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“Yes,” said Sherin.
Mom was shaking her head. “You can’t all go off and fall in love with just anyone. It can’t work like that. There have to be rules. There are consequences.”
“Katrice,” said Dad with a warning tone.
Mom looked at the speaker pod. “It’s not only about Sherwood and the alliance families. Marriage isn’t easy. It isn’t all sunshine and flowers blooming. Sometimes it rains for a month, and you have a headache and bad sinus, and the roof leaks right above your bed. And you had kids, and they’re a handful, and your brain turned to mush, and nothing you do feels like you’re making a difference because rich bastards keep getting richer, and they don’t share it around.”
She was visibly upset, not making eye contact, her hands twisted together, her voice cracking. “All you want to do is go hiking and not talk to anyone forever, but you can’t because the world is killing albatrosses and polar bears and coral. And you fell in love, and you have a responsibility that keeps you tied to your partner even when you sometimes hate them, and you hate yourself and not even a great new haircut will fix it.”
“Mom,” Zeke put her arms around her. “We’ll make up new rules, okay. None of us want to bring outsiders in if it puts the rest of us at risk, but Cal’s got this. He always does.”
Mom sniffled. “No one else gets to fall in love till I’m ready. No one else.”
“Does that mean I have your vote?” Cal asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He sat back in his chair, his system flooded with relief, making it difficult to focus on the conversation around him. After all this, Fin had had better say yes, too. And he wasn’t leaving that to chance.
Chapter Twenty-One
After that night on the carpet, Fin didn’t need a brief. She was in a no-holds-barred, capital L. O. V. E. relationship with Cal. It went from lifestyles of the rich and famous fake dating to sharing a tub of Chunky Monkey with a single spoon in front of an Alien marathon.
She loved the normality of it. Cal was positively changed by it. She’d never heard him laugh more, seen him smile more. He relaxed into her saggy couch wearing well-worn sweats, and she loved him more for the lack of ceremony. They didn’t have to be anywhere, know anything, talk to anyone. There were no cues to send, no earrings to twiddle, or purses to drop. It didn’t take her hours to get ready to go out. She wore a baggy tee and no bra and got more affection than she’d ever had from him when she wore designer clothing.
If he were a social media savvy guy, she’d have declared they were in love everywhere. She’d have been overdosing on couple selfies. But her guy didn’t even have a decent website for his business, let alone any of his own personal accounts, so she took the pics and kept them private.
Not that they were hiding out. The official business functions had tailed off as the Everlasting deal closed, and his Brainstorm deal wasn’t yet at the One Night Wife stage, but that meant more time for doing their own thing.
She dragged him to off-Broadway plays. He bought her a mountain bike, and they went on rides in Cunningham Park and Blue Mountain Reservation. They took weekend trips out of town and slept late, went to dinner after work, and ate too much. They hung out with Zeke and Lenny, and one night, Halsey made an appearance and so did Rory. Rory was surprisingly cool. She teased Cal mercilessly and went out of her way to make Fin feel like family.
As did Cal’s dad when his badass mom insisted they meet. He gave her a tour of his prized rose bushes and told her stories about Cal as a kid that embarrassed him and made Fin weak with joy.
That night, she was Cal’s sex slave in bed, anything, everything he wanted and had never asked for. All the things she’d learned from him about reading other people she used on him to find out what those things were. She made him melt, kissing and sucking on the pulse point behind his ear, lose it to shouts of laughter when she blindfolded him and tickled him with a feather boa, and shudder uncontrollably when she deep throated him. They broke a slat in her bed base because in the end, it was wild and fast, and he was virtually unconscious when she’d finished with him.
In the morning, he fixed the slat along with waffles. He was a keeper with maple syrup and bacon on the side.
And maybe the best part was the way she didn’t lose herself in him. She worked hard in the office with Lenny, taking Skype calls with project partners on the ground in various parts of the world with inconvenient time zones.
They built a totally new website with more funds to add more features and better apps. Lenny’s work brought in companies, clubs, and groups for small amounts they could match with the big foundation donor funds Fin had attracted to double then triple their effectiveness.
Lenny’s family was still in disarray, but Fin’s parents were finally impressed with what she’d made of herself. She wasn’t a flaky little wannabe anymore. Like Marilyn said, dreaming about being an actress was more exciting than being one.
Her life would be entirely transformed if she could only decide on a costume for the benefit Cal was taking her to.
She put a mug of coffee in front of Lenny. “Famous couples in history for ten points.” That was the theme of the benefit.
Lenny pushed the spreadsheet she was studying away. “Adam and Eve.”
“I’m not wearing a fig leaf.”
“You could do Marilyn and Arthur Miller.”
“They didn’t stay together.” Fin struck a pose to quote the star. “Husbands are chiefly good lovers when they are betraying their wives.”
Lenny rolled her eyes. “I assume hard pass on Romeo and Juliet.”
“Ugh.”
