re pretending to date, Oakleigh? Because you don’t want to disappoint your mom?”
He looks less than impressed when the coffee in my mouth lands as a fine spray over his ripped jeans. I force myself to swallow the little bit that still remains in my mouth before sending an apologetic look to Jamie.
“The fuck are you apologizing to him for? I’m the one you just sprayed with essence of tree bark.”
“You deserve it,” I whisper fiercely at him. “Dropping a bomb like that mid-sip.”
“I had to bring it up sometime!”
“Well, next time choose your ‘sometime’ better.” I wipe my mouth with a napkin, my heart racing.
Sam’s smirk returns. “You wanna know how I know?”
No. “Tell me.”
“I saw Oakleigh go on a date with some guy four months ago. The timing throws your whole timeline out of whack.”
Oakleigh went on a what?
“She went on a what?” I ask, my voice hollow and my throat dry.
Sam’s face falls. My head feels heavy with intrusive thoughts. Some guy putting his hands on Oakleigh as if he has any fucking right to touch someone so beautiful. I don’t give a shit if this guy was Henry Cavill himself, he’s still unworthy.
And you are? my brain asks. Bold of you to assume you’re worth anything. Even your parents left this world to get away from you.
Not fucking true.
Isn’t it?
I give my head a rough shake, but the voice that mirrors my own still remains in the background, leaving me constantly doubting everything I think and feel.
“Oh, shit, Finn. I’m sorry, man. I just assumed that since it wasn’t real, then the feelings weren’t … you know … real.”
But Sam is wrong, at least when it comes to me.
They are real, they’re as real as they’ve been since the moment I saw her, covered in baked cherries from the cherry pie she was scarfing down.
It’s been real enough that the love I feel has always gone hand in hand with a severe case of yearning and dissatisfaction.
Real enough that the mere mention of any other man even showing her any attention has me wanting to throw up.
Sam’s gaze turns cool and observant.
“Finn, what are you trying to achieve here? What are you expecting to get out of all this?”
“For my mother to relax and not worry about me,” I say firmly.
“She’s your mother, she’s always going to worry about you. It’s part of the job description.”
“I don’t want her to worry. I want her to take comfort in the knowledge that I do want to be with someone, that I haven’t given up on love.”
He watches my every expression. “And is this someone you want to be with Oakleigh, by any chance?”
I set my mouth into a firm line and that’s enough of an answer for him.
“So, you’re also hoping to get the woman you love.”
Unworthy.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And if the woman you love doesn’t love you back?”
Leave it to Sam to ask the hard questions.
“If I wanted to be asked questions like this, I’d go and tell your brother the truth.”
“He would be honest,” he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck. “Ain’t no doubt about that.”
I think Sam is a bit embarrassed by how often he visits his brother.
He keeps his distance from the farm, mostly sticking to this very coffee shop, or popping off for meetings somewhere else.
I think that the distance he’s put between himself and his family has woven itself into his core and it’s now a habit that’s almost impossible for him to break.
Now, just the mere mention of his brother has his tan skin turning bright pink.
“I just…” Sam waits for me to continue patiently.
“Everything happened so quickly. I let something slip that I shouldn’t have, and my mom just went with a story that I never even told.
I was going to explain the truth, honestly, I was, but then I spent the entire night after lying awake and thinking, and there was just constantly this part of my brain that kept telling me that I had an opportunity.
That this was a chance for me to at the very least experience what it might have felt like if Oakleigh loved me back in some alternate universe.
I saw it as an opportunity to let her see that we’d be so much better together if we replaced the fighting with something deeper. ”
“Maybe she already knows that?”
I scoff bitterly. “Yeah, right. That night eight months ago, she literally tried to best-friend’s-brother zone me.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Something worse than friend-zone.” I wince at the memory, at the ghost of a feeling in my chest that I felt deeply back then.
The feeling of hopelessness that coated my skin like acid at the mere mention of being nothing more than I was then.
I remember that feeling turning into the fuel that pushed me to tease and kiss her.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” I chug the remainder of my coffee and hunch in my seat. Sam looks deep in thought and I’m grateful for the reprieve; grateful for the chance to wallow in my self-pity for a minute and wish for something more than what I have.
“You know the one thing I really don’t understand in all of this?” Sam asks.
“What?”
“Why the hell do the two of you hate—or should I say ‘hate’—each other in the first place?”
I let out a groan and tilt my head back until it falls onto the back of my chair, because fuck this story.
“It was all one big misunderstanding that I just never clarified.”
“Do tell,” he says, sinking further into his seat to get comfortable, a grin dimpling his cheek.
I shake my head in retaliation, but the words come out of my mouth regardless.
“The first day I met her, me and this idiot I used to know, Benjamin, were coming home late from practice. He used to stop by my house on the way to his because Mom would always feed him. When we got home, Wren was sat in the kitchen with Oakleigh and I had never seen her before, but Sam, I could have sworn to you that I felt this sort of new lease on life the moment I laid eyes on her. She had her face absolutely full of this cherry pie that they had made in home ec., and it was all over her mouth and she hadn’t even bothered to get a fork, she was just there eating it with her hands. ”
Sam grimaces at the thought, but I smile softly at the memory.
“I just remember thinking how free she looked, so uninhibited and not ruled by her mind like I am. Her eyes were the lightest things I’d ever seen, and I just felt this urge to spew out some shit about how she was the most beautiful thing.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Yeah, why didn’t you?” Jamie asks.