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“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Finn.” She wanted to reach out and touch his face. The years have sharpened the edges in them, made him rugged.
“You know what happened a week after the wedding, right?” he urged.
“Avery lost the pregnancy,” she mumbled.
“Yes. And the guilt, Jane, I can’t tell you … the guilt.” He shook his head. “All I could think of was that it was my fault. Because I didn’t really want it. I wanted to be free, and here I was, but at what cost? It was my fault. Because I’m a shit human being and because I loved you so much my fucking skin hurt, and I felt that losing you was worse than losing the …” He took a deep breath. His eyes glistened with pain, regret, guilt. “I kept thinking … if only I had waited one more week. One week, and I could have been … I wouldn’t have to … I would have you.”
“I didn’t know all that.” The words came out as a half-whisper. She was glad she didn’t believe in fate. Fate sounded like a bitch with a cruel sense of humor.
“I couldn’t exactly tell you. I didn’t know where you were. And I couldn’t leave a woman in that state, not even her. And the guilt … I had to make up for it. She lost another pregnancy at seven weeks sometime after. I knew that was my fault, too, because I treated it as some debt I was paying to a God I don’t even believe in.”
Anne looked at his face. Eyes washed in pain, features hardened. She knew what that felt like—trying to do something right and only making it worse.
“Then, she was finally pregnant with Max, but you didn’t show up for the christening.”
“Did you really expect me to be there?” Her mother had given her hell over it, but she just couldn’t.
“I didn’t want you there.” The muscle in his jaw flexed. “I didn’t want to have to see you and love you from afar at my own son’s christening.”
Tears prickled her throat now because the new shards in her heart weren’t dulled by time like the old ones.
What a mess. No wonder “their” song was a mumbo jumbo of words that no one understood. The two of them made about as much sense as the lyrics.
“At Noah’s daughter’s christening the year after, you walked in, and all I could do was pretend we were relatives and old friends meeting. I hugged you, with the entire family standing there, and God help me, I wanted to throw everything away just to be with you. Weeks of guilt … months … for one hug …” He trailed off.
She remembered that event. Her mother hadn’t let her dodge Noah’s daughter’s christening. She remembered that hug. She remembered drowning in his arms. She remembered him whispering in her ear something he knew she’d understand. “What fresh hell is this, Jane?” It was a quote that made them laugh when they had studied Dorothy Parker’s writing years before. She remembered Avery saying, “Anne, you’ve got to hold the baby.” And she had. She had held baby Max and sworn to never let Finn touch her again, to never let this hell take over Max, him, her. She had seen in his eyes back then that Max was what kept him going.
Tears brimmed her eyes now, and she swallowed, trying to stop them from falling.
Finn reached out, cupped her face, and brushed the tears away with the pads of his thumbs. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
He closed the distance between them, and his body touched hers again. “What fresh hell is this, Jane?” he half-whispered, this time against her lips.
The initial soft touch, that first taste, was all it took for them to be thrown right into where they had left off.
Like years ago, like no time had passed since they had last kissed, they held each other, clinging to the other’s touch and taste. Finn kissed her hard and rough and deep, like only he could. They were two people knowing and rediscovering each other.
Her head floated, but her body remained anchored to his. His fingers tangled in her hair and he held her firm against him, his pelvis and chest pressed into hers, and he was hard everywhere. She held on to his forearms and slipped her palms up to his biceps and shoulders. God, to touch him again …
But when her palms landed on his chest, and she felt the thudding of Finn’s heart, she pushed him. Kill the need.
“No. No. This is still wrong,” she panted against his lips, which he refused to withdraw from hers. She turned her head to the side and pushed more. “You’re Max’s dad. He’s my cousin. I can’t stand Avery, but she’s my cousin, too. And my aunt and uncle, and my parents, they’re not going anywhere, and they’re not nothing.”
Finn pulled himself back from leaning into her and tilted his head back, though he still held her with his hands in her hair. His eyes were the color of crashing waves.
“And for what, Finn?” she continued before he could speak. “We only spent one week together. We bonded over two broken dreams.” She swept a hand in the general direction of the gallery. “We never had a great basis from the start.”
“You know that’s not true,” he said, slipping his hands out of her hair and down to his sides.
He was right; it wasn’t true.
“I have to go,” she said. Sweeping her back against the wall, she moved to the side, out of his reach, then turned and walked out of the dark, messy corridor, and into the luminous gallery, leaving him behind.
She faked a smile and ran a hand over her hair to smooth it back to place. Then, despite her shaky legs and the heat that flooded every part of her, she walked toward Eddie and joined him and a few lingering guests, nodding at their artistic conversation. She ignored the way Eddie’s baffled gaze dropped to her lips. She knew they were probably red, raw, swollen. She smiled, or at least hoped she managed to wear a smile, to cover the ashes of her heart.
Moments later, from the corner of her eyes, she saw Finn walk out.
Her gaze and heart followed him, but her body stayed put. She couldn’t complicate her life, or her family’s. If she wanted to be a mother, she had to put others’ needs in front of hers. Just like he’d had to do back then. And despite what it had done to them, she respected him for that. Worse … she loved him for that, for being the kind of man who could take responsibility and do the right thing in impossible situations. And for having a rare heart.
