Page 136 of Oleander

Finn lifted his head, some inscrutable look in his eye. “You sure?”

“Did he say something?” I asked him, unsure how I felt about it if he had. I knew he’d never tell Finn we’d been anything.

Finn frowned, then shrugged. “He just asked why you were there, how I knew you. I said we were friends.” His voice was a little strange as he said this. “Then he asked me where he could find you. Should I not have told him?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, it’s fine. He’d have found me anyway.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry I made shit weird...” he said, looking at his feet again.

I shook my head. “You didn’t, I promise.” I was still high, and there was a gentle simmer of arousal in me, and Finn was looking at me like he always did before he’d take me into his mouth.

But more than all of this, I heard Cas’s voice:I’d like for you to stop seeing Finlay.Well, fuck that. Fuck him.

“So, you care about me?” I asked him. I saw a note of alarm creep into his face. “At the party, you said you’d made it abundantly andpatheticallyclear that you cared about me.”

He cringed, cheeks reddening. “Fuck, did I? Right, well I’m off to walk into oncoming traffic.” He moved off, and I reached out to pull him back. Pulling him close enough that a tilt of my head would bring our lips together.

“I liked hearing it,” I said.

He smiled, almost shyly, and began playing with the button of my shirt.

“What about the hot as fuck rower you left behind in there?” He nodded in the direction of Code.

“He likes Tarantino,” I said.

“Fuck, that’s disappointing.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed. “So...do you have anything good to drink at your place?”

As his eyes lit up and he nodded, I wondered if I should feel cruel.

Finn liked me, cared about me even, and I suspected though I liked and cared about him too, that I was doing this for all the wrong reasons. But under the drizzly skies of Oxford that night with the borrowed euphoria from the coke in my veins, I only cared that Icoulddo it.

That I could do whatever and whoever the fuck I wanted to without Caspien’s permission, and that included Finn.

Ten

Finn’s room at the house on Fromme Street was about four times the size of my dorm, with a set of doors leading off to a small balcony large enough for a single chair. A large king-size bed in a metal frame was set against one wall with a flatscreen TV on the wall opposite, and there was an ensuite with a bath and a shower

It didn’t smell like an old library, either, and I suddenly wondered why we mainly went to my dorm when we did this.

I sat on the bed with the bottle of wine he’d slid out of the rack downstairs while he fiddled with the remote until the TV played some EDM playlist as was his preference. He rolled a joint and went to the balcony to smoke it. We passed it between us, along with the wine, until I felt so light-headed I had to sit down again.

“So, you ever gonna tell me?” he asked after we’d been silent a while. The joint was long gone and he sat against the headboard as he took sips from the bottle of wine. I was lying sideways near the foot of the bed.

“Tell you what?” I asked, though I had an inkling I knew.

“You and Cas,” he said. “What the fuck did he do to you?”

What the fuck did he do to me? I laughed at this. Because for some reason, it was funny to me then, what he’d done. What I’d allowed him to do. It was fucking hilarious actually. It was a joke, or I was.

“What’s funny?” Finn asked, a faint smile on the side of his mouth. I covered my eyes and laughed harder, so hard that my chest, stomach, and throat hurt. But then, I realised, I wasn’t laughing anymore.

Finn was beside me quickly, voice a little panicked as he said, “Fuck, Jude, are you crying? Shit. Okay, shit. Fuck, Jude.”

“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m honestly fucking fine.” I looked at him and smiled. “Promise, I am.”

“Okay…” He looked like he didn’t believe me, so I surged forward to kiss him. He hesitated only a moment, as though suspicious of how quickly I’d recovered, but then he let me push him back onto the bed and kissed me back.