“Do you like how it looks?” Smith asked, sinking into a chair and stretching out his legs.
“Very much,” I admitted. “Thank you.”
“It’s a really beautiful color,” Riggs said with an appraising frown. He sat down beside Smith and kicked his foot against Smith’s ankle. “Very elegant.”
I chewed and swallowed.
“I’ve never been fond of the pink,” he continued. “It felt pretentious to me.”
Smith made an amused sound in the back of his throat, and I dared myself to glance at the remaining pink wall. I wasn’t sureif pretentious was a word I would have used for it, but there was certainly something much more refined with the purple.
“I really can’t thank you enough for coming over today and helping.”
“That’s what friends are for, right?” Riggs asked, shrugging one shoulder toward his ear.
“Family,” Smith corrected.
The two of them shared a look so sweet it made me want to throw up in my mouth a little. I couldn’t hate it, though. I should be happy my brother had found that kind of love. Marshall had it with Silas, and Hunter definitely had it with Lincoln. I wanted all of my brothers to have the best things in their lives, but it was hard to not feel like Smith might have deserved happiness a little bit more than the rest of us. He’d had a really hard go through the early years, and it was jarring almost to reconcile the quiet peace of him at Riggs’s side with the angry and tempestuous teenager I remembered.
That was the kid Marshall saw when he looked at Smith, and I made it my duty in that moment to make sure Riggs found acceptance in our family—if he wanted it. Smith wanted it; I could tell by the lovesick look in his eyes, and Riggs had already told me he wanted to marry my brother. I needed to make sure that when the two of them got to that point, that Marshall would handle it well.
“Speaking of, don’t you think it’s time you started bringing Riggs around more?”
Smith’s head snapped up and he stared at me with wide and nervous eyes. I appreciated the feeling, because I’d spent the past eight or ten months carrying it myself. Back when things had been good with Neil and Annette, I’d stayed up late many nights wondering how I would ease my brothers into the idea of me being with more than one person. I’d never found an easy way to do it, which had worked out in the end because this wholething would have been much more embarrassing if my brothers had met Neil and Annette before things had gone to shit.
“I don’t know,” Smith said, chasing the words with some beer.
“What are you scared of?” I asked.
Riggs worried his lower lip, stare solely focused on the movements of Smith’s face, absolutely and completely tuned into whatever my youngest brother was feeling and processing.
“I’m not scared,” he said.
“He’s a good man,” I assured Smith, even though I was confident he didn’t need a reminder of it. He wouldn’t have settled for less, not the way I did. “And if you plan to keep him around, you have to socialize him.”
“He’s not a pet.”
“I know.” I shot a sidelong glance at Riggs, who smiled at Smith like he hung the moon. “I think you should give them a chance. Give us a chance.”
Smith sighed.
“I’ll talk to them first. Soften them up.”
“Would you?”
“I would do anything for you, Smith.” The words sat heavy and true in the pit of my stomach. Maybe that sort of devotion was my downfall. I’d do anything for my brothers, would have done anything for Neil and Annette. I needed to get my heart off my sleeve and back in my chest where it belonged before someone stole it for good…whether I liked it or not.
“That would be nice of you, Finn,” Riggs said, angling the neck of his beer bottle at me in a long-distance toast. I mirrored the pose and we both took a drink.
This was something new. This was good. I could focus on Operation Make My Brothers Like Riggs in an attempt to get my mind off the natural disaster that had overtaken the rest of mylife. I swallowed down the rest of my beer and set the bottle on the floor.
“It’s the least I can do,” I told them both.
And when they finished their meals and set back to painting Annette out of my life without another word, I realized just how true it was.
CHAPTER 6
FINN