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She could hardly hear the words because Finn leaned in, bending his elbow so his forearm was on the wall, imprisoning her. The look in his eyes, mere inches from hers, the muscle that flexed in his jaw, and the way their breaths intermixed, made her pulse so loud in her ears that it sounded like the shrieks of a truck in reverse on its path to collision.
She closed her eyes, knowing what came next, knowing that once he kissed her, she’d be lost.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The alarm of her heartbeat kept screaming. If she was afraid of it before, knowing what it could do to her, she yearned for it now. She wanted Finn to kiss her like only he could.
When no collision hit, she opened her eyes.
Dark cobalt skies met her gaze, and in the blue, she could swear she saw her own heart reflecting.
“I thought so,” Finn rasped.
She felt that low rasp in her body.
Now that he had proven his point, Finn took a step back, his arm leaving the wall, and Anne could breathe again.
“Are you punishing me, Jane? Because, trust me, it won’t work. I must be a glutton for punishment. I spent too many years married to your cousin, for fuck’s sake, and loving you all along.”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to save us both more heartache.”
“It’s not working.”
“Then I’m trying to spare the others.” She took a deep breath. “Finn, it’s a small family, just two branches, twin ones, nowhere to run or hide. But forget the grown-ups. Can you imagine the clusterfuck of your son’s Christmases and Thanksgivings if we walked into a family gathering together? With his mother there, and her mother, and mine? Me, who he thinks of as an aunt, though he doesn’t see me too often, and now I’d be his dad’s … a clusterfuck. Avery will never accept me with you, and I doubt her parents will, which means that your son will be torn.”
He inhaled deeply then let it out slowly, averting his gaze. She could hear the low murmur of conversation from the people who were still in the gallery, on the other side of the wall.
“Do you think I wanted to marry your cousin?” he asked, bringing his eyes back to her.
“I don’t need you to rehash the entire history for me, Finn. I was there.”
“Do you think I wanted to stay married to her? Maybe you need to hear this again, Jane, because I never had a chance to tell you. Do you think it was easy for me to stay away from you all those years? From the woman I love? And you know why I stayed. Let me rehash that and tell you a few things no one knows, not even you, because you weren’t there.”
She didn’t want to hear. What if the things he told her hurt even more? What if they made her love him more and destroy what little resistance she had left in her?
“She was eight weeks pregnant when she told me. Her belly wasn’t even showing,” he said. “I had forgotten all about her. I didn’t know she was your cousin. I did what I thought was the right thing because you said there was no option for us either way.”
“There wasn’t. And I know all of that.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know that two days after town hall, with a pregnant wife at home, I came to you … but you were already gone.”
“What?” She was stunned but still noticed the way he had uttered the word wife and said town hall instead of my wedding.
“You’re my drug, Jane. Two days after that wedding, I was ready to throw it all to hell just to be with you. And if you had been there, I know what I would have done if you gave me the chance. That’s why I stayed away from you all these years. Because I knew what I was capable of.”
Her mouth was agape. She knew that, to him, who suspected he was the result of an extramarital affair, this was all the more horrible. She also knew that, if he had found her then, she would have—was—capable of the same. And then they would have truly been screwed—they would have hated themselves and eventually each other.
“Yes, Jane, two days after my wedding. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to tell you that I couldn’t give a damn about doing the right thing if it meant I had to be without you. That I made the biggest mistake of my life. That I was happy she wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t have to touch her. That I was going to divorce her, get the marriage annulled, or whatever I needed to do to get out of it so I could be with you. I was going to make you take me. I didn’t care how messy it was going to be with your cousin about to give birth to my child. I didn’t care. Not about her and not about anyone else. Just you. But you weren’t home, so I went to your mother and invented some excuse about a present I needed help exchanging. She told me you went on an unplanned road trip.”
“I had to make your wedding cake, Finn! And attend your wedding. All I could do later to stop myself from screaming was get in my car and just drive for three days with hardly any stops. I blew a tire in Cincinnati, so I just stayed.”
The dim corridor that they stood in was the back side of a beautiful, illuminated gallery. It somehow fit their state and the look in Finn’s eyes.
“We messed each other up. I messed us up. I hardly knew her. One miscalculated, unnecessary, forgetful … thing … before you and I got together …” He drifted off.
He looked lost; drowned in a sea of guilt. But the guilt wasn’t just his.
She had played a part in the way things had unfolded, too. But they had both done what they had to do.
