They both wince at my words, and I do the same, but harder, because while they hear the bite in my words, they don’t also have to see the way Oakleigh’s face had fallen and the light in her eyes dull.
Wren had told me off after that. She had looked shocked that I’d said such a thing and while I was, too, I was also way too embarrassed to offer up any more words, so I moved to my bedroom and didn’t leave; spent the rest of the night plagued with intrusive thoughts and compulsions that kept going until I passed out from exhaustion.
“Did you apologize?” Sam asks, an eyebrow raised.
“I tried! But when I saw her next, I opened my mouth to speak and she just cut me off and went to town on everything she didn’t like about me, and I never said anything because?—”
“Because you thought you deserved it,” Sam finishes for me.
We sit in silence, the weight of that dreaded day hanging over my head heavier than usual. Jamie waves off any regulars that try and get his attention.
“Can I offer my two cents?” Sam breaks me out of my thoughts.
“You haven’t been already?”
“Fair point, but this is more of an overall conclusion.”
I adjust myself in my seat. “Go on.”
He takes a deep breath and runs a hand along the faded sides of his hair. “Look, when it comes to Oakleigh, I know you and her well enough by now. I know that while the two of you play enemies or whatever the hell it is you’re doing, there’s already some weird-ass kind of friendship hidden underneath. You don’t need to change how the two of you act, just the way the two of you communicate.
“Now, the hard part for you is that you’ve got to find a way to unload a bunch of feelings onto her while somehow managing to express any new ones…How long have you been in love with her, exactly?”
“Um…fifteen years?”
“And you’ve known her for…?”
I clear the imaginary lump from my throat. “Fifteen years?”
Sam lets out a whistle as he stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Damn, okay. So, then you really made this hard for yourself.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, look, in all honesty that does make it harder, purely because you should have just told her from the beginning.”
“I was seventeen,” I defend.
“So what? Did you only learn to talk at eighteen? You could have told her something, you should havesaidsomething.”
I stay silent. I don’t tell him that I was about to ask her out when, on the same day, Wren told me she was off limits, and Oakleigh decided that she hated my guts.
“You should really just tell people how you feel, Finn. Not just Oakleigh, but your mom, too. They both deserve to know how you feel and you deserve for your feelings to be heard.”
Sam takes my continued silence as his cue to continue. “Finn, no one else owns this company except for you. That, in its entirety, means that nobody can make a decision for the welfare of your company except for you.”
I sit forward, hoping I can ignore the uncomfortable bolt of lightning that is zipping up and down my spine. I arch my back inward a couple of times hoping to rid myself of the issue.
“I can’t afford to lose them both,” I say, my eyes refusing to meet Sam’s. “I just can’t.”
“Who says you will?”
“The—” I catch the words and stuff them back down before I sound like an absolute lunatic.
The voice in my head.
It always tells me I’m about to lose something if, for once, I do something that only I want to do. It tells me that I’m selfish in the most soul-crushing way possible, making sure that I never do anything worthy of my own happiness. In the past few weeks, the weight of that voice has been like a crushing force that I couldn’t lift even if I tried.
Sam lets out a breath and watches me. It’s almost impossible to think that I could get a woman like Oakleigh when I’m so broken, and even though I can’t tell her how I feel to her face, I’m determined to show her as best I can.
