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It’s dark by the time I get home. Because I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Ruin, of course. And because I want to give Finn time alone to spend with his parents too.

Not because I didn’t want to spend time with his parents.

Not at all. Want has nothing to do with it.

It’s more like… can’t . I don’t know how.

I’m unfamiliar with the concept of meeting your partners’ parents—with the concept of parents, full stop—and God knows ‘deeply uncomfortable and out of my depth’ is not my finest form.

It’s to everyone’s benefit if I keep my distance, and the everyone in question must agree because no one’s waited up for me.

The house is utterly silent as I toe off my boots and shuck the thin shirt I wore over my tank to protect my shoulders from the blistering sun. Leaving the former by the front door, I drape the latter over the back of the sofa—otherwise known as my bed for the night.

I could’ve stayed at the main house, but then again, I couldn’t’ve.

The thought of being that far from Finn made me itch, just like the reality of it has made me itch all day, and it’s that itch that has me creeping upstairs to check on him before I settle in for a long night of staring at the living room ceiling.

I’ve just reached the first floor when I hear a faint yell. The violent creak of a bedframe sounds next. Panic flaring, I haul ass down the hall, throwing open Finn’s bedroom door, convinced I’m going to find him collapsed on the floor, gasping and bleeding.

I don’t. Not the floor part, at least. Not bleeding either, but that doesn’t grant me any kind of comfort, not when the gasping part is true. Sitting up in bed, Finn blinks wildly, nostrils flaring as he sucks in deep, desperate lungfuls of air.

Rushing to his side, I cup his cheeks, searching him over frantically. “What happened?”

Unfocused eyes land on me and snap to attention.

A harsh exhale makes his whole body shudder.

In a split second, he’s dragged me onto the bed, onto his lap, my body twisted awkwardly so our chests connect.

Strong arms completely envelop me, forearms stacked at the middle of my back while his fingertips dig into either side of my ribcage.

Breathing still ragged, he buries his face in the crook of my neck.

I should protest. I should get the hell off him, lift my dead weight off his injured body, but I don’t. He’s holding me so tightly, I don’t think I could if I tried. And I don’t want to either, not when it’s so clear he needs the contact.

Not when I know the aftermath of a nightmare when I see it.

Gnawing on my bottom lip, I rest my cheek on the top of his head.

I’m not good at comfort, I’m not someone anyone seeks it from, but I can try.

I remember that night in the attic, the night we fought and I slipped, when he cradled me and kissed my temple and murmured quiet comforts that I was too far gone to comprehend, but they soaked beneath my skin regardless.

I can do the same for him. Kiss and whisper and hold.

Eventually, it starts to work. His grip loosens and I take the chance to lean back, peering at him cautiously, my fingers brushing a clammy cheek that matches a clammy forehead, and a clammy rest of him too. “I’m gonna run you a bath, okay?”

Gazing at me listlessly, Finn nods, but he makes no move to release me.

“You’re gonna have to let me go, baby.”

A disgruntled noise rumbles in his chest. But, slowly and with obvious reluctance, he loosens his hold on me until it falls away completely, leaving me free to carefully scramble off his lap and into the bathroom.

Hot on my tail, Finn watches as I turn on the faucet of the porcelain tub I’ve been eyeing since the first time I stepped foot in here.

There’s a window right beside, a wicker basket balanced on the deep sill, and as I rifle through it, I decide now is not the time to tease Finn for having four different kinds of bubble bath.

I pick the emptiest one and tip it beneath the hot waterstream, the scent of lavender and ylang-ylang strong and soothing.

Leaving the tub to fill, I turn my attention to Finn—whose attention never left me.

I’m not even sure he blinks as I near, as I finger the waistband of his sweats and push it down his hips.

The material pools around his feet and he steps free of it, his hands moving to my waist, toying with my waistband.

Though he doesn’t hesitate to guide the button securing my jeans free, he still asks, “Joining me?”

“If you want me to.”

Finn huffs like that was a silly response before yanking my jeans down over my ass and dropping to his haunches so he can drag them the rest of the way down.

I’ve never been undressed so… innocently.

So utterly unsexual. He strips me naked methodically, starting from the bottom and working his way up.

His hands roam, but they’re reverent, soothing—to me or to him, I’m honestly not sure.

He’s literally eye-level with my cunt, hovering mere inches away from it, baring it with swift movements, but when his lips make contact, it’s my thigh he kisses.

A single, light brush that matches the one he presses to the inside of my wrist, to my hipbone, to the tattoo on the crook of my elbow, and gets even lighter when he reaches the border of peeling skin and a nasty scab.

Before the scowl that always forms whenever he catches a glimpse of my injuries, like the mere sight of them pisses him off, can make an appearance, I distract him by tugging him to the bath.

Turning off the water, I test the temperature, deeming it okay and gesturing for him to get in.

He does and I move to sit opposite him, but he has a different idea.

He leans forward and jerks his head to the gap behind him, so I fill it.

My back to the tub, and his back to me. I squint at the surging water level nervously as he leans back and it rises dangerously close to his stitches, but I still sigh contentedly as his weight settles on me, settles me.

Making sure my own injuries stay dry, I let one arm hang over the edge of the tub, the other locking around Finn’s shoulders, mindlessly tracing the sharp line of his collarbone as we soak in silence.

At first, at least.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as my fingers skirt the edge of a clean bandage.

“Why, baby?”

“Nightmares.”

“Even if I tell you it’s not your fault, you’re still gonna feel guilty, aren’t you?”

I neither confirm nor deny, but I fear the answer is obvious.

Finn sighs. “I don’t have nightmares about getting shot. I have nightmares about you getting shot.”

“Why?”

He tilts his head back enough to snag my gaze with his. “You ready to talk about it yet?”

No. But will I ever be? “You said you loved me.”

“I said I love you. Present tense.”

“You can take it back.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why would you…”

“Love you?”

“You can take it back,” I repeat.

He swears instead.

And then he loops his fingers around my forearms and yanks pointedly, pulling me to my feet while I frown, carefully guiding me to move in front of him, sit in front of him, facing him, bearing the brunt of a very irritated expression.

I know, despite my paranoid mind trying to convince me otherwise, that it’s not aimed at me. That… that it’s himself he seems to be annoyed at, for some reason. Frustrated with.

Bathwater sloshes onto the tiles as he abruptly leans back, his arms braced on either side of the tub as he huffs. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I blink. “For?”

“Clearly I’ve been doing a terrible fucking job at loving you if you have no idea thats what’s been happening.”

Without giving me a chance to respond, Finn shifts forward again, unavoidable. “You are not an easy person to love,” he murmurs, and raw pain momentarily constricts my lungs before he clarifies the words are not his own. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

I keep my mouth shut, but I reckon my face says it all—it says enough to make Finn tut, to have him shaking his head, chin dipped low as he rests his elbows on his knees.

“You are one of the most complicated people I have ever met. You’re angry.

You’re rude. You take everything as an insult, everything is a slight.

You hurt so you like when other people hurt too.

And,” he slides his palms up my shins, one encircling the wrist of the hand I’ve pressed to my racing heart, “I love you so much, I don’t know what to do with it all. ”

I stop breathing.

Finn doesn’t stop at all. “You are difficult, Charlotte. You are fucking infuriating. You make me wanna bang my head against a wall, and I love you so much it’s literally all I think about.

“You are difficult,” he repeats, he praises , he makes the word sound good . “But you are not difficult to love. I do it so fucking easily, baby. It’s like breathing. It’s like—”

A splash of water cuts him off. Me splashing water. Me clambering out of the bath.

Lips parted with confusion, dark eyes track me as I clamber out of the bath, narrowing as I snag the robe hanging on the back of the door and wrap it around me.

Finn starts to get up too, but I hold up my hand—a physical command to stop because I’m not sure I can get a verbal one out.

He hisses my name as I slip out of the ensuite, another utterance following me out of his room and into the hallway, and I reckon if his parents weren’t a floor away, he’d wake the whole house, bellowing for me to get my ass back there.

I half-expect him to come tearing after me—butt-ass naked, considering I’m wearing his robe—so I make it quick.

I dart downstairs, into the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets until I find the one where the miscellaneous shit lives, a collection of candles among them.

From the junk drawer just below it, I snag my lighter.

Lastly, I root through that ridiculous assortment of flowers until I find roses, and I pocket a bunch before bringing my haul upstairs.

Finn is right where I left him. His disgruntled expression softens when I re-enter the bathroom, morphing into amused curiosity as he watches me light candles and carefully pick a handful of rose petals—flaring, just a little, into something else entirely when I strip off once more.

I dim the lights before getting back in the bath, shivering despite the steamy temperature that envelops me as that intense gaze roams over my body.

Voice a heated rasp, Finn asks, “What’re you doing, baby?”

I take a deep breath before throwing the petals in the air, watching them float down and swirl in the water. “I figured you’d appreciate a little romance when I tell you I love you.”

The softest, sweetest smile blooms—completely at odds with the cocky way he claims, “I knew that already.”

I scoff. Plucking a petal from the water, I flick it his way. “Oh, you did, did you?”

Hands wrap around my ankle and tug, guiding me between his spread legs until my bent knees touch his chest. He dips to kiss one, humming against my skin. “You knitted me a sweater.”

I snort—quite the damning evidence. “I knit lots of people sweaters.”

“People you love.”

“You’re kinda ruining my declaration.”

“Sorry.” Calloused fingers glide up my calves and down my thighs, and up my body until they find my cheeks and cup them tenderly. ‘Go on.”

Taking another deep breath, I wrap my hands around his wrists and hold him tightly, grounding myself as some part of me, a scared, frigid part I don’t think will ever go away, begs me to shut up.

To not say, “I love you. Like a really terrifying amount. Like more than I thought I was capable of. More than I can comprehend. And I wish I could say it was easy and lovely and sunshine and fucking rainbows, but it isn’t.

Not for me. It’s really, really hard because I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t think I’m equipped to do it, I’m so scared I’m gonna get it wrong, but I’m trying.

Not trying to love you—fuck, Finn, I tried not to, and I’m sorry if that’s shitty and unromantic, but everyone I love leaves me or doesn’t love me enough or hates me at some point, and I didn’t want that to be you.

No, I’m trying to love you right . Enough. The way you deserve.”

“I know exactly what I deserve.”

“I hope not. Because I think it’s more than me.”

“There is nothing more than you, my love.”

My eyes shutter closed.

“My love,” he repeats, his breath warming my cheek. “My sweet, angry love. I think I loved you the first time you told me to fuck off.”

A wet, rasping laugh escapes me. My eyes open again.

My love.

My fucking love.