27
“You know it’s Sunday, right?” Ezra asked as he came into the sanctuary kitchen, sitting down across the table from where Finn was drinking Oscar’s orange juice.
He’d bring him a new carton tomorrow.
“I’m neutering a Rottweiler later,” Finn said. “The foster carer could only bring him in today.”
“So the two cats you did yesterday…”
“Recovering at home with cones on their heads,” Finn said. “The program’s taking off. I’m gonna have to start convincing other vets that it’s extremely rewarding to donate their time to stuff like this.”
“Right. And you didn’t just move those bookings up for the same reason you deep-cleaned the reptile shed this week?”
“Someone had to do it eventually,” Finn defended.
He knew Ezra could see right through him, but he had a few shreds of dignity left that he wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
“Uh huh,” Ezra said. “It’s okay to just be sad, you know.”
“I’m coping,” Finn responded, looking up to meet Ezra’s eyes.
“I’mcoping,”he repeated.
“By which you mean you’re employing all your coping skills, not so much that you’re okay,” Ezra said perceptively. “He’s sorry.”
“How do you know?”
Ezra pulled out his phone and passed it over after a few taps.
A lump formed in Finn’s throat as he read over the short exchange with Nolan.
“Yeah, well,” he said, passing the phone back. “Like you said, he needs to tell me himself.”
Everything still hurt, and Finn knew Ezra was trying to help, but the reminder that he wasn’t theonlyone hurting stung.
Angry as he was with Nolan over listening to Gavin, he hated the thought that Nolan was upset.
Now that he’d had time to calm down, an apology was all it would have taken. He’d thought he’d feel better if he walked away.
He’d thought he never wanted to see Nolan again.
And now it was the weekend, and that had becometheirtime in Finn’s mind, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was suddenly a Nolan-shaped hole in his life.
“You said Gavin bullies him,” Ezra continued. “You don’t think maybe you should cut him some slack?”
Finn sighed.
Yeah.
Yeah, he did think that. He couldn’thelpthinking that. This was on Gavin.
Mostly.
But it had stillhurt, and Finn hadn’t done a damned thing wrong.
Except walking away. Except using his feelings for Nolan as a weapon to make him feel worse about all this.
That hadn’t been his intention, but he knew that was how it’d come out. He’d been desperate and scared and hurt, and he’d said things he shouldn’t have.
