Page 38

finn

I sit with a cool whiskey glass in my hand, shirtless, my grey sweatpants riding low on my hips. It’s the same as every night over the last two weeks. I’m completely empty. Broken.

My phone buzzes, and if I wasn’t so desperate to hear from Carter, I wouldn’t bother looking.

I pick it up, Carter’s name flashing on the screen with a text message.

I nearly slosh the remaining whiskey over the rim as I jerk upright in my seat.

Unlocking my phone with trembling fingers, my heart in my throat, I read his text, the words stunning me.

Carter: I’m outside.

It takes me a moment before my body catches up to my brain, and I’m moving quickly through my house.

Wrenching open my front door, Carter is standing there in the flesh.

The urge to grab him and pull him into my arms is strong.

I just want to hug him, hold him close to me.

I can barely contain the relief that courses through my veins, the tears that want to fall. Fuck, I’ve missed him.

“We need to talk.”

“That’s never a good thing, but considering we haven’t spoken in over two weeks, I’m not going to complain,” I reply, my voice coming out as strangled and broken as I feel.

I open the door further and Carter walks into the house, and as he walks past me, I inhale his woodsy, sweet scent into my lungs.

My fingers twitch at my sides, and I have to ball them into fists to keep from reaching out and touching him.

He looks like he’s lost a little weight, the tan that he worked for in Emberleigh already faded.

He spins on me, and the empty look in his eyes tells me that he’s not here to work things out.

But I’m not going to let him go this easily. I can’t.

“I just need to know the truth. All of it. Nothing is making sense to me anymore. So, please, after everything, give me that. You said you wanted to explain. I need to hear it, but if you lie to me . . .”

I let out a long breath, running my hands through my hair. This conversation is long overdue.

“In case you missed it, my dad’s a top-notch asshole.

Always has been. He’s ruthless when he wants to be, which is almost always, and I am his one and only failure, the golden child that he desperately wanted.

He gave me the best education money could buy, tutors, coaches, but I have always fallen short in his eyes.

The fact that I’m gay just makes it all the worse.

I’ve been trying to be enough for him my entire life and always come up short, Carter. I’m never good enough.”

Carter’s eyes are filled with a stormy mix of empathy, rage, and confusion, and I’m uncertain which emotion he’s feeling the most.

“I feel for you, Finn, I do. He’s a piece of shit and I wish like hell it was different for you.

But that doesn’t explain the shit that’s going on.

I want to know why. Why offer the distillery a feature?

Why tail me? Why force me to go away with you?

Why ask me to lean in? Fuck, Finn. Was I just some sick game to you?

Try to turn the straight guy? Do you really have a goddamn girlfriend?

!” He huffs loudly while every piece of my heart crumbles.

“So explain it, or I clearly made a mistake by coming here.” He snaps out the words, each one shattering my heart a little bit more.

“I don’t, Carter. She’s nothing to me, I swear.

Lexi isn’t anyone but a lost girl whose dad is pressuring her to marry rich.

Our dads are business partners. Mine refuses to acknowledge that I’m gay, and apparently Lexi is his key to showing everyone that his son isn’t an abomination.

They have been trying to arrange our marriage for a long time.

Lexi is on board because I’m a Nash. She wants the life that she has grown up knowing, and I’m her ticket to keeping it.

I’ve never touched her. Never even been alone with her until I saw her standing in my bedroom in Maine. That’s the truth.”

Carter looks at me—really looks at me—and I hold my breath and wait for him to give me some semblance of a clue that he believes me.

“Fuck, Finn. Your dad’s a piece of fucking work. Now what about the part where my family is involved in this shit? How do we fit in this fucked-up situation?”

“I’m still figuring that out. Every piece I have given to you, Carter, that was all real.

When I said I love my job more than anything, at the time, I meant it.

My dad owns one of the most popular and well-known travel magazines there is.

He knows how much working there means to me, and he uses that to get me to comply. ”

“Why don’t you just leave and go somewhere else if he’s so fucking bad? Finn, he can’t control you. You’re so much damn better than this.”

“Because he would ruin me! The magazine may be big, but the communities are small. He would make sure no one hired me anywhere else. He would sully my name, and no one would publish me. Up until recently, I haven’t had anything in my life that I cared for more than travel writing.

” Up until I met Carter Hayes. “I stumbled on Aspen Ridge by accident. I was given a twenty-year-old signature bourbon from your distillery as a gift from my best friend. I wanted to know more because that’s what I do, and I found Aspen Ridge.

Carter, when I tell you I fell in love through just photos, I did.

I had Trey immediately reach out, and then I gave the proposal to my dad for Aspen Ridge to be the focus of my next feature. ”

“Okay . . .” he says, urging me to go on, leaning his shoulder against the wall next to him, his muscular arms crossed tight across his chest.

“He flipped. He’s always been prone to violent rage, but Carter, he freaked. Forbade me from ever stepping foot in Aspen Ridge and especially from speaking to your family.”

“What? Why the hell would he care?”

“Our parents know each other, or did at one time.”

“What?” he asks me, his eyebrows pinching together with the same confusion I’m feeling.

“I don’t know the details because he doesn’t talk to me, just expects me to listen, but my dad despises your family. He went ballistic, Carter.”

“So why the hell didn’t you stay away, Finn? Why fuck with me?”

“Because I couldn’t! I fucking couldn’t!

” I yell, my voice cracking with emotion.

Doesn’t he feel this between us? Why is he fighting this so hard?

“I saw your photo online and I couldn’t stay away!

I tried! I needed to know you, Carter. I needed to see you in the flesh. It was a pull I couldn’t fight.”

Carter stands tall, rigid and in a defensive stance, his fists balled at his sides, eyes narrowed at me in frustration. My knees nearly buckle from the piercing, fierce stare alone.

“What was your plan then, huh? Fuck around with me, get me to open up to you, then what? I was just something you couldn’t stay away from and then you were going to what?

Keep me your dirty little secret? Drop me altogether?

When were you going to fucking tell me I meant nothing and that we were never going to get that feature? ”

“You mean everything! I didn’t know at the time, Carter.

I was being impulsive because you consume me.

But you don’t know what it’s like to work for him, to be his son.

I didn’t have a plan for handling it, but I was going to figure it out.

I didn’t want to hurt you, but I didn’t want to lose you.

You opened up to me in Maine, and I was going to tell you everything. I wanted to figure it out together!”

Carter’s face pinches as if he’s in pain, and I see the panic before it starts to hit. My hands instinctively reach out to him, but he pulls away and my heart stops in my chest, the air snatched from my lungs.

“I don’t believe you.”

My head jerks back as if he had slapped me. I would have preferred it.

“This is over. Whatever you think happened in Maine stays there. It’s over.

I agreed to your stupid demands, I went on your little fucking trip, gave you what you wanted, and I should force you to write the article you promised me, but we don’t want it.

I want nothing from you. Tell your dad to eat shit and that he got his way, something I’m sure he’s plenty used to by now. ”

I feel like I just took a sucker punch to the gut. My heart falls into the pit of my stomach, bile rising up my throat and burning. My head scrambles with what to do.

“What do you mean this is over? We’re not over.” We can’t be.

“Yes we fucking are. ”

“So you can fuck me but you won’t admit what’s between us? Happy to have me on my knees for you and share my bed, but that’s as far as it goes?”

“I never wanted this! I have never wanted commitment! You’re not special, Griffin. Just because I’ve fucked you doesn’t mean I want more from you.”

Griffin.

A sardonic laugh that I don’t recognize erupts from my chest. His words are knives slashing across my flesh, ripping through muscle and puncturing vital organs.

His eyes flash with surprise, either at his own words or my reaction, but I don’t give him time to react further, and he doesn’t get to see how deep those words wound.

I’m never going to be fucking good enough for anyone.

Never be enough for someone to choose me.

I thought he felt everything between us.

I thought he would trust me to tell him the truth, but I’m not enough.

Without a word, I turn on my heels and head for the door.

“Finn, wait . . .”

Carter trails behind me, his footfalls hard on the wood floors of my house.

I snatch my keys from the bowl at the entryway table, my body on autopilot, a quiet, calm, stillness settling over me—numbing me. A defense mechanism I’ve perfected. I’ve felt so much pain and heartbreak over the last two weeks of silence between us, and now I’m just empty.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Fuck. That came out real bad, let’s talk this through,” he backpedals.

I’ll never be done with Carter Hayes, but I’m not going to be used and abused so he can live out some sick fantasy and never fully give himself to me.

He keeps fighting this magnetism between us instead of leaning into it, and I’m not going to stand by to wait for the next time he wants me.

If he can’t have my back, if he can’t trust me, if he can’t choose me, then I can’t stay.

Even if he’s wrong. So very, very wrong.

I said my piece, was truthful, and he still doesn’t believe me.

“You knew exactly what this was. We were fucking. That’s what I do, Nash.

I fuck. I don’t do feelings. I can’t,” he says, his voice softer but firm.

Little goddamn liar. He’s only trying to convince himself.

That’s what this is really about. He’s been doing feelings this entire time, he’s just choosing to ignore them.

I whip around to face him, my face pinched with anger and frustration.

His steps halt, even taking a hesitant one back like he can feel how he’s finally pushed me too far.

This is it. All in or nothing at all. I can’t do the in-between for a moment longer.

Not after I’m choosing him over my family, over the goddamn job that I love so much, over everything that I have.

I choose him knowing I am walking away from everything.

If he can’t be all in for me, then I’m done with him.

I’ll forever feel love and gratitude for Carter because he gave me the strength to walk away from a life I should have left a long time ago.

With or without him, I’m going to survive this and start over.

I just hope like hell it’s with him by my side.