“No.”
“Were you?” he pressed.
“No.” I blinked hard, fighting back tears I was sure had no right to exist. Not now and not anymore.
In my pocket, my phone gave two quick vibrations against my thigh, then another set, and one more. Three incoming text messages, and if any of them were from my two other brothers warning me of Marshall’s planned ambush, it was already too little and too late.
“What was it, then?” Marshall asked.
“Honestly?”
“Always.” He gave me the most endearing look, the most infuriating thoughtful and paternal look. It made me want to throw up in my mouth because who had appointed him our father figure, just because he was the oldest, the most levelheaded, the most responsible? The rest of us had done plenty good for ourselves. When had we decided that Marshall fucking Covington was the unofficial leader of our lives? The one we were beholden to?
“None of your fucking business,” I said.
I finished the rest of my drink and slammed the glass down on the table, then slid out of the booth.
“Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom,” I snapped. “Unless I needed your permission for that too?”
“Finn.”
I waved Marshall off dismissively and headed for the bathroom, bypassing it entirely in favor of the back door that led to a small alleyway off the side of the restaurant. It was more like a dead end, narrow and confined with not much more than a dumpster and some dying street lights, but it was the air I needed, not the ambiance.
In my heart, I knew Marshall meant well. I also knew Marshall was a control freak dominant and that might have been great for Silas, but that wasn’t what I’d signed up for just on account of being born with half the same genes as him. Leaning against the wall, I fished my phone out of my pocket. If the messages were from Smith or Hunter, I decided I was going to leave. I’d deal with all of them another time, when they felt like being reasonable adults who could express their concerns about me in a productive way. Not whatever the fuck this was.
The messages weren’t from my brothers, and it was somehow better and worse all at the same time. All three were from Sophie. I frowned at her name on my screen until it went black, then I swiped it open and tapped into the thread before I thought better of it.
Sophie
You weren’t kidding about leaving me on read.
Hope your paint turned out well.
Here’s mine.
Beneath the words was a picture of a bedroom that looked like it had walked right out of the kind of design magazine that would run a feature on Silas. I hated that I knew Sophie’s wallsand ceiling being the same color meant she’d color-washed the room in that same lush green she’d picked up from the paint store on Monday. I equally hated I knew her bedroom set was made from white oak and not birch because Smith had spent an hour one afternoon explaining the difference in the grains and the color striations to me. What I hated more than all of that, though, was the way each of the two matching nightstands was stacked and well lived around, making it very clear she shared that bed with someone frequently, if not permanently.
Do you have a boyfriend?
Fuck it.
There was no real point in beating around the bush with her over this. I wasn’t too arrogant or proud to admit my limits, and the wounds from Neil and Annette, while in the past, were still too fresh for me to get involved with anything that had any possibility of ending poorly. Not that I’d ever looked at Sophie as a long-term thing, but texting and potentially flirting with a woman in a committed relationship was a hard limit for me.
These days, at least.
No.
I was in the middle of typing out a reply telling her that her bedroom had determined that was a lie, but another message popped through before I could.
I have a fiancé.
I deleted everything I’d started to write her, my heart in my stomach.
Bye, Sophie.
Finn.
