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Lips parted as requested, I make a real show out of licking the creamy yogurt dressing smeared on the spoon he extends towards me.

I smirk when he groans, squirming when he squeezes my thigh before he forces his attention back to the dinner he hasn’t let me help with even a little.

Not that I’ve really tried—I’m more than happy with my role of Head Taster. With my spectator’s position.

Not for the first time in my life, I wish I had my brother’s artistic capabilities.

I wish I could draw like he can because Finn, in this moment and in every moment, surely deserves to be memorialized on paper.

The concentration creasing his brow as he chops a bundle of herbs.

The purse of his lips as he whistles along to the low music playing.

The round, perfect ass he flashes when he turns away to flip the halloumi grilling on the stove.

When he faces me again, I can’t help but smile. I laugh a little too because he looks like he’s fresh off a murder scene, his white shirt ruined with red droplets—the consequences of taking the back of a knife to a ripe pomegranate.

“You should just take it off,” I quip, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that either.

Nor is it the first time he grins and kisses me and mumbles, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

My lips quirk and my heart jumps, and it is the first time I’ve felt like this.

Whatever the warm comfort embedding itself in my bones is called.

Whatever it is that makes me curse the five fucking feet of distance between us when Finn moves to grab something from the backpack hanging off one of the stools on the other side of the island.

What makes me clingy when I’m usually not, what makes me miss someone who’s still in my direct line of sight when I rarely miss anyone, what renders me speechless when God knows that’s not a common affliction of mine.

The latter, I’m a little more of when I realize Finn hasn’t returned empty-handed.

“Not quite my little broken heart ,” he quotes my own words back to me as he nudges my thighs apart and slots between them like he belongs there. A hot palm coasts over my skin so distractingly, I almost don’t notice the other brandishing something right beneath my nose.

With an uneven swallow, I accept the offered token, the delicate carving that’s so much simpler than its predecessors yet entirely too complicated.

Flipping over the mahogany red heart, I thumb the two marks marring the otherwise smooth surface while mine, weathered and withered beyond its years, throbs.

I curl my fingers around it tightly and hold it to my sternum, as if I’m scared he might just snatch it away. “Day’s not over yet.”

My other hand, Finn finds a heart for too—one that thuds rapidly beneath our interlocked fingers. “Not planning on letting you out of my sight.” He stoops to kiss my knuckles, nipping them playfully. “So I think it’s safe to celebrate.”

Snuffing a spark of irritation before it can ignite, I stare at the thumb that follows the curve of my own. “Because you don’t trust me?”

That thumb freezes. Retreats. Disappears as Finn drops my hand—as he plants both of his on either side of me, any trace of playful tenderness abruptly erased as he drops his forehead against mine.

“Because you scared the fuck out of me the other night, Lottie, and the thought of leaving you alone right now scares the fuck out of me too.”

I swallow thickly. As thick as the apology I choke out that makes Finn shake his head and huff.

“Not looking for an apology. Not trying to make you feel bad when I tell you that it was terrifying to have you, you , sobbing in my arms, inconsolable, saying you can’t do it anymore .”

My mouth gapes open, nothing coming out.

I want to tell him that I didn’t mean it like that, I didn’t mean those words the way he’s taken them, except I can’t because I’m not entirely sure it’s the truth.

I don’t entirely know how I did mean them.

In the moment, I just wanted it all to stop.

And I don’t know how to word that without it sounding so… well, exactly how he thinks it sounds.

“We don’t have to talk about it.” Finn eases the great war raging in my head. “But you can talk to me, okay? If you want to. You don’t have to feel like that alone.”

Suddenly, I am so very soft. “I don’t feel like that when I’m with you.”

“That’s nice,” he croons, he looks like he’s trying very hard not to find it quite so nice. “But I’d prefer if you never felt like that at all.”

As would I. God, wouldn’t that be nice?

Carefully setting my new, wooden heart down on the counter, I wrap my arms around Finn’s neck, wrap my legs around his waist, wrap him up in me as best I can. “I’m working on it. I promise.”

And that’s good enough for him. He takes me at my word. He doesn’t find any reason to doubt my promise. He rewards me for it with another kiss, the soft kind, the kind that’s quickly becoming my favorite, that I greedily accept and try my best to return.

A scoff has us abruptly separating.

An audience has all that leached tension rushing back into my body.

Something just south of furious, Theo scoffs again. “Seriously?”

Finn stiffens. “Watch your tone, Davis.”

“Are you kidding me, man? Have you already forgotten that she skipped out of Bishop’s with her boyfriend ?”

A possessive, protective palm slips beneath my sweater, burning the skin over my ribcage. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Theo huffs and rolls his eyes and grumbles something else I don’t particularly care to hear.

His girlfriend mutters his name, casting wary glances between him and me and Finn as they continue to snip at each other, and Adam does nothing at all but stand there, silent, waiting, looking more annoyed at his friends trading quips than at me.

“ Okay .” Slipping off the counter and landing with a thud, I clap my hands together to catch everyone’s attention. “Here’s the CliffsNotes.”

I flick up a finger. “Ricky is not my boyfriend.” A second digit rises. “It would be none of your fucking business if he was.” I point to myself. “ My business.” I point to Finn. “ His business.” My fingers shift to Theo. “ Not yours.”

I pause, for dramatic effect or whatever, before lifting a third, shakier finger.

“I’m an alcoholic. That’s why I never go out with you guys.

That’s why I’m never here on Sundays—I go to meetings.

That’s why I’m here in the first place; I got into some trouble, I went to rehab, Lux brought me back. ”

My hands drop to my hips, settling over the pair that landed there at some point during my little speech. “Any questions?”

For at least a minute, there’s only silence.

And then, “How long have you been sober?”

Yasmin elbows her boyfriend. “ Tee. ”

Unoffended, I glance at my nonexistent watch. “About… forty-eight hours. Give or take.”

A fond noise warms the back of my head, lips tickling my scalp where my hair parts down the middle, swept into two braids that Finn wraps around each of his hands.

A husky proud of you makes me shiver, the words penetrating my skull and lodging somewhere deep, somewhere permanent, somewhere that makes me actually believe them.

“Oh my God,” Yasmin gasps, and I recognize the pure horror twisting her pretty face. “ I brought you to a pub. ”

A tightening grip tugs at my roots. “You what ?”

Throwing an elbow backwards, I shake my head at Yas. “You didn’t know.”

“But—”

“You didn’t know,” I repeat, leaning forward as much as the handsy bastard behind me will let me so I can snag a dish towel off the counter and toss it as my horrified friend. “It’s okay. It’s done. We’re over it. Anything else?”

Though she looks no less stricken, Yas doesn’t press the issue. She does, however, press her boyfriend with a stern look and two fingers digging into his sternum until he gets the message.

Theo clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says once to me, and then another time to Finn. “For the tone.”

“Apology accepted.” The knot in my gut eases. “Can we be done now? Because talking about this kinda makes me nauseous.”

A round of laughter chases away the lingering tension in the room.

A kiss to my temple chases away the lingering tension in me.