The arm's length comes with us anyway.
I don't push at it. I put my hands in my pockets and give her my day instead, because if I can't have her close, I can at least talk to her the way I'd like to be talking to her for a long time. Easy. Intimate. Just us.
I tell her about the vendor video call I was on earlier today when a grown man said "cringe" with full commitment, and how I deserve some kind of medal for not laughing in his face. I tell her about the prototype tent that's supposed to be rated for a gale and instead folded up on one of my testers in Utah this morning—wrapped him like a burrito with his boots sticking out the end—all of it on video, the best thing I've seen all week.
I tell it all to her the way I'd tell it at her little kitchen table, as if we were a real couple. I don't ask about the texts. And I don't ask why a woman who slept peacefully in my arms two nights ago is standing four feet away like I'm a stove she doesn't trust.
She laughs about the burrito.
Not the careful laugh she's been giving me all afternoon. The real one I haven’t heard enough. It gets away from her before she can reign it in. She hears it happen, and for a second she looks almost caught.
I've been chasing that laugh since high school. Getting it now, in an empty parking lot, after two days of politeness and rain checks does more for me than I'd be able to explain to anyone.
At her car she turns, essays on her hip as she looks up at me. In a couple seconds of silence, I watch her decide something and then decide against it.
"Thank you for today," she says. "It matters to the kids, you know. That you keep coming back."
"I didn't come back for the kids, Darcy." I say it gently, no charge in it, just true. "I'm glad the arch is safe. But you know why I'm here."
Her breath catches, a small hitch I only notice because I never stop watching her. "Finn?—"
"You don't have to explain anything. You said it's a heavy week, so it's a heavy week." I shrug. "I had nowhere to be tonight that beats a parking lot with you in it. That's all. No response required."
She looks at me for a long moment, gold flecks catching the last of the light, and whatever's behind her eyes comes right up to the surface and stays there.
"Goodnight, Finn," she says softly. Then, quieter, half lost in the door opening, "Thank you."
I don't know what the second thank you was for. I know it wasn't about the arch.
I stand there and watch her taillights all the way out of the lot, then I drive back to the vineyard on empty roads, being honest with myself the whole way, which is a new habit and I can't say I love it.
She's still in it with me. I'd bet everything I own on that laugh. But she's pulling back anyway, on purpose. Something happened between Monday morning and Monday night that made her decide to be careful with me. I don't know what it was. I keep arriving at the worst version. That the night that recalibrated my whole life was—for her—a thing she needs to be careful about. I don't believe it. I can't quite kill the feeling, either.
So I'm not going to push. I'm going to show up tomorrow, and the day after that. I’m going to be worth showing up for, until she tells me to stop or tells me what changed. I've waited out storms in a tent the size of a coffin. I can wait out a grading week.
The estate house lights are on when I pull in to the vineyard. My phone buzzes in the cupholder.
Wyatt:Status check, Bardot. It’s been a week. You know how this ends, right? Damien's gone. Alec's gone. Brad and Gabe are one dinner party away from folding. It comes down to you and me. Two-man race, one very large pot. I've already picked out the boat. Hurry home. The table misses its emcee.
Two weeks ago I'd have fired back something about the boat inside a minute. Wyatt has never once sent me anything I didn't laugh at. That's the whole friendship. That's the whole club, honestly, a table full of men keeping everything light because being light around one another is what we're good at.
I read it twice. I don't delete it. I don't laugh, either.
If Wyatt could see me today—hell, if any of them could—they wouldn't bother waiting for the wager to play out. One look at me in that parking lot with Darcy and they'd make me fold on the spot. And they wouldn't be wrong.
I'm all in with her. I've been all in since her staircase and that first kiss we shared. Maybe since high school, and the only person at the table who hasn't shown her cards is her.
I turn the car off and go inside.
CHAPTER 22
DARCY
By last period I've given up pretending this is a normal Wednesday.
The grading week I’m hiding behind is real. The stack waiting on my desk is real. What's also real is that I've read the same paragraph of Lisa's essay half a dozen times and retained none of it, because my brain keeps leaving the building and driving back to yesterday with Finn. To a nearly empty parking lot and him with his hands in his pockets, saying,I didn't come back for the kids, Darcy.
He said it gently, as if he knew exactly how hard I was holding my own rules together and had decided not to make it a fight.You know why I'm here.And then, while my whole body leaned toward him like a plant toward a window, he let me off the hook.No response required.
