Chapter 4

Phin had lied about having another appointment because he’d needed to get Emily out of his office. She presented too much of a temptation to him, which bothered him immensely. He wasn’t the type of guy who was easily tempted. He kept to himself, and it had worked for twenty-eight years of his life.

When he sat down heavily in his office chair, he stared at nothing for a long moment. Until a voice broke through his disordered thoughts.

“Who’s the new client?” Katherine, Phin’s coworker and only real friend within the office, sat down on the edge of his desk with a smile. Happily married with kids, Katherine was somehow convinced that everyone else needed the same things in life to be happy.

Phin, however, had so far resisted her best efforts to pair him up with one of her girlfriends.

“Sixteen-year-old brother arrested for aiding and abetting a robbery,” he replied.

Katherine whistled. “Damn. That’s serious. You gonna do a plea?”

“Most likely. I’m not sure we have any other option.”

“And that was his mother…?”

Phin shook his head. “No, sister.”

“Interesting.”

Phin ignored Katherine for the time being. If she wanted to say something, she would. She always did.

When Phin had first joined the office, he’d been uninterested in going out to office happy hours and attending potlucks at people’s homes on the weekends, which hadn’t made him popular. Phin found mindless socializing to be annoying at best, painful at worst. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his coworkers. They weren’t friends, though. He preferred to keep it that way.

But the office was small—staff included Katherine, Dave, Jerry, their boss, Linda, and the front desk woman, Tammy, along with Phin—and Phin had entered into an already tight-knit group when he’d been hired. His aloofness hadn’t made him popular, and soon, Dave and Tammy, the most extroverted and prone to planning potlucks, had stopped inviting him to shindigs entirely.

Katherine had been the only one to draw him out of his shell. Where Dave and Tammy had been offended by Phin’s disinterest in their invitations, Katherine had realized that Phin simply wasn’t comfortable in social situations that weren’t strictly business. Phin had never said as much to Katherine, but she was perceptive.

Too perceptive, given the speculative gleam in her eye right now.

“I got a glimpse of her. She’s gorgeous. Like, ridiculously beautiful.”

“So why don’t you date her?” drawled Phin.

Katherine grinned. “My husband probably wouldn’t love that arrangement. No, I’m just saying that I saw that look on your face. I’ve never seen that on your face, ever.”

“How would you know? Have you seen my face every moment in the last twenty-odd years?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you’re interested in this woman—”

“I’m not.”

“Then you should ask her out.”

“Katherine, she’s a client.”

“She won’t be for long. Besides, you can date clients. It’s not against the rules.”

“It’s still a bad idea.”

“Fine, wait until everything is done with her brother. Then ask her out. What do you have to lose?”

Phin knew very well that a woman as beautiful as Emily would have no interest in some socially awkward lawyer like him. Besides, when he’d tried to hand her her sweater, she’d acted like he had the plague. That wasn’t a woman who would say yes to going out for a drink.

“I’m not asking Emily out because she’s a client,” he said again, “and because I’m not interested in her. I’m too busy for dating anyway. Did you need something else?”

Katherine shrugged and got off his desk. “No, but just a reminder that even somebody like you can’t live your entire life without any companionship. Humans are social animals. You aren’t an island, Phin. Nobody is.”

After work, Phin considered Katherine’s words as he sat outside on his tiny apartment deck and watched the sunset. Although his apartment was small, he’d chosen this place for the view of downtown Portland and the Willamette River curling lazily around it. He’d grown up in Washington State, but he’d moved to Oregon for college over a decade ago. Portland had quickly become home, its quirkiness and vast array of people in contrast to small-town living in tiny Fair Haven, Washington.

Despite living in a large city now, Phin had managed to be an island for his entire life. The only people he really cared about were his siblings—Trent, Thea, Ash and Lucy—and even then, sometimes he felt like he was obligated to care for them because he shared DNA with them. He’d envied only children sometimes. They didn’t have to worry about siblings constantly wanting to know about your business.

He grimaced at how cold that sounded. His brothers would tell him he was an arrogant piece of shit for thinking that, and they’d be right. Even though Phin struggled to understand Trent’s need for absolution with their now-deceased father, or Ash’s love of sleeping with any woman who so much looked at him sideways until he’d met his fiancée, Violet, Phin still loved his brothers and his sisters regardless.

Despite Phin’s insistence to Katherine that he preferred to be a loner, there was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind that wouldn’t let up. If he was entirely honest with himself, he’d felt lonely lately. He came home from work to a silent apartment, the weight of the day’s work on his shoulders, and he almost wished he could talk to somebody about it. And, yes, maybe enjoy the embrace of a woman along with the talking.

Women, though? They wanted more than Phin could give. They wanted security, compliments, attention. They wanted sweet words, grand gestures. They wanted not just your time, but your heart cut out of your chest for them to use as they saw fit.

Phin smiled wryly. His sisters would slap him upside the head for the thought. What women really wanted, though, was the one word that made him shudder: commitment.

Phin didn’t have time for commitment. He hardly had time to buy groceries, let alone dedicate time to another person. He found fulfillment in helping other people who would never demand more than he could give.

As a child, Phin had watched his parents fall apart. Beatrice Younger had suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness. She’d only deteriorated further due to Edward Younger’s propensity for hitting her when he was at his angriest and drunkest.

Phin had seen how Beatrice hadn’t been able to get the help she’d needed from the system, and she’d killed herself in the end. Beatrice had died when Phin was ten. He’d decided at her funeral that he’d do his utmost to help people like her when he was older. Maybe he could make a difference. Maybe he could be that one person that kept someone from getting lost in the maze that was the system.

A memory resurfaced. When Phin had been six years old, he’d been home from school, sick with a cold. Beatrice had stayed with him, playing games with him to pass the time until they could get to the pediatrician later that afternoon. This had been before things had gotten really bad, when Beatrice hadn’t spent most of her time in her room crying, or too high on pain pills to notice what was going on around her.

“Phin, did I tell you that your teacher called me?” she said as she placed letter blocks on the Scrabble board. “She says you should skip a grade.”

Phin studied his own letters, barely hearing his mother. Despite being in first grade, Phin read at a fifth-grade level already. He sped through assignments with ease, and as a result, he tended to get in trouble because he was bored.

“I was thinking about it, and I think you should,” continued Beatrice. She smiled as he formed the word frigid on the board. “What do you say, Phinny?”

Phin looked up. “What grade would I go to?”

“Second grade, although Mrs. Keller said that you’d do some more testing to make sure.” Beatrice ruffled his hair. “My son the prodigy. I’m so proud of you. You’ll do something great with that big brain of yours, I know it.”

Phin swelled at the praise. While Trent and Ash were popular and athletic, Thea was artistic, and Lucy was simply adorable, Phin had always felt like he was the odd one out. He was too young to know what that feeling really meant, but he thought it was because he could read better than Ash already or because Thea liked to ask him to do her homework, before Beatrice had caught her and grounded her for it.

Phin had ended up skipping a grade, finishing high school at sixteen and graduating with his law degree by the time he was twenty-three. Because he’d been so advanced for his age, he’d struggled to make friends, especially as a teenager. By the time he’d gotten his law degree, he’d resigned himself to being alone.

Phin’s reverie was interrupted when he heard something being shoved through his mail slot. Getting up, surprised that the mail was this late, he sorted through mostly junk until he came upon the last piece of mail. Phin smiled as he opened the thick vellum envelope, his name and address written in looping calligraphy.

You are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Ash Younger and Violet Fielding. The date and time followed. Didn’t these fancy invitations always have the couple’s full names?

Phin couldn’t help but laugh a little when he realized that Ash had avoided including his entire given name on the invite. All of the Youngers had ridiculous names that they’d all shortened to more acceptable nicknames. Ash’s full name was Ashley, something he’d detested as a kid.

Phin had never minded his full name—Phineas Ronald Theodore Younger —although it hadn’t been the best name to have in school when you’d already been deemed the weird awkward kid.

Phin stared at the wedding invitation and the RSVP card enclosed inside. Ash had already asked Phin to be one of his groomsmen, but Phin guessed they’d sent the entire wedding party invitations regardless.

As Phin was about to fill it out and put only one person attending, he stopped himself. His family expected him to show up without a plus one, and normally, he wouldn’t care that they’d expect this. But Katherine’s words nipped at him. He growled under his breath and tossed the invite onto a nearby counter without filling it out.

Unbidden, he thought of Emily. It was stupid, but his brain latched onto the image and decided to follow it through. He saw Emily dressed in some gorgeous little black dress, heels on her dainty feet. Would she wear her hair up or down? He didn’t know which would be more alluring—up, so he could imagine taking it down later that night, or already down, so he could run his fingers through it as they danced.

He swore under his breath. He wasn’t going to ask a client to go to his brother’s wedding. The wedding might be in two months, and maybe Josh’s case would be over by then, but—

No, it wasn’t worth thinking about. Emily wasn’t the type of woman who’d want him, anyway. Phin didn’t even resent that thought, because he’d long accepted that he wasn’t the type of man women were generally attracted to. It was simply what life had given him, like his hair color or the fact that he was left-handed.

Thinking of Ash’s wedding, Phin felt jealousy bloom inside him. What would it be like to have the love of a woman like Violet? Ash was damned lucky, that was for sure.

As Phin returned to his balcony, he finished watching the sunset until the sky turned a bruised purple with twilight. His mind circled around love, marriage, dating, Emily, and the fact that he already knew he wouldn’t have any of those things.