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“You’re never going to stop punishing yourself, are you?”
He catches on quickly. “Probably not. But I couldn’t bear to spend the rest of my life punishing you.”
A pit of pain swells in my throat, his words driving a thousand nails through my already fragile heart. Wake up, Dia. That’s just a nice way of saying he didn’t want to be in your life.
“Meaning you left because you didn’t want to be with me?”
“Meaning I had to get my shit together before I could be worthy of you.”
I can’t wrap my head around it. If what he’s saying is true, he left that day with one goal and one goal only…
To become a better man.
“I knew if I stayed, you’d try to fix me. But no one could do that but me,” he adds.
I expel a deep breath, bringing a hand to my forehead as if to prevent a migraine from forming. Finn rolls onto his side to look at me.
“And did you?” I ask once I’ve regained my composure.
“Did I what?”
I flip onto my side, too.
“Fix yourself?” My voice breaks.
He moves closer to me, brushing the side of my face with his fingers. The air grows scarce in my throat at the contact.
“Why do you think I came back?” he whispers.
I shiver everywhere at his touch and pull away like I just got zapped. I can feel my resolve starting to crumble and have to remind myself of one important fact to counter the effects of his speech.
“You didn’t check on me while you were gone. Not even once,” I accuse.
I expect his features to darken with guilt, but the only prominent emotion on his face is shock.
“They never told you, did they?”
“Tell me what?”
He lets out a quiet laugh. “Dia, Xavier almost had to block my number after the accident. I was blowing up his phone, texting him twenty times an hour for updates on how you were. He eventually got sick of my shit and stopped answering me. I got so worried at one point that I called your brother. Of course he told me to suck a dick, but I figured it was worth a shot.”
Finn called Jesse?
Knowing how much my brother despises him?
He must’ve been beyond desperate.
“There hasn’t been a day since I left where I haven’t pestered Xavier for information about you. Not one. He wouldn’t go into details, though. He’d update me on how you were doing, and when I asked specific questions, he’d tell me to come home and see for myself. I spent the last year watching your social media accounts like a fucking stalker. And yes, I left you, but fuck, Dia, you have to know… you never left me.”
I’m all choked up by his story but battle the flow of emotions threatening to sweep me away. Is this what Chance meant? When he said that just because I couldn’t see Finn doesn’t mean he wasn’t there?
“And this.” Finn points to my bracelet on his wrist. “I never took it off except to shower.”
That must be why he wasn’t wearing it this morning.
He takes it off, placing it in the palm of his hand to show me. “It kept me going. Like a constant reminder of what was waiting for me back home.”
That’s where I draw the line.
