“For what?”
“For what you did back there. It genuinely helped.”
“Oh,” I search for the right words. “Well, glad it helped.”
We go back to silence, but not for long. Finn speaks up again.
“I’m not the only one who feels this, right?” he asks.
My head snaps to him. “What?”
“I’m not the only one who feels this…attraction, yeah?”
I stare out the window, watching the world go by and wishing I was anywhere but here. “No, I suppose not. But I thought we were trying to win a bet?”
“So because of a bet between us, you think that we’ve magically become attracted to one another?” he asks, his face screwed up as he keeps his eyes on the road.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You seriously can’t just admit to anything, can you?”
“I’m not struggling to admit anything, I’m simply trying to attach a reason.”
“Sometimes, there just isn’t a reason. Sometimes, things just happen.”
My face scrunches as I think about it. I can’t really attach one particular reason to being attracted to Finley. I don’t even know exactly when it started. It’s just been something that always has been there in the background ever since we were teenagers. I just always easily ignored it because it was easier to acknowledge the ways that he pisses me off rather than the ways that he doesn’t.
I huff out a breath and slap my hand against my thigh. “So what if we are, anyway? I mean, it’s not like anything can ever happen between us. Anything real, anyway.”
“And your reasons for that are?”
“I…I made a promise to myself, that’s all.”
I can feel him eyeing me. “A promise?”
“I’m not looking to date,” I assert. “My track record is a shitshow and I’m not looking forward to making it any worse.”
There’s a pause before he says, “And I’m worse.” Not a question; a conclusion.
A voice in my head says no, that he would be the complete opposite of worse, but I silence it before I can believe it.
“Any man is.”
In my peripheral, I see him nod slowly. He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth, the supple skin coming away red raw by the time he lets it go. “Right.”
“What are yours?” I ask, desperate to not sit in silence any longer.
He doesn’t answer for a while and it makes me squirm. Something vibrates off of him, but I can’t pinpoint the emotion. Whatever it is, it definitely isn’t good.
“I don’t want anyone having to deal with my shit,” he says, the words clipped; forced. “My OCD can be…a lot sometimes. Wouldn’t be fair to let someone deal with that on top of anything life served them.”
I watch him with a frown. How can he possibly think that? How can he think that just because he has something extra to overcome, it makes him less worthy of love?
“Finn—”
“It’s fine,” he snaps. He stares straight ahead and his hands tighten on the wheel. “I came to grips with it a while ago.”
I feel a hairline fracture crack across my heart. For Finn, my heart breaks just that little bit, because he’s gone this long with thinking that he would be a burden on someone just because he has OCD.
