Page 41 of Cabin Fever

Blood rushes in my ears. “What are we doing?”

He doesn’t answer for a long moment. When he does, his voice is slow. “I . . . I’m holding you.”

I sink back into him, not knowing where to go from there. My voice comes out barely above a whisper. “I was scared to see you. Because I never know what we’re doing. Even when we were kids, I never . . .” I let out a long breath.

Finn doesn’t answer.

“I just need to know. Not whether you care. I think we both know how much we care about each other. But I need to know if you want there to be, you know.” I pause, debating how to say it. “Follow through.”

I wait, but all I hear is the slow sound of Finn’s breath. When his finger twitches against my stomach, I laugh to myself.

Of course. The moment I decide to finally say what’s in my heart, Finn Gallagher has fallen asleep.

Chapter Fourteen

I wake up warm.

Not cruise-cabin-thermostat-too-high warm. Cozy warm.

There's an arm over my ribs and a slow heartbeat against my back and breath moving the hair at my neck in a rhythm my body synced to at some point during the night, and for three full seconds I can’t remember a single problem in my life.

Then I hear a tap.

My eyes open. Across the cabin, sitting cross-legged on my bed in Finn's T-shirt with her hair like a dandelion gone to seed, my sister is holding her phone horizontally. For better composition.

“Dahlia,” I hiss.

“Shh.” She taps again. “You'll wake him.”

“Delete that!”

“Mm.” She examines the screen. Tilts her head. “No, I don't think I will. The light's really good.”

“There’s barely any light.” I gesture to the bathroom, the door cracks open.

She ignores me and crawls over. “I'm getting married today. You can't yell at me. It's my special day.”

The words punch through me as the night before comes into focus. “Wait⁠—”

Behind me, without moving a single other muscle, Finn says, “You’re getting married?” in a voice still eighty percent asleep.

Exactly my question. I extract myself with Finn’s limbs still heavy and sit, my legs dangling off the bed.

Finn shifts and rests against the headboard, flicking on the light, and Dahlia crawls onto the end of the bed. “Okay. Family meeting.”

I shoot him a glance, and he smirks.

“I'm marrying Theo,” Dahlia says. No preamble. No takebacks.

I open my mouth, but she holds up a hand. “Let me say the whole thing. I woke up early and had a lot of time to think. I went through all the thoughts. Can I trust him? Does he love me if he can’t be honest with me? Is he going to do it again? All of that. But somewhere around six a.m. I realized I was focusing on the wrong thing.” Her eyes come up, clear as the water in Cozumel. “He told me, Harper. Before the vows. Scared, drunk, and broke, with every opportunity to wait.”

She looks at Finn. “He told me that you gave him an ultimatum, by the way, and that’s another part of it. He has good friends, and he listens to them.” Dahlia drops her eyes, picking at the comforter. “Dad had twenty-two years of chances to tell Mom. He had years to listen to his friends, and instead, he chose to alienate them. He never once—” Her voice catches. “He just dug himself deeper. So no, I'm not marrying Theo despite the worst thing I know about him. I'm kind of marrying him because of it. Because now I know what he does with a secret when it's killing him. He didn’t do it perfectly, but even if you hadn’t said anything, Finn, I don’t think he would’ve stood at the end of that aisle without coming clean.”

Finn nods. He moves, and his leg rubs against mine. “He thought he could fix it.”

“I know.” Dahlia gives a small smile. “And he needs to know that from here on out, we fix things together.” She sniffs and hops off the bed. “Plus, this gives me one huge screw-up that he can’t be mad about. I’m already thinking⁠—”

“Dahlia!” I laugh, standing and pulling her into a hug.