Page 5 of Best Friends, Tennessee

Was he trying to kick me down a peg? Finn had become better friends with my sister than me, since I’d left town, and it was a particular sore spot for me. I still got along well with Danielle, and we talked on the phone every so often, but Finn had been the one who washere. He’d gotten more involved in Dani’s life since she’d had a baby a couple of years ago, becoming a single mom when her ex moved up to Montana.

That was one thing I was determined to do, now that I had to be back in Tennessee: take care of my niece Olivia anytime Icould. I still felt like a kid myself sometimes, but I wanted to be there for her, too.

“Nice of you to invite me to drinks with my own sister,” I said, already regretting my tone, and maybe regretting going there at all.

He gave me a warning look.

“You know she’s like family to me, too, Ori.”

“How is Danielle meeting you for drinks anyway? Don’t tell me she brings her 18-month-old into the bar.”

Finn glared at me. “Your mom will have the baby for a couple of hours. She watches over Olivia at least a couple of nights a week. Sometimes your dad even does, too. He’s pretty good with kids.”

I could hear the unspoken truth behind what he said:I know your family better than you do, since you split to the coast and left us all behind.

I set my jaw. “I’ll pass. Saloons really aren’t my vibe. I’ll be seeing Danielle and my folks plenty now anyway, working at the diner.”

Finn held my gaze. “Figured.”

“Well, you figured right.”

Another silence stretched out between us, like a pot threatening to boil over.

Finn turned to leave the room, then stopped, looking back my way. He lifted his hands above him, leaning in the doorframe.

“You’re going to have to get used to it,” he said. “You’re living in Bestens again, whether you bitch about it or not.”

Fire bloomed through my chest. “Leave it alone, Finn.”

“You know I’m right.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, but words came out of my mouth before I could check them.

“Guys usually only linger around me this much when they want to fuck me, you know,” I told him, lifting an eyebrow.

He looked me up and down, his gaze steadfast.

I knew he didn’t give a damn when I joked about gay things, and he’d joked about them plenty back in the day, too. But I still wondered if I was pushing a button. Going too far.

“Just don’t make this worse on yourself like you always do, all right?”

“Like I always do,” I repeated. “As if it’s my fault I hate this place.”

His gaze was serious. The sunlight was making his eyes shine again, standing out like amber jewels against his tanned skin.

I felt like an animal ready to strike. I knew he remembered what I went through when I lived here, and how half the people in my high school saw me as nothing but a human dartboard. A target. Not even because I was gay—just because I had the nerve to be different from them at all.

“A lot of isn’t your fault,” he said. “Some of it is. We all went through shit, you know.”

I turned away, literally biting down on my tongue so that I wouldn’t lash out and say something I’d regret.

Because the truth was, it was a lot more than just cowboy hats and country music.

There may as well have been a canyon between the two of us.

I looked down at a place on the windowsill where Finn must have been wiping away dust earlier, but had missed a spot in the corner.

Finn had gone through shit, too. Even when we’d been at our worst, when he had to stay with my family in senior year, I knew it couldn’t have been easy for him. His dad had split after cheating on his mom when Finn was eight, and his mom’s addiction to pills had finally led her to rehab when he was seventeen.

---