Page 7 of Finley

Shit.

Knowing he had to face the music sooner or later, he pushed the covers back and placed his mug on the side table. After getting to his feet, he stretched his arms over his head and caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his door. White T-shirt, grey shorts, and,shit, his hair really did look kind of weird, even to himself. The cut made him look more…mature.Sophisticated, he thought as he angled his head to the side. His mother was going to flip.

“Finn!”

More than she already was.

He headed down the narrow hall of their beach house, the salty ocean air filling his lungs on a deep inhale. He’d loved growing up on the water. Going to sleep to the sound of the waves crashing to shore, and waking to the gulls cawing at sunrise. It was peaceful there, and it had helped heal his family after they’d been broken from his father passing.

As he rounded the corner into the little kitchen that faced the ocean, he spotted his mother, all five feet of her, singing and dancing to “Kokomo” as she flipped pancakes at the stove. He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and watched her as she swayed around the kitchen to the beat of the music.

Carefree and bubbly with her beach-blond hair braided down her back and her sundress flowing around her knees. She was happy there, and it showed. Then, when she turned around and spotted him, her singing abruptly stopped and her spatula froze in midair.

“Daniel Finley,” she said, shaking the kitchen utensil at him as she walked barefoot across the linoleum floor. “You are a sight for sore eyes, young man.”

When she reached him, he wrapped his arms around her and sighed as she took him in hers. He’d missed this part about home. The familiarity and the warmth of ones who really loved you.

Then she whacked him on the arm with the spatula and pulled away to tell him, “And I don’t mean that horrible haircut.”

“It’s not horrible,” he said as she slipped out of his arms and looked him over.

“You look city.”

He walked over to the breakfast bar, where she’d laid out three plates, and picked up a handful of grapes from the blown-glass fruit bowl in the middle of the counter.

“Iamcity,” he reminded her before he popped one of the grapes in his mouth.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t like it. The city’s taken my boy and made him…”

“A man?” he suggested, tongue in cheek.

“Don’t you get smart with me,” she warned him, and turned back to the stove.

“Come on, Ma. Don’t tell me you aren’t proud. Katrina said you tell everyone you know that your son is a ‘fancy’ lawyer in the big city.”

“Your sister always did like to tell stories.”

“And you always said that most stories have a grain of truth in them.”

She took the frying pan off the stove, slid the pancakes onto the stack she’d previously made, and then brought it over to him. “Don’t you go quoting my quotes back at me. Keep that kind of talk for your clients.”

“Yes, Ma,” he said, giving her his most charming smile.

She placed several pancakes on his plate and then rested her hip against the counter.

“You’ve been gone too long, Finn,” she said softly.

He knew that it’d been coming, but the way her voice cracked made his guilt fester and his stomach knot.

When he’d decided to say,Fuck it all, and leave like Brantley had so heavily encouraged him to do, he’d made a promise to himself: he wouldn’t look back, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going tocomeback. Not until he was good and ready. Which he still wasn’t sure he was.

“You’re here now, though, and I told everyone I know that they need to stop by tonight and see you.”

“Ma,” he grumbled. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because people have missed you. That’s why.”

He scooped a spoonful of blueberries onto his pancakes and then cut, and shoveled, a forkful of them into his mouth. That was when his sister decided to make her entrance and slide onto the stool beside him.Hmm, maybe I can?—