Her eyes roll so hard she must see stars, but it only makes me grin wider. “I am absolutely not jealous of whatever the hell it is you engage in on a daily basis.”
I close the last bit of distance between us, pinning her between the wall and my body. She’s so much smaller than me, even though she’s tall. It makes ridiculously primal thoughts swim through my head.
“Maybe not, but he doesn’t know that,” I respond, surprised to hear my voice has gone deeper, raspier. I hope she doesn’t notice.
She holds my gaze for a long moment, shades of green and gold peppering her eyes like looking through an earth-toned kaleidoscope. I could just as easily get lost in them.
“You really think we could convince him?”
The words niggle through my chest, piercing the piece of my heart that always beatsFinley. I should have thought this through better. I should have considered how hard it would be to pretend with her, to have her in so many of the ways I’ve always wanted, but for it to be fake. For her to be wantinghimwhile doing it.
“Why do you want to convince him, Finley?”
I need to know. Because if she agrees to this because she wants to make him jealous, because she wants him back, I don’t think I can do it. I’m already so close to the edge of my sanity as it is.
Her focus drops back down to my throat, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth. I think there’s a sheen to her eyes, one that makes my chest ache. I want to kill Gus Zimmerman for everything he’s put her through, all the heartache he’s caused. All the brightness he’s stolen from her.
She’s quiet for so long that I don’t think she’s going to answer. Finally, though, voice soft, she says, “He said he didn’t want to get married, that he never wanted to settle down. He said it wasn’t what he was looking for. But then he found her. And she was enough for him.” She pauses, lifting her gaze to mine. The look there is determination mixed with heartbreak, and it kills me. “I just want him to know I’m enough for someone.”
I just want him to know I’m enough for someone. Finley’s words still ring in my head hours later, haunting me. I don’t know what I expected her to say, but it wasn’t that. I don’t know how she, of all people, could feel like that. She is the first flowers in spring, sunshine after weeks of clouds, everything I’ve never allowed myself to hope for. And she thinks she’s not enough. It makes my chest ache in a physical way. It’s so painful I have to press my palm there to soothe the hurt.
I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to ensure that she never goes to sleep questioning her worth again. I have no idea how to do that. But I’ll figure it out, if it’s the last thing I do.
I’ve barely allowed myself to think about the rest of what happened, how I agreed to pretend to date the woman I’ve beenin love with for fifteen years. How I offered to attend her ex-boyfriend’s wedding with her. What we will have to do to make him jealous. Finley says that’s not why she’s doing it, and I believe her, but I want that shithead to know exactly what he gave up. He had everything I’ve ever wanted, and he let her go. He doesn’t know how good he had it, and I intend to show him.
It’s going to actually kill me.
My phone vibrates on the couch cushion next to me. I mute the baseball game on the TV and smile when I see the photo on the screen. A man in his early fifties, salt and pepper hair sticking out from beneath a too-small kids’ plastic firefighter hat.
Swiping open the call, I say, “Hey, Charlie.”
“Hey, son,” he bellows, never able to control his volume, and just like always, it makes my heart constrict a little. Charlie Holt isnotmy father, but it’s never stopped him from treating me like his son. The day I showed up at the fire station in town, where I now work, at five years old, he took me under his wing. He showed me around the fire station and taught me everything I know about fighting fires. Everything I know about life.
During my darkest moments, I find myself wishing he really was my father. And then I kick myself, because even though my own father has never been the caring, doting father I so desperately wanted, he’s sacrificed a lot for me, including his personal happiness. I owe him and my mom everything, and just thinking about Charlie like that is ungrateful.
“How’ve you all been?” I ask Charlie. Five years ago, he moved to a small town in Maine after meeting a woman who lived there online. I was worried for him, thinking he was being catfished, but Susan has been everything to him. Her kids and young grandkids live nearby, and he’s finally, at fifty-eight years old, getting to live the family life he always wanted. It was like he wasn’t even alive until he met her, and although I miss seeinghim at the station and around town every day, I couldn’t be happier for him.
“We’re good,” he says. I can hear his smile through the phone. The smile he wears every time he gets to usewe. “Maine is something else in the summer. You really should come up to visit me.”
He says this every time we chat, and every time, I promise to take him up on it. But between my schedule at the fire station here, his schedule at the fire station there, and all of his activities with his new family, the timing has never worked out.
“Soon,” I reply, just like always.
But this time, he surprised me by saying, “What do you think about coming in the next few weeks? Labor Day weekend, to be exact.”
I push myself out of the couch cushions, propping my elbows on my knees. “What?”
“There’s a job,” he says after a moment. “Here in Cape Landing. It’s not listed yet, but one of the guys is planning to retire in the fall, and they’re going to open the listing in the end of the summer.”
“A job,” I parrot. “In Cape Landing.” It’s not as if this offer is a total shock. When I started half-heartedly looking for jobs in other cities a few months ago, I told Charlie to keep an eye out for anything. He might be from a small town in the mountains of North Carolina, but he knows people all over. I just never expected there would be a job so close to him, in his own town.
From all the blurry off-center photos he’s sent me of the small coastal town, it’s idyllic. Exactly what you’d picture—lighthouses, craggy shores, lots and lots of lobsters. It’s nothing like where I imagined ending up after living in the mountains my entire life, but then again, I’m sure he didn’t either. Charlie has seemed to effortlessly trade trees and mountains for salty air and miles of rocky coastline.
“It would be a promotion. Lieutenant.”
I chew my bottom lip. I’ve been at the station in Fontana Ridge since I was eighteen, first as a volunteer, then as a firefighter after finishing the academy at twenty-two. Even with all that experience, my opportunity for advancement has been slim, since most of the company has also been there for decades. To them, I’m basically still a rookie, only having two hires after me.
Butthis—this would be a promotion, a chance to start over somewhere new, where the woman I’ve been in love with for half my life isn’t always there, reminding me of why I love her and why she will never, ever love me.
