Page 233 of One Wild Wish

“I leave for Germany Monday morning, and she keeps freaking out about it, won’t get too close to me. I’m a mess over it, but I know we can make it work. We have to make it work. So I keep telling her not to worry, that we’ll figure it out. But I guess that’s me taking control again. Making her—us —my project. I haven’t even asked her what she wants to do.” I tried to swallow, but my saliva thickened. “I can’t lose her, Finch. She’s…just…I can’t go through this again, not after being with her. What do I do?”

His dark eyebrows winged upward. “You’re asking my advice?”

His surprise almost made me laugh, something I hadn’t done with Finch in an eternity. It was odd to be with him, angry one second, leaning on him the next. Searching for my twin under nine years of unyielding grudges. He was there, though. He was in front of me, asking my forgiveness. Blocking him out had only embittered me.

“You know her. You seem to know me better than I know myself.” Even though we’d barely spoken. Finch could always see right through me. “So, yeah—I’m asking for your help. Begging for it, actually.”

He assessed me, a deep stare that lingered, then he grinned. It wasn’t the easy grin I’d once known, but there was hope in it, thankfulness. It breathed life into my deadened arteries, beating the hardened section of my heart back to life.

“I appreciate that,” he said, “more than you’ll ever realize. And I know just the thing to do.”

* * *

Gwen

So focused on the journal, I jumped when Finch settled onto the barstool beside me. He studied the diary. “Must be a good book.”

A surprising page-turner. I was only halfway through because I’d slowed down. Instead of skimming for clues, I’d read Mary Hamilton’s words carefully, hanging off each one, desperate to learn how I’d been conceived, if she’d sensed betrayal from her man. Another woman in his life. I hadn’t even noticed the band on stage, six guys with a country-rock vibe. Plaid shirts. Beards. Hipsters with a twang and a horn section.

I pointed to Finch’s scruffy face. “You’d blend in on stage.”

He massaged his beard. “Makes the talent feel comfortable. I’ll be sporting a mohawk and nose ring for next week’s gig.”

“You’d look ridiculous with a nose ring.”

“I’m insulted and offended.” His cheeky smirk said otherwise.

“You can insult me back. Take your best shot.” Punishment I deserved. Anything to assuage the guilt that had been chasing me since August had revealed the extent of our betrayal. Finch’s fault, largely. That didn’t absolve me of my part.

Finch tipped up his chin, considering me. “That frilly blouse you wore for all our grade-school class pictures? That abomination burned my retinas.”

“Which is why I had it incinerated.” The flowered nylon travesty haunted me to this day. “Your neon high-tops broke every fashion law imaginable.”

“You took your Green Day love to loser levels.”

“Your soccer jersey phase would have been fine if you’d washed it from time to time.” I fanned my nose.

“That jersey was the shit.”

Sitting here, joking like old times, was the shit. It was also a distraction that didn’t change the past. I sighed and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Finch. For everything that went down. I used you that night. I was lonely, and I wanted to hurt August, two reasons that shouldn’t have ended with us in bed.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth. “No, they shouldn’t have. But I was just as shallow. I didn’t think so at the time, really thought I’d been in love with you, but I was in love with the idea of you. I wanted what August couldn’t have.”

The revelation winded me. “So we used each other? To hurt him?”

“We were quite the pair.”

The band finished a song, applause and whistles filling the room. I didn’t glance away from Finch. My regrets over what we’d done to August lived permanently behind my breastbone. It also irked me, what Finch had asked of August, falsifying his SATs. But moving on meant accepting our mistakes. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”

“Only if I am, too.”

I pressed my hand to his thigh. Not a sexual gesture. It was grounding, a tether to our past. Hopefully one to our future, too. “Did you guys talk? Work things out?”

“Mostly. It’ll take a bit to really move on, but we took the first steps. Like you guys did.”

August and I had taken more than a step. We’d taken a running leap, and I still hadn’t landed. I searched the dimly lit room, no sign of him anywhere. “Where is he?”

“Taking his next step.”