I just… lit candles around it, emotionally speaking, and somehow it works. Turns out danger and comfort can coexist, which feels very on brand for my life now.
“Hey, boss.”
I glance up from the event binder in my hands and find Finn leaning against the bar, grin already loaded and ready to misbehave.
“I hate when you call me that,” I tell him.
He looks offended. “That is deeply untrue. You tolerate it with visible affection.”
“I tolerate it with recurring irritation.”
“Which, for you, is basically a sonnet.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
He beams.
Honestly, he should be illegal.
My gaze drops to the counter and catches on his phone.
Face up.
Just sitting there.
Not flipped over. Not hidden. Not treated like it might explode if someone loves him too directly.
It still hits me sometimes, the little things.
He sees where I’m looking and gives one easy shrug, like it’s no big deal. Like this is casual. Like the sky is casual, and breathing is casual, andFinn Reilly leaving his phone face upis casual.
“Some of us are emotionally evolved,” he says.
“Some of us are showing off.”
“That too.”
I smile because I can’t help it.
He’s different now in the quietest ways. He doesn’t disappear. He doesn’t make himself slippery when things get too real. He stays for the boring parts. The dishes. The morning coffee. The silences that used to make him itch.
He’s reachable.
Not just by phone.
By us.
By me.
Which is maybe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen him do.
“Also,” he adds, pointing at my binder, “I think your Friday jazz and whiskey concept is sexy and inspired.”
“That is because you think the word whiskey is foreplay.”
He puts a hand over his heart. “It’s nice to be known.”
Yeah.
