Page 29

Pathetic. On top of everything else, I am so fucking pathetic. Pathetic enough that the hand who’s made his opinion of me very clear has actually taken pity on me, for reasons I still don’t understand.

I ask, I mumble, “Why are you doing this?” around the straw poking out of something that tastes more like sweet rice pudding than a beverage.

Swallowing a mouthful of what looks like carbonated milk, Finn tilts his head to one side. “Sitting here?”

“Trying so hard. With me. We’re not friends.”

“We could be.”

I laugh—I assume he’s joking. And when it quickly becomes clear that he isn’t, when that mouth remains flat and the divot between his brows persists, I tell him the same thing I told Yasmin. “I’m not really a friends kind of person.”

“You’re a cool, mysterious loner. Got it.”

“Don't forget hot.”

“You're never gonna let that go are you?”

“Not likely.”

“A little compliment starved, are we, Lottie?”

I drop my gaze to my drink and shrug.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I’m not a very complimentable person.”

Finn doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re funny. You’re really good with horses. I like your jeans. That’s three. Four, if you include the hot thing, which I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume you will.”

It’s a good thing my hat hides most of my face because I’m pretty sure my cheeks are bright red. God, that’s a lot better than a jealous brat, huh? Even if the third one does make me snort a little. “You like my jeans?”

So smoothly, so unexpectedly I almost spit out my drink, he clarifies, “I like your ass in those jeans.”

My head snaps up.

Head cocked to one side, he crooks one dark brow questioningly. “Better?”

For the first time in possibly my entire life, I can’t think of a single snarky thing to say.

I don’t tell him I don’t want to go home yet, but it must be obvious. I must look even more pathetic than I thought. He must feel really, really bad for me. I must feel really, really bad for myself.

I can’t think of any other reason why he would take the backway into Serenity so he can drive to the creek without passing the main house or the A-frame.

Why I don’t make so much as a peep as he parks beneath the trees so he’s sheltered from the spitting rain as he sits in the bed of his truck and stares at the water—so we can.

Why when, after I don’t even know how long of sitting in silence, he stands and jerks his head towards the grassy shore, and I stand too, knowing exactly what he’s silently suggesting.

Why I copy him as he starts to undress.

I watch him first. I watch the veritable strip tease that reveals a brawny, defined chest, plain black boxer-briefs, and thighs that could almost, almost , put the ranch’s previous bulkiest hand to shame.

I might be Serenity’s very own antichrist, but I am, at the end of the day, just a girl.

And in my defense, it’s not like he’s a perfect gentleman as I shed my own clothing. His gaze burns so hot, I’m surprised it doesn’t leave marks where it lingers on the dangling diamonds decorating my bellybutton, the tattooed curve of my hip, the thin cotton that twin piercings peek through.

With a shake of his head, Finn throws himself in the creek like he really needs the icy cleanse.

And with a shake of my own—a futile effort to un-burn the fleeting glimpse of a round ass, toned back muscles, and thighs that look just as good from the back from my brain—I follow him in.

For a little while, only the gentle lap of water disturbs the silence. Water, the wind rustling the trees, and low, slow breaths. It’s peaceful—it’s the reason we’re here, I think. The calm before the storm. Pretty, tranquil procrastination.

I don’t dwell on why Finn knew to come here. On how often my family’s break from reality might’ve served as his. I don’t let myself get bitter about it. I just float on my back and stare at the clear, gray sky and let the cold seep beneath my skin and into my bones until my mind goes blank.

Or I try to, at least.

I try and I try and I try until inevitably, I accept failure. “Finn?”

From closer than I thought, a reply comes. “Yeah?”

My eyes drift shut. “What did you mean when you said you think I’m jealous?”

Finn doesn’t swear aloud, but I’m pretty sure I hear an internal curse rattle around his skull.

I’m not sure if it’s reluctance or if he’s just trying to word it right, but it takes him a long, impatient minute to get out, “I think you're jealous that I was here and you weren’t. That you missed things I didn’t.

I think—” He pauses, a splash coming from wherever he is, and in my mind’s eyes, I picture his pinched expression as he scrubs a hand down his face, the bulge of a bicep as he scratches the back of his neck.

“I think you think they like me more than they like you.”

My breath catches sharply.

“Which is bullshit, by the way.”

My chest constricts, making it hard to get out a quiet, “Is it?”

Water sloshes over my chest as Finn drifts closer, fingers just barely grazing my shoulder. “Yes, Lottie. It is.”

I find that hard to believe; I make their life hell, he makes their life easier.

I do nothing but the wrong thing, and I don’t think Finn’s ever done anything wrong in his entire life.

He is a good person and I am an exceptionally shitty one, made even shittier by the fact that I know it. That I do nothing to change it.

“Hey.” A tug on my hair has me opening my eyes, has me staring up at the man looming over me. “You weren’t here. You didn’t see them. They more than like you, Lottie. They missed the fuck out of you.”

Something old and bitter pulses behind my ribcage. “I was five hours away, Finn. If they missed me that bad, they could’ve come and seen me.”

Finn nods. Not in acknowledgement, but… like he agrees. And not that they could’ve, but that they should’ve.

I shiver, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

“When I first got here,” he starts, and I hold my breath.

“I thought you were dead. I knew you existed because of your room and the photos everywhere, but no one talked about you so I figured something had happened. And then a few months go by, and Lux gets this phone call and she just… collapses. Never seen her like that. She was crying, everyone was crying, and I didn't really get what was happening, but I gathered it was about you, whoever you were, wherever you were. I asked Eliza and she told me you left. That you didn’t talk to anyone anymore, that they hadn’t heard from you since you disappeared.

And I remember thinking what the fuck is wrong with this girl?

Who wouldn't wanna be here, who would treat these people, these good people, like that? Whenever I thought about you, when I saw you, I saw them being crushed.”

With such a heavy weight sitting on my chest, I’m surprised I don’t sink right to the bottom of the creek. “And that’s why you don’t like me.”

“I didn’t like the idea I had of you,” he corrects, and it’s ridiculous, it’s so fucking pointless, to focus on his use of paste tense. To hone in on it.

To ask in a quiet voice that’s so timid it makes me want to hurl, “And now?”

“Now I get that things are complicated. That I don’t know shit. But I do know that the way Lux yelled at you today was really shitty, Lottie. You didn’t deserve that.”

And there it is. Suspicions confirmed—that’s why we’re here. That’s what today has been all about. He feels bad for me. He saw me get yelled at, he saw me get hurt, and now I’m his pity project.

I hate that. I hate that so fucking much. More than I hated him not liking me because I thought my family held weekly gatherings where they dissected each and every one of my shortcomings.

I don’t like being pitied. It makes my skin scrawl, makes my stomach hurt, makes me lash out. I need him to stop, and I think that’s why I feel compelled to really let him know how shitty I am. To tell him, “I got a DUI. That was the phone call, I think.”

A long, loaded pause. A carefully blank face. An even, “What happened?”

I shift in the water, my feet brushing a slippery muddle of stones and silt as I slip beneath the surface, submerging everything below my mouth.

“I didn't hurt anyone or anything, but I was really drunk and driving like an asshole, and I got pulled over. I knew it was a bad idea, but the guy whose car it was, he was so fucking high and he wanted to drive and everyone else but me was high too. None of us had any service to call a car or any money so I took his keys and… yeah.”

“Did you get arrested?”

I nod.

“Having a really hard time picturing you in an orange jumpsuit, princess.”

A choked laugh razes my throat. “I had to, uh,” my tongue darts out to wet my bottom lip, a lie falling from it a second later, “do community service.”

Blatant curiosity flares in those dark eyes, but he keeps it on a leash—he tables it in favor delivering a far more devastating blow. “Are you telling me this to try convince me you did deserve it?”

“So,” I continue before Finn can do anything about the blatant curiosity I watch flare in those dark eyes. “I did deserve it. Maybe Lux was shitty today, but I am infinitely shittier a lot more often.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Give it time. You will.”

There goes that frown again. There goes that mouth again, asking things the owner has no business wanting to know, things I don’t understand why he wants to know, why he cares. “Do you not have friends because you don't want friends or because you're so convinced no one could possibly like you?”

“Jesus.” I laugh hoarsely, the noise coming out as flustered as I feel. “When did this become a therapy session?

The water laps at his collarbones as he dips further beneath it, bringing himself almost eye-level with me, only a handful of inches away. “You don't want me to like you.”

“I don't really care, Finn.”

“I think you do.”

“Fuck off.”

He hums, something unsurprised about the bob of his head. “Right on cue.”

“What?”

“That little defense mechanism of yours.”

“Let me guess,” I muse with no real interest, with resentment because I hate how much he thinks he knows me, how much he does know me. “Psychology major?”

“I didn’t go to college.” His expression turns sly. “They didn’t have a course in ranch bitchin’.”

Yet another laugh tickles my throat, but it’s quiet, short-lived. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Even closer he drifts, so close that his breath scalds the lower half of my face where the water has kissed my skin and left it cool. “Wanna know a secret?”

My eyes flit between both of his, trying and failing to gauge the meaning behind their gleam.

“Kinda liked it.”

I choke on another laugh, then on a lungful of water as I dip too low and accidentally inhale more than just air. I scowl as I splutter, splashing Finn for doing this to me, for grinning and splashing me back.

With ease, he catches both of my flailing hands in one of his, putting an end to my watery attack and holding me still as he decimates another one of the messy inches between us. “You know what else I like?”

Eyeing his grip pointedly, I wiggle my hands. “If it’s something kinky, you can keep it to yourself.”

It’s his turn to choke now. To splutter. To laugh, once he collects himself, hearty and real and loud. “Jesus, Lottie, how can anyone not like you?”

Like a punch to the gut, it strikes me that while this isn’t the first time I’ve heard those words, it is the first time they’ve sounded like that. Like he’s genuinely asking, like he actually doesn’t know. He’s smiling, but it’s not sarcastic, he isn’t teasing me.

He knows that, I think. He didn’t know it when he said it, but with whatever instinctive outward reaction I fail to stifle, he comes to a quick realization.

Relenting his grip on my wrists, he drops below the waterline again. Like a damn predator, all knowing eyes and a sharp gaze, as he just watches for a long moment. When he rises enough to reveal his mouth, its smiling again. Still not sarcastic. Still not teasing. “You failed, y’know.”

Though I almost don’t want any clarification, I still silently request some.

Shimmering water droplets cascade down a firm body as Finn rises to his full height. Instinct urges me to do the same, but it does nothing to less how utterly small I feel as he looms over me. As he croons, “I still don’t think you deserve it.”

I hear a silent and . I hear an addition that he decides, for whatever reason, not to verbalize.

Somehow, I don’t need him to clarify that the other thing he likes is me.