Blessedly, she listened to me, and the subject was closed. Finn went back to eating his steak, Kate continued to sneak peeks at me in between bites of pasta—which I pretended not to see—and I replayed Finn’s uncomfortable, almost pained reactions to the questions about his family on a loop.

Something was off. But did I have the nerve to confront him? Was it any of my business? I’d insisted to Kate that trying to change his mind was pointless and could only hurt me. I’d put myself out there, didn’t get the answer I wanted, and had moved on with my dignity. I was proud of myself. Our story—our love story, at least—was a nonstarter.

Except the way Finn still looked at me with fondness when he thought I wasn’t looking, like right now, made me question if it wasn’t really over after all.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

Brothers was jam—butt-in-every-seat, standing-room-only—packed.

From the entrance, I regarded Finn, who we hadn’t had the heart to ditch after dinner. “This is Brothers, right?”

“It is,” he confirmed, his eyes scanning the bar in surprise.

“And Andrew Hanes hasn’t taken over and replaced the cousins with a famous crowd-drawing mixologist?”

He snickered. “He has not.”

“Is the beer free or something?” Kate asked. I had told her the place rarely reached 50 percent occupancy.

I snorted. “Considering the cousins’ lack of business aptitude, I wouldn’t be surprised.” I was still holding a teeny-tiny grudge against them for their dismissal of my brilliant idea for an Oktoberfest.

We pushed through the crowd and over to the bar, where, despite our objections, Finn ordered a pitcher of Brothers dark and three glasses. Taking freebies from Finn felt wrong, given he wasn’t my boyfriend or my fuck buddy, but the upscale dinner and two fancy cocktails at Lakeview House had run me seventy dollars after tax and tip. It was either accept his generosity or drink water, and my pride wasn’t that thick.

I pointed out Aaron and Greg to Kate. The black letters on Aaron’s gray T-shirt said, “It’s my birthday. Buy me a beer,” which I suspected was the reason for the swarm of patrons. It wasn’t clear if it was a purposely ironic choice to wear it at his own bar tonight.

Finn poured us each a glass of beer and said he had to use the bathroom. I was just pleased to learn there was a bathroom. An outdoor Porta Potty would not have shocked me, especially if someone other than the cousins was responsible for keeping it clean.

As soon as his back was turned, Kate grabbed me by the elbow. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To flirt.” She pointed at the crowd of men surrounding us.