by Elise Faber
“What are the chances of you putting on thirty pounds of muscle again?” she said, after pausing the movie like Finn had asked.
“Zero.” He glanced up from his cell, where he was taking notes about the film he’d brought over for them to watch after Rylie had gone to bed. “I didn’t see a carb for outside of six months. There is absolutely no way I could ever do that again.”
Her lips twitched. “Until the next role calls for it.”
A sheepish grin. “Okay, so you’re probably right. If the conditions were right, I could do it. But let it be known I was a grumpy asshole during the entire shoot.”
“If I wasn’t eating carbs, I’d feel the same way.” She took a sip of wine from her glass. “This is really good, by the way.”
“The wine or the movie?”
She snorted. “Well, since you somehow figured out my favorite type of wine”—she paused, waiting to see if he’d dish on how he’d figured that out, but when he didn’t, she went on, keeping her own suspicions for how (or whom—cough, Pepper) to herself—“I’d have to say the wine.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“But just note, the movie is all right, too.”
“A ringing endorsement,” he deadpanned.
There was something about his tone . . . Shan set her wine down and shifted on the couch, facing him fully. “You do know this film is incredible, right?”
“It’s good,” he said, shrugging as he made another note then set his phone on the table. “But it’s not going to change people’s lives.”
Hmm.
“And is that what you want to do?” she asked carefully. “To change people’s lives?”
Silence.
Then, “I know it makes me sound like a selfish, egotistical asshole, but, yes. I do.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing,” she said. “I mean, there’s a part of me that wants to know I’m doing something important and valuable.”
“You’re teaching America’s youth. I don’t think you have to go far to find your value.”
“Maybe.” She sat back. “But many times I sit back and wonder if I’m doing enough. If I’ve used my platform effectively to really help them become well-adjusted, good people. Or if it’s all pointless in the end because the world is so harsh and unforgiving and many of them will turn out to be assholes anyway.”
Finn tilted his head to the side, studying her for a long time.
Long enough that she felt guilty for calling her students future assholes.
But then he took her hand, laced their fingers together. “I’m supposed to be the one with the words.” A soft chuckle. “Though, I guess that they’re usually written for me, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You always are able to articulate aloud the words I don’t know I’m thinking.”
She frowned.
“Did you know that I chose my latest project by closing my eyes and picking from the pile of scripts—well, emails with scripts attached—at random?”
“Um—”
“And that it’s shit. Not because of the writing or even the story, but because I couldn’t see myself in the role. Nothing felt original or fresh or new, and it hasn’t for years.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said.
“My favorite part of acting has always been trying on someone else’s skin for a while”—he made a face—“that sounds terrible, but I . . .”
She waited.
“Stepping into someone else’s life, trying it on for a while, figuring out all of the little pieces that go into making a person react the way they do. Why they say things, or how they speak, or what becomes that critical thing for them to drag their heels on.” His eyes lit up. “Because everyone is different, you know? My line in the sand might be something as simple and stupid as having a proper cup of coffee in the morning, maybe yours is organization and keeping all of your ducks in a line, maybe my agent’s is getting as much money as possible so he’s never at risk of living again like how he grew up. And acting gave me the space to explore all of that, to understand it.”
“But you haven’t felt that way lately?”
“No.”
“Is it—” She stopped, trying to phrase the question in her mind differently, because she was wondering if the trauma of what was done to his sister had taken away his enjoyment for his craft.
If perhaps he blamed himself for being away or somehow thought his fame had made her a target.
“About my sister?” he asked as she was struggling with wording.
Shan nodded.
“I’m sure it is in some way.” He sighed. “I’m sure it is in a lot of ways. She was at a party for an actor friend of mine, took the rapist she met there up on his offer to drive her home. If I wasn’t doing what I was doing, she would have never been at that party at all.”
“And she thought it was safe because the host was your friend.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. “I should have been there,” he said. “I was supposed to be. But I’d just gotten in from a long shoot, and I was tired—” He broke off, shoved a hand through his hair.
“You blame yourself,” she said, confirming her earlier thought.
“How can I not?” he asked. “I didn’t go, and that happened to her. I should have sent her in a car, should have been there in the first place—” He broke off, hands fisting on his thighs.
“Trauma is an odd thing.”
His gaze flicked to hers.
“My mother was an addict. Opioids. OxyContin. Percocet. Vicodin.” She sighed. “Then heroin. And eventually, what would be her downfall, fentanyl.”
“Shannon.” The tension left him, and he scooted closer, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t bring it up to try to out-trauma you. I . . . well, my point is that my mom died when I was twelve. OD’d. I found her after school and called 9-1-1 and there was nothing they could do. She was gone.” Shannon inhaled and exhaled slowly, putting that old pain back into its box, carefully locking it. “I went to live with my dad at that point. An arrangement he wasn’t too thrilled about, especially when he’d—direct quote here—dodged a bullet with my mom. He didn’t want another female of her blood in his life.”
“That’s—”
“Horrible. Terrible.” She nodded as he slid his hand up and down her back. “All the -ble’s,” she said, going for a weak joke. “It was. I’d spent a long time taking care of her, and then I went to my dad’s and I spent the rest of my childhood trying to make him proud of me.” Her eyes slid shut. “Newsflash. It didn’t work.”
“Asshole.”
“In a lot of ways,” Shan said, with a broken laugh. “I agree with you. But the trauma of dealing with my mom brought that side out in him. Granted, not all of it, because he wasn’t a gem in ways that were many and copious, but living with an addict affects people differently, trauma affects people in strange and painful ways. My dad did his thing. I did mine. We were both sliced to pieces inside.”
“Except, family is supposed to help you heal those hurt pieces.”
“My dad wasn’t capable of that.”
Finn sighed and sat back. “That’s bullshit. That’s not what a good parent does.”
“You’re right.”
“Then how can you talk so calmly about it?”
“He couldn’t be what I needed.”
“That’s—”
“The painful truth,” she said. “Right around the time I found out that Brian was cheating, I realized how much I’d shrunk myself down in order to try to be this perfect person for him, just liked I tried to do for my dad. I’m still working on it, still find myself fighting the urge to bend and transform myself into what people want from me.”
“Blue Eyes.”
“I’m different now. I promised myself it would be different.” She touched his cheek, ignoring the
pity in his tone. “It’s a promise I’m scared I won’t be able to keep.”
“You will.”
She bit her lip. “I hope so.” She wrinkled her nose. “Did you know that I didn’t even want to be a teacher?” she said. “I became one because my grandmother taught for years and I thought my dad would take pride in it.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But he didn’t express any pride, and I found myself in a career I didn’t love because I tried to live for someone else.”
“And do you love it now?” he asked. “Or would you want to make a change?”
Did she?
“There are parts I do love,” she said. “And there are parts that are the worst, but any job is like that, right? It’s never going to be one hundred rainbows and unicorns all the time.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“So, now I’ve redirected the conversation completely back to me,” she said. “I was trying to say that just because the trauma didn’t happen to you, doesn’t mean you weren’t affected.” She put her hand up. “And that’s not to discount your sister and her trauma because that’s what’s most important. It’s just this kind of stuff . . . isn’t singular, you know? A rock being tossed into a lake creates ripples, and those ripples flow and move over objects in their path, and they can be changed.” She blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling, and that probably doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re wrong.”
Her gut sank. “I—”
“You’re not rambling,” he said, leaning forward again and cupping her cheek. “Once again, I’m just amazed by your ability to take something so tangled and misshapen in my mind and put it into words.”
“Well, if the words are working, then I’ll take it.” She smiled.
He bent to brush his mouth across hers. “They’re working.” Another brush. “Also, you’re amazing.” He nipped her bottom lip. “I hope you’ll at least take that.”
“Finn.”
He ran his fingers along her jaw. “It’s true, Blue Eyes.”
Her heart swelled, warmth spreading out and filling her from head to toe. Just being next to Finn, being held and touched by him was wonderful. And being able to talk to him about things both important and not made it even better.
“I like you, Finn Stoneman.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, because I like you, Shannon Torres.”
More warmth. More . . . heat.
Propelling her into confidence, into doing something she’d never had the courage to do before.
She made the first move.
Leaning forward, she closed the distance between their mouths and put every single bit of warmth and heat and like for this man into that kiss.
His tongue slipped between her lips, rubbing against hers, sending sparks of need throughout her body as his arms wrapped tightly around her, and they kissed and kissed and kissed. Eventually, they broke apart, chests heaving, her pulse pounding in her ears. She rested her forehead against his, breaths mingling, the space between her thighs wet and aching. Finn’s honey eyes had deepened to amber, and the sight of them staring hotly at her made her desire ramp up even further.
But Rylie was down the hall.
And . . . she wasn’t ready.
So, she shifted in his embrace and reached for the remote. “I like you, Finn Stoneman, but I think I like you even more with those extra thirty pounds of muscle.”
He grinned, tucked her against his chest, and stole the remote.
“Then I guess I’d better take advantage of that six months without carbs in any way I can.”
He hit play, and they watched the end of the movie cuddled together.
For the record, Finn might not think the film would change lives, but he was absolutely wrong.
Because it had already changed hers.
“I’m sorry, Beatrice,” Shannon said into her cell a few days later. “But I can’t cover your club tomorrow”—like she always did. Shan swore she might as well be the leader for how often she ran the sessions—“Rylie has an important dance class that she can’t miss, and I promised her teacher that I would video the girls.”
A beat, probably because Shannon wanting to please everyone in her world hadn’t just begun and ended with the men in her life.
She bent over backward for everyone and to her own detriment.
Well, that had ended.
“Can’t someone else film?” Beatrice asked.
“Sorry, no,” Shannon replied.
“But—”
“I need to go,” she said, pausing only to say a quick goodbye before pocketing her cell. She smiled as she walked toward the railing of the deck, leaning back against it, feeling the cool, salt-tinged air coat her skin, listening to the crash of the waves. Yeah, it felt good to have a backbone.
Good enough that she didn’t care if Beatrice was mad and gave her the silent treatment. Good enough that she thought she could keep standing up for herself, keep growing into a person that Rylie would be proud of one day.
A person she could be proud of.
Her.
Yes, for once she was as important to herself as the rest of the people in her universe.
Progress.
Small progress.
But she’d take it, just like she’d continue taking these baby steps moving forward.
Brian hadn’t shown up.
Again.
Fucking hell.
And now Rylie was playing on the deck, having avoided the sand because Brian didn’t like it in his car, and as the hours went on, her daughter’s face got sadder and sadder.
“Shit,” she muttered, putting her book aside and picking up her cell.
She’d thought they were done with this.
She’d thought that with their lives separated that Brian would be able to put away the anger he’d been fostering toward her and focus on the innocent being they’d created together.
Instead . . . he didn’t show up.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, forcing herself to modulate her tone.
“Okay,” Rylie said.
And it was the just said part that was the problem. Because Ry didn’t talk at a normal volume. She yelled and cheered, filled every word with excitement.
Except . . . with Brian.
Ugh.
Because she’d learned that behavior from Shannon.
Well, no more.
So, instead of going around the corner like she always did, instead of quietly talking in the corner, listening to Brian berate her while trying to get a word in edgewise, she sucked in a deep breath, forced herself to sit back into her chair, and dialed her ex’s phone number.
Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring.
Voicemail.
Asshole.
She took another breath, listened through Brian’s voice telling her to leave a message. Then after the beep, she said, “You were supposed to be here three hours ago to take your daughter for the night. You missed out on spending time with our wonderful girl. Again. She’s awesome and strong and sweet and kind and she wants to spend time with her dad.” Another breath. “Not have her heart broken because you can’t be bothered to show up. Again.” Shan’s eyes slid closed. “I’m calling only to tell you that this will not happen again because I’m having Alberto renegotiate our custody agreement, so it never happens again.”
Then she hung up.
Phone on the table, book in her hand, deep breath to concentrate on the words.
This was fine. She could do this.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“You sounded mad.”
Shannon’s throat burned. “I am mad, Rylie boo.”
“At me?”
She pushed out of her seat, hurried over to her daughter. “No, baby. Not at you at all. I love you so much.” She cupped Ry’s cheek. “I’m mad that you were waiting. I’m mad that you missed out on a fun time. But I’m not mad at you. I love
you.”
Ry nodded, but her expression didn’t clear.
Fuck.
Shannon slipped her arm around her. “It’s okay to be sad.”
“I know.”
“But it’s also okay to find stuff that makes us happy.”
Ry tilted her head up, eyes coming to Shannon’s. “What makes you happy?”
“You.” Her daughter made a face. “And ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
She nodded, lips tugging up at the edges. “Yup.”
“Can we get some?”
Another nod. “Yeah, baby. We sure can.” She stood. “Let’s go get our jackets on and get root beer floats from the diner, okay?”
Ry grinned. “Root beer floats? Really?”
“Really really.”
And maybe she was giving her daughter poor coping skills or putting an improper emphasis on food and her daughter’s relationship with it. But know what? The root beer floats at the diner were the best. They did make her feel better and . . .
Did she really need to worry about and measure out every single thing she did?
Could she just relax about the expectations?
Could she and Ry just be? Just live and not stress over everything?
A year ago she would have said no.
Today, she knew that if her life and her daughter’s was going to be a happy one, then she’d have to.
But that was okay because she wanted to.
“Root beer floats!” Ry shouted, running for the house, presumably for her jacket.
“Root beer floats?” a masculine voice asked, sending heat arrowing down between Shannon’s thighs. She spun, saw Finn there. “Hey, Blue Eyes,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yup,” she told him. “Ry and I are going to get root beer floats at the diner.”
“Spoiling your dinner?”
A shrug. “Probably.” Then she did something that fit right in with her promise to worry less, to live more, to be more for herself and her daughter. She grinned up at Finn and asked, “Want to have your world rocked again?”
He stepped closer, voice going husky. “What do you have in mind?”
Wobbling knees. A skipping pulse. The way those intense honey eyes fixed on hers.
God, she wanted to kiss him again.