Page 7 of By All Accounts
“Move to Los Angeles,” he’d begged, same endearing tone he’d used the first time he asked me to dinner.
It was the bigger of the two asks, but it made sense. We’d been together eight years, and neither of us had any complaints about the state of our relationship. We had good lives and were deeply in love, but could that really go on forever with so many miles between us? We had a talk about the future and what we wanted it to look like, and that settled it. Daniel hadn’t been wrong either. Los Angeles would offer more opportunities for me than Portland would, though I was loath to leave my friends. Thankfully, they understood; they wanted this next step for me. They threw me a massive going away party and then… I was gone.
I found a job within the first month, making almost double the salary I’d been getting in Portland. Daniel and I started house hunting immediately. His small one-bedroom apartment was not going to be sustainable for us, considering we’d spent the past decade building separate lives. The housing market was tight and as an interior designer, I had strong opinions about what I wanted in a property.
Thankfully, we found a place in Brentwood that we could easily afford, that only needed some minor renovations. Most of the updates were cosmetic, so we’d moved in and agreed to build as we went. We’d spent most of the weekend on the bedroom, and Daniel had me so distracted with his mouth I’d done bad math on the square footage and not ordered enough paint.
Leaving the bedroom half-finished had me going crazy, so I decided to take a half day at work, go home, change into my dirty housework clothes, get some more paint, and finish it up before he got home for dinner. Unfortunately, even after so many years in the business, the wait for paint never got shorter. I looked from my dirty sneakers to the machine shaking the paint can around, wondering if I could will it to rattle faster.
Behind me, someone made the most miserable sound I’d ever heard come out of another person. I glanced over my shoulder to find an obscenely tall man staring at the wall of paint swatches like he would rather papercut himself with every available option than make a decision. He had on a pair of worn jeans that hugged every sharp line of his legs like they’d been cut just for him, paired with a slightly stretched-out white t-shirt that looked like it was definitely meant to be worn under something a little more professional. His hair was light brown, a little too long but in the way that made it look grabbable, not overgrown. Some scruff around his jawline that made him look a little too rugged for a man who also had on a five-hundred dollar pair of sneakers.
“Everything all right?” I asked because I couldn’t help myself. And not because he was attractive, but because it was my literal job and I was the kind of woman who could never turn that part of me off.
He startled a little, not much more than a quick twitch of his shoulders before he threw me a weary glance from the corner of his eye.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Picking paint?”
He rubbed his lips together, then turned a little more toward me, giving me my first real look at his face, which was just as nice to look at as the rest of him. He had eyes like Daniel, darker, butmore like pools than they had any right to be. Swirling and deep, easy to get lost in. I looked at the paint on my shoe again.
“In theory.”
“Have you narrowed it down?”
The man shrugged, almost helpless but mostly tired, a feeling I was intimately familiar with so I knew it well. It was the same response I’d given Daniel after we’d gotten home the day I lost my last job.
“I need something to cover Sulking Room Pink,” he said, rubbing one long finger across the edge of his lower lip.
“That’s not impossible.” I took a step toward him, not because I wanted to be close to him, but because I wanted to get a better look at the chips. “Any colors you want to stay away from?”
“Sulking Room Pink,” he answered.
I laughed, reaching for a dark purple. “This one is nice. It looks a lot richer on a big wall, though. It can be a lot.”
“I don’t mind a lot.” He took the chip out of my hand and stared at it, a little blankly.
“I’m Sophie, by the way.”
His eyebrows went up, and he looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time, like our conversation somehow hadn’t happened or he’d been talking to a wall.
“Sophie,” I said a second time, pointing at the center of my chest. I pointed next at the color in his hand. “Pelt.”
“Finn,” he answered, tapping the edge of the sample against his sternum. I followed the motion, accidentally watched the way his throat worked when he swallowed, looked back at the wall.
“This is probably not best for a small room,” I warned. “It’s…”
“A lot,” he finished for me, the barest hint of a smile flashing on his mouth before disappearing. “It’s not a small room.”
“Could be a contender then. If not, there’s others.”
Finn gave me a dangerously slow onceover that had my toes curling. Behind me, the man working the paint desk cleared his throat and set my can down on the counter with a heavy thud.
“Studio Green,” he announced, and Finn cocked his head to the side before looking back at the paint samples.
“This one,” I said, snatching it out of the sleeve and handing it to him.
He compared the green against the purple I’d suggested before sliding the chip back into its holder.
