AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Finn’s control snapped and he lunged at one of the men who’d spoken. He didn’t know what he intended to do, but the rage in him needed an escape. People screamed around him and someone, probably a cop, pulled him away.
He shook off the hands holding him and glared at the crowd, daring them to say anything more about his family. His gaze landed on a girl standing at the edge of the crowd. She looked so out of place among his neighbors in her peach tank-top and running shorts with her long blond hair hanging over one shoulder, resting on the swell of her breast. But more than that, the wide-eyed innocence in her emerald green eyes said she didn’t belong here.
Gretchen Christensen.
He hadn’t seen her face-to-face in years now, but under her newly formed curves, he recognized the once pesky kid who’d always insisted on tagging along with him and his best-friend, Brock. Only, looking at her now, there was little trace of the child she’d been.
“Gretchen.” He choked out her name and stumbled back.
There was fear in her eyes. She’d never seen him truly angry, had likely never seen a man hit someone, or say the words he’d said as he lunged for his neighbor. Those things didn’t happen in the world she inhabited. He’d never wished he were different so much in his life.
His gaze locked with hers and he shrugged in apology, hoping she’d remember he’d once spent an entire summer teaching her to swim, or that he, and not her brother, always let her hang out with them. Maybe then the fear in her pretty eyes would vanish.
“Finn.” She ran toward him and leapt into his arms. Squeezing his neck, she buried her face in his shoulder. His rage subsided, replaced with Gretchen’s unquestioning love.
Closing his eyes, he breathed in the smell of suntan lotion and chlorine—a scent he always associated with Brock’s baby sister—but now there was something else, something warm and tempting, something he could only describe as Gretchen. Oddly, as he breathed her in again the rest of his anger drained away.
My Gretchendrifted through his mind.
“Can you get me out of here?” He pulled back, still scanning the crowd.
“Of course.” Her fingers lingered on his neck. “You want to go to my parents’?”
He shook his head. “I have a room. I was staying at the motel.”
She nodded and took the keys he handed her, then followed him to his car.
~ ~ ~
Gretchen navigated the streets of their town in silence, but it wasn’t the comfortable companionship of old friends. Instead, the air was thick with Finn’s anger and confusion and her own thrumming awareness of his proximity. She didn’t take a full breath until she pulled into the gravel lot in front of the dingy motel on the outskirts.
“Have you been paying to stay here?” She peered through the windshield, cutting the engine.
He smirked. “I wouldn’t expect you to find it accommodating.”
“My dad would give you a room for free at the hotel.” They always had an empty room at the luxury hotel on the river her father owned, and he had a soft spot for Finn.
“I don’t need handouts from your family.” He opened the door and pushed himself out, slamming it behind him.
Gretchen sat for a moment, staring after him as he entered his room. Her hands shook, and her heart pounded in her chest, two things she’d never experienced around him before. Although she’d always had a crush on Finn James, he was her brother’s friend, not hers. He and Brock had already been dating girls and raising hell when she was still in elementary school. He’d been too old and uninterested in her for her to believe her crush would ever amount to anything. But now, she could still feel the ghost of his hands at her waist and her nipples still tingled from the press of his chest against hers, when he’d hugged her. She’d never reacted that way to any of the boys she’d dated.
Sliding from the car, she made her way around potholes and across the parking space to Finn’s room. She didn’t bother knocking before she pushed open the door and walked in, watching him as he stood in front of the mirror, his hands braced on the counter.
He’d stripped off his shirt, revealing the hard muscles of his back. The space between her thighs grew warm and she forced herself to breathe as she took him in.
He finally spoke, breaking the trance. “She was a whore.”
“Your mother?” She came into the room and closed the door behind her, turning the lock slowly.
Finn nodded, his gray eyes meeting hers in the mirror.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I shouldn’t say that?” he challenged.
Gretchen watched him for a moment before shrugging. “Was she? I didn’t know her well.”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t. You weren’t a man, and you weren’t paying for her services.”
She’d heard stories about Beth Reynolds being a prostitute, but since most of them had come from her own mother who openly detested the other woman, she hadn’t paid much attention.
