“Fine,” Finn said after a long moment of silence. “You win.”
I sipped my drink, letting the bubbles coat my insides.
“It’s not about winning. Scars are scars, Finn. We all come from somewhere, and what breaks one person fortifies another. You don’t get to choose that. You don’t get to choose how you break.”
“Can I ask the obvious question?” he arched a brow. “How are you two not married? Or together? I mean, how do you even move around it?”
My phone rang, making us both jump.
“You don’t.”
I glanced down to see Thay’s name vibrating and hit the video icon with a scowl.
“So,” I said, cutting off Thay’s ability to speak first, “Finn was just asking me a question.”
Thay sat on his bed, staring at me behind a pair of sad eyes.
“Oh yeah? And what did Polo Shirt have to say?” he sighed, rolling my mentor’s existence between his knuckles as if it were a coin.
“He wants to know why we’re not married or together.”
Finn cleared his throat, suddenly fascinated by the view outside his window.
“Did you tell him that’s none of his fucking business?” Thay asked, leaning forward.
“No,” I smirked, burning holes into his eyes. “Is Lyla okay?”
“For now.” He let the question fall to the floor. “So, how do you want to respond?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, surprised when he turned my game back on me.
“If it were up to you, and no answer was wrong or a lie,” he explained quietly. “How would you explain what I am to you?”
It was time to get out of the car. I cast a glance at Finn to say goodbye, who nodded when I reached for the handle.
“Can I pick you up later?” he mouthed.
You would think the dark, stormy bits of my story would have shoved him firmly into the friend zone. If not that, then surely the devil on the other end of my phone would have. Instead, Finn watched me with those pretty eyes like someone licking a flame in the middle of a bonfire.
Perhaps he thought he could save me, and I possessed a tiny urge to see him try.
I nodded yes and climbed out of the Bronco.
“No. Don’t leave him yet,” Thay ordered, and I paused before shutting the door. “I want you to answer his question. Tell Finn who I am to you. I want to hear you say the words.”
nineteen
Daphne: Normal
They talk about purple prose like it’s the worst thing that ever happened to literature. Unless, of course, you’re mentioning Brontë, or leaning hard into a setting where it was okay for the moon to drip on your skin and flowers to breathe in colors. What theydon’tconsider are the complications of emotion that arise when your soulmate backs you into a goddamn corner and demands you confess something he already knows to be true.
No, this was for Finn.
Thay wanted to ensure he understood exactly what he was to me. A parallelogram instead of a poem. Maybe that was why all I could think of were adjectives. Metaphors. Bloody things.
“Tell him, Daph,” Thay coaxed, his black brows following the mood storming on his face.
Damn, he was beautiful in all the ways he should never be allowed.
