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She was now out of time and had no choice but to move on, leaving behind the club she had invested so much time in.
“You’re resilient enough you’ll find something else.”
“If it was that easy, I would’ve left already.” She added, “Long before the Peckers showed up,” to make the point she might not have met him if she had bailed as soon as the going got tough.
“The arm of the law is long. I’ll put out some feelers.”
While that would be a sweet gesture, the cop network probably wasn’t the best or easiest way to find a strip club manager position. But if that made him feel helpful, she’d let him have it. “And in the meantime?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Will we?” Mel pulled back a bit and tipped her eyes up to his stony face. “Tell me, Finn… Are we still pretending?”
“Pretending?”
“That our relationship is fake.” She had a few realizations while Taint dragged her outside by her hair. She would now share those same hard truths with Finn. Facts neither of them had addressed. “You stay at my place every damn night, Finn. You’ve been taking me to and from work for weeks now, when you really didn’t have to. Your reaction every time a Demon put their hands on me was more than someone only defending an acquaintance.” No, he took those incidents as a personal affront. “You should’ve seen your face when you got out of your truck.”
His tight jaw shifted. “You should’ve seen my face when I had to stand there watching Saint drag you out of the building.”
She sighed. “I’m sure. But would your reaction have been the same if I had simply been a paid informant?”
He pressed his lips together until his mouth was nothing but a slash.
“I know this is your job—”
“You’re not my job,” he said gruffly.
She ignored his interruption and kept going. “And you weren’t looking for a relationship. Neither was I.”
She was never one to avoid difficult, but necessary, conversations and she certainly wasn’t going to do that right now. Finn was too important to her.
When he swallowed, it was hard to miss his Adam’s apple hanging at the top of his throat for a few seconds before it dropped like a rock back into place. “Yeah.”
“But here we are.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Of course, since I have no choice but to figure out my future. I need a job. I have a mortgage, a car payment and I want to avoid dipping into the savings I put aside to buy a club of my own.”
He dropped his chin to his chest and met her eyes. “Not about that… About us.”
Her tongue swept across her dry lips. “Finn…” If he was going to avoid the truth, maybe it would be better to go their separate ways. She no longer had a reason or the access to continue helping the task force.
And while walking away from him at this point would certainly hurt, if she did it now it would be easier to recover and move on with her life. If she let herself fall any deeper and he didn’t feel the same, it would be devastating.
She stood at a crossroads. She could deal with an uncomfortable pinch now or a hard-hitting sucker punch later. It was up to her to protect herself. Both her heart and her future.
He stared at something over her head for a few long moments. Real or imagined, she didn’t know. But when he finally took a deep inhale and released it, “You’re right,” came along with it.
“About what?”
“It’s not fake.”
“What isn’t fake?” She needed to hear him say it. To admit the truth to not only her, but himself.
“What’s between us.” His hazel eyes locked with hers again. “It never was.”
Holy shit. Her hope went from tumbling to her feet to soaring above the clouds. “So, now what?”
He dropped his arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the waiting police. “Now you give them your statement so I can take you home.”
Home. That would be one discussion of many when it came to “figuring it out.” But not tonight.
Tonight she only needed Finn. No heavy discussions or decisions had to be made. In fact, “A soak in the hot tub would probably do me some good.”
“Whatever you need, girlfriend.”
Despite biting through her bottom lip when Taint slammed her into the wall, she gave him a big, even if painful, smile. “Your girlfriend needs her not-fake boyfriend to join her in that hot, bubbly water. Preferably naked since I have a lot more hidden freckles to discover.”
“He might need to inspect you for hidden injuries first.”
“Dr. Daniel Finnegan has quite a ring to it.”
“My medical license, found at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, qualifies me to do both thorough internal and external examinations.”
Did he just crack a smile? Even a little one?
