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Chapter forty

Finn

The rain starts just as I hit the edges of campus, fine and misting and completely at odds with the wildfire raging under my skin.

My hands are tight around the wheel, my heart lodged somewhere between my ribs and my throat, and the only thing I know for certain is that if I don’t tell him what this is, or what he is to me, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

I’m done waiting. I’m done pretending like this isn’t real just because it’s scary.

And yeah, maybe I didn’t say anything when I should have, maybe I left too quickly, too quietly, but that doesn’t mean I’m not all in.

I think about Ryan, and the way he stood there like he had a right to be part of Foxx’s life again. It makes my grip tighten on the steering wheel all over again.

He doesn’t get to have him. Not after the damage he did. Not when he didn’t even stay to pick up the pieces.

Foxx deserves someone who shows up. Someone who stays.

I press harder on the gas.

By the time I pull up outside his place, the rain has picked up, clinging to the windows in a fine, relentless sheen that makes everything look slightly blurred.

With a deep breath, I get out.

I jog across the street, rain soaking through my hoodie, shoes splashing in the shallow puddles already pooling at the curb.

Reaching the call box, I stare at the list of names, hand hovering.

I could press his. I could buzz him and say what?

I kinda want this to be a gesture he doesn’t see coming.

So I scan for Eugene’s name and press call.

A few seconds pass. Then: “Yes?”

“Hey, Eugene, it’s Finn. Could you let me into the building?”

The line crackles slightly. “Why aren’t you calling your boyfriend?”

“Well, I’m kinda trying to do this big romantic gesture…” I hesitate, knowing it sounds ridiculous. “You know what, don’t sweat it. I’ll just call—”

The door buzzes open. “Go get him, kid,” Eugene says, and I’m pretty sure I can hear the smile in his voice.

I step into the warmth and quiet of the building’s entryway, heart pounding.

Foxx’s apartment is ground floor, just down the hall to the left. I don’t rush, but I don’t hesitate either. My shoes leave damp footprints on the tile, my hoodie sticks to my back, and by the time I reach his door, I feel like the storm outside followed me in.

I knock once, and with that one sound, I think I might pass out from adrenaline.

And then he opens the door.

He’s barefoot, hair a little messy, like he’s just raked his hands through it. His expression shifts the moment he sees me—surprise first, then something more like concern. “You’re soaking wet,” he says, eyebrows drawn.

I wave him off and push my way inside, fueled by the intense need to speak my mind.

“Foxx, I swear to god,” I say, still catching my breath, “if you let that asshole stand in front of you and say even one thing that made you feel like you were anything less than…than everything, I’m gonna lose my mind. ”

His eyes widen, but I don’t stop. My arms have a mind of their own as they try to talk alongside me, flailing around.

“He doesn’t get to show up and rewrite your story again. He doesn’t get to crawl back into your life, like the years in between never happened. He left you. He chose to leave. And I’m not going to let you think, even for one second, that you weren’t worth staying for.”

“Finn—”

“No,” I cut in, voice unsteady, but sure, “I left that classroom thinking I didn’t want to get in the way, and I’ve hated myself for it since.

And I know I should’ve stayed, but I didn’t know how to hold all of this .

” I gesture around my chest, as though he should know what I’m talking about, my heart, my soul, every part of me is holding something of him and I…

“I didn’t know how to let this be real without wrecking it. ”

I pause, swallowing down everything still pushing at my ribs.

“I’m here now, though, and I’m not walking away.”

He stares at me for a long moment. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I only know that I’ve never said anything more honest in my life.

Then he exhales slowly, the tension around his eyes easing as he looks at me like I’m something unexpected, something impossible he doesn’t want to blink away. I hope he never does.

“He’s gone,” Foxx says. “You’re right; he doesn’t deserve me.” His face then transforms from pensive to a small smile that looks as though he’s holding back a laugh. “But you just did a whole speech for me.”

My arms flail up one more time before admitting defeat at my sides. “Of course I did a speech,” I say, breath catching in my chest. “I’m in love with you.”

His expression shifts, and then he’s stepping forward, hands finding my face, pulling me in like I’m the air he needs to survive.

The way he carefully and continually scans my entire face as though he’s documenting every single part of me, makes me feel seen, makes me feel safe.

And I want to spend as long as he’ll let me right here in this feeling with him.

His thumb brushes my cheek. “You don’t know what that does to me,” he says.

“The speech?”

He nods. “And what you just said, which was what again?”

My lips lift at the sides. “That I’m in love with you?”

He stifles his smile, pulling in his lips to hide between his teeth.

“Hey," I say. "I earned that one. Don’t hide that smile from me.”

He tips his head back with a laugh, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anything better than that, his throat exposed, eyes crinkled, the unguarded sound of his happiness.

“You did earn it, but I’m not hiding, just taking it in,” he says, eyes now locked on mine.

I reach up, fingers grazing his scruff-covered jaw, tracing the curve of it, memorizing the bristle against my skin. “Take all the time you need. I’m not taking it back.”

He leans into my hand, just slightly. “Good,” he murmurs. “Because, baby?”

“Hm?”

“I’m in love with you too.”

My whole body warms as I pull him into a short, sweet kiss that imprints onto our lips.

“I don’t know how to do this perfectly,” I whisper.

“I don’t want perfect,” he says, voice rough. “I just want you .”

He leans in, and his forehead rests against mine for a long, quiet second.

Neither of us moves. “You came into my life like a riptide,” he says.

“Fast, and all at once. I didn’t see it happening.

I was still trying to convince myself I had everything under control, and then suddenly, there you were.

And I couldn’t hold anything in place the way I used to. ”

His gaze doesn’t move from mine.

“But you didn’t break anything. You just..

.changed it. You shifted the whole current, and I didn’t fight it because, for the first time in years, it didn’t feel like something I had to survive or control.

It felt like something I wanted to keep.

And I think that’s what undid me the most. Not the chaos or the rush.

Just how easy it was to let you in, and you wiped me out anyway. ”

My throat’s tight, and I don’t try to speak. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.

Because what do you say to someone who just told you they let go of everything safe, everything they try to control, because you made it feel worth the risk?

I press my forehead a little closer to his again, and I close my eyes.

“I love you,” I say, looking up at him again.

He smiles as he threads his hands into the back of my hair. “I love you, too, baby.”

And then he kisses me again. It’s slow at first, like we’ve got all night.

As though there’s no rush to prove anything, and there really isn’t after what he’s just said.

His lips move against mine with the kind of certainty I didn’t know I’d been waiting for.

I know he’s not just kissing me because he wants to, but because he has to, because maybe, like me, something in me healed something in him. And now, he’s not afraid of it.

His hands skim under my hoodie, fingertips dragging along the skin at my sides like he’s memorizing me one inch at a time. And when I lean into him fully, when I feel the warmth of him pressed against every part of me, there’s nothing left but certainty.

We don’t talk. We don’t need to. Every touch feels like an answer to a question I didn’t know I’d been asking.

When we finally make it to his bed, it’s not about the heat building between us. It’s not about distraction. It’s about staying. About being known, and wanted, and letting that be enough.