Page 71 of By All Accounts
It hadn’t beenthatlong since I’d seen him. I’d gone over to his apartment and pinky promised him I was fine. What more did he want from me?
My desk phone rang, and I stabbed my finger into the speaker phone button.
“This is Finn,” I said automatically.
“Your first meeting is here,” the receptionist told me.
“Send them in.”
I turned my cell phone upside down and slid it toward the edge of my desk. I hadn’t even been at work long enough to review my calendar and see who the obscenely early meeting was, but it wasn’t long before Hunter’s broad shoulders filled my doorway and answered the question for me.
“Don’t you have some documents to file with the court or something?” I asked, rolling my chair back from my desk and gesturing weakly for Hunter to take one of the guest chairs.
My brother was dressed for court, a sharp navy suit and a pale yellow tie. His hair was styled, thick curls that managed to hold themselves in place on the top of his head. He’d let it grow out since meeting Lincoln, and I didn’t hate the look on him. Hunter undid the button on his suit jacket and sat down, leveling a tired look at me from the other side of my desk.
“To what do I owe the pleasure? Is this another Marshall-staged intervention?”
Hunter made a dismissive noise. “Bold of you to assume Marshall is the only one who cares about you.”
“I told you the day I came over I was fine.”
“Forgive me if I didn’t believe you.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” I scrubbed a hand down my face and stared blankly at the fluorescent overhead lights until my eyes hurt.
“Finn.”
Hunter said my name gently and I hated it.
“You know.” I cleared my throat and dropped my head back into place so I could look at him, black spots from the light and all. “Do you ever think about our mothers? About what Willem said to them? Or how that whole decision-making process went?”
Hunter grimaced, shaking his head. “I try to not think about either of my parents any more than I have to.”
“I was thinking about my mom this morning,” I admitted. “How her love for me had a price.”
No wonder I didn’t trust Sophie and Daniel.
Or anyone.
If my own mother could give me away for the right amount of money, why would anyone who wasn’t even related to me want to stay? I had to give it to Willem; he certainly had a type and seemed to only stick his dick into women who didn’t know better. Maybe it was the abandonment that made me so needyin my relationships, even though common sense would dictate the less I asked for, the more likely people would be to stay. It seemed my subconscious need to overcompensate ran counter to my need to be loved unconditionally. A therapist would have a field day with me, but I hadn’t sat across from a shrink in well over a decade.
“Oh,” Hunter said simply.
“Oh?”
“This girl you’re seeing,” he said. “You really like her.”
There was no way around it.
Marshall had tried to catch me off-guard at lunch. Hunter had showed up at my office knowing I wouldn’t have noticed his name this early on my calendar. Smith wouldn’t be far behind, and Andrew was always waiting in the wings. I had to stop avoiding them. It was time to face judgment.
“Her name is Sophie,” I muttered, and there was no possible way I could have missed Hunter’s proud smile.
“That’s a pretty name.”
“It is.Sheis pretty.” I worried my tongue across my lower lip, suddenly very worried about what my brother would think when I told him the truth.
It was a weird life, growing up the way we had. Our common circumstance had maybe bonded us more than our shared blood, and my brothers were proof that not every relationship was fleeting or transactional. My mother might have abandoned me, but I knew my half-brothers never would. I was the one who’d been running from them, desperately chasing…something.
