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Wes
LettingAudreygohomealone after the town hall meeting was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but Finn was a mess and couldn’t be left alone for the night in his condition.
Warren Chase was an asshole. I had joked about running for mayor at the start of summer—just because I was sick of walking everywhere for three and a half months out of the year—but after what he pulled tonight, the idea of stripping his power started to sound like a damn good idea. I had no doubt he wanted to fuck with Finn, which was petty bullshit on its own, but using his own daughter to do it made him an irredeemable piece of shit.
The worst part was, it was so slimy in its subtlety that most people wouldn’t realize what the mayor had been doing in the first place. It grinded his gears that Finn’s construction company was so successful. He kept up appearances, hired him for festival work, played nice because he knew Finn was tight with me. It was a politics thing. But throwing Finn into the middle of a storm like that could’ve hurt his business, and the mayor damn well knew it.
This was a small town. People gossiped all the time, about everyone and everything, but they did it in individual groups, and it spread in quiet ways. Bringing Thora out like that ensured the people who came to the meeting just to watch shit go down would latch on to the two of them like starving wolves over a week-old steak.
It had the same effect as making him the main character of the day on a social media platform. But in real time. Where he couldn’t log off to escape it.
People didn’t mind doing business with a good-time guy who maybe slept around too much, but they sure as shit minded doing it with someone who had a scandal attached to his name. If Audrey hadn’t stood up when she did and told the whole town we were fucking, they would’ve eaten him alive. Goddamn, I loved that woman.
“I’m running for mayor this year,” I said.
Finn snorted into my couch cushion and lifted his head, which swayed on his shoulders. He reached for the near empty bottle of whiskey on the floor. “I’ll be your campaign manager.”
“Wouldn’t that be some shit?”
“Hey.” Finn pointed the bottle at me before tipping it back, letting the last few drops land on his tongue. “Did I tell you I was gonna marry Audrey?”
“Twice already. And since I’m not in the mood to shut you down for the third time tonight, maybe you should switch topics.” Not that I could blame him. I’d tried to talk myself out of wanting to marry Audrey for ten years without success.
“Can’t do it. I’m gonna marry her.” He dropped his head back onto the cushion.
“Good luck with that, buddy. Let me know when to expect the invite to your wedding.”
He passed out before I finished the last word. Just as well. I got him a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen and set them on the coffee table for when he woke up. He’d suffer tomorrow, but his physical pain still wouldn’t hold a candle to what else he was going through. Fucking Warren Chase. I was dead serious about running for mayor. Or making Cole do it. He’d make a great mayor. There was nothing he loved more than bossing people around.
My phone buzzed on the end table next to my chair, and Seth’s name lit up on the screen. It was well after one in the morning. He couldn’t keep normal hours to save his life.
I picked up. “You’ve got to start keeping track of Eastern Standard Time.”
“And yet you answer every time.” He had me there. “Is Audrey with you?”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Not at the moment, but we’re together. If you want to be pissed, be pissed, but I’m not playing this game with you anymore. We’ve been out of high school for years now.”
He let out a long-winded sigh. “I know.”
“This mean you’re over it?” Not that I gave a shit either way at this point, but it would make Audrey happy and the holidays a hell of a lot easier.
“I’m over it.” He paused. “Are you?”
“I’ve been over this shit.”
“I mean, are you over the fact that I asked her out in the first place? Because if you stay in your feelings about that, we’re never going to move past this.”
Hell. I wanted to tell him I could let it go. It didn’t matter anymore. I was with Audrey now for the long haul. But I didn’t know if I could say I was done resenting him for how everything had gone down, and I wouldn’t lie. “I don’t know if I’m there yet.”
It was possible that I’d get there over time, but there was a lot of damage lying at our feet. Audrey was still holding pieces of herself back from me, small ones, but any were too many. And I didn’t know how to shut down my fear every time her temper flared up. We’d come farther than I’d ever dared to hope, and yet, we had more work to do. Maybe we always would.
“Fair enough,” Seth said, his voice holding a note of resignation. “I’ve said my piece anyway. We’ll see how things go at Christmas.”
“Sounds good.” I hung up first this time and set my phone back on the table. It wasn’t perfect, but my relationship with Seth never had been.
I stayed at my house for a while longer, just to make sure Finn didn’t wake back up and try to walk his drunken ass to the Chases', then took the trail to Audrey’s. We’d left the meeting with the understanding that I wouldn’t be staying with her tonight, but I couldn’t help myself. She was like a drug and I couldn’t go more than a few hours without a fix.
I pounded on her door, and a few minutes later, she flung it open. Her hair fell in a tangle around her face, and her eyelids were heavy with sleep. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on babysitting duty for Drunk Finn?”
