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He rubs my back in calming circles. “Did she get hurt?”
“I caught her. She was dead weight in my arms. I had her on the couch before Leo got to me.” A soft laugh. “I think he broke the light and sound barrier doing it. Apparently the biggest thing to worry about is being hurt from the fall, so they put her on bed-rest.”
“I’m sorry. Can I do anything to help?”
I lean my head against him, and he tucks me under his neck. “You always see me at my worst. Things going wrong. Breaking down. Crying.”
“I see you at your best,” he says softly. “Every time.”
My heart squeezes. “I know she’s okay. My brain knows it, but my heart can’t seem to—”
“Of course not,” he says, his voice low and calmly reasonable. “Adrenaline flooded your system, helping you handle it. For hours. And once it wears off you need rest.”
I sigh. “I should probably call my mother and give her an update. I talked to her when Haley was discharged from the hospital, but I should still—”
“Can you send her a text?”
“Well, I suppose. But she already knows all the information. She’ll just want to decompress. Talk it out until she feels better.”
Silence from Finn.
Then: “You need to feel better, Eva.”
I stiffen. “They’re my family. This is a crisis.”
“Earlier was a crisis. This is you serving as the emotional regulator for every person in your family. If your mother is stressed, that’s fine. A scary thing happened. Let her be stressed.”
“I should be there for her.”
“Will she be there for you? Or does it always go one way?”
Indignance rises. “I know the Morelli family is messed up. I know we’re broken and toxic and a million other things, but they’re mine. I love them, and they love me.”
“They love what you do for them.”
That’s it. I stand up, even though it hurts to leave the warm comfort of his arms. And I face him in my rumpled lavender baby shower dress. “You’re one to talk. You’re sacrificing your entire life to your family. And not just your family. That I could understand. You’re sacrificing everything to the secret your family keeps.”
“Eva.”
“You’re just as bad as me. Admit it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s worse, actually.”
“It’s the Hughes curse. I was raised to do this.”
“Phineas Galileo Hughes, your family doesn’t have a lock on curses.”
He pauses. “I like my name on your tongue.”
I glare at him, because I’m still not over it. He gives everything to his family and then tries to argue when I want to do the same. Both of us tend our families like they’re terrariums, ecosystems that only exist because we’re keeping them together.
“It makes me hard,” he says, tracing two fingers down my thigh, along the silk fabric of the dress. “But I never got to sign it on your naked body the way you did on mine.”
Sensation runs through me, hot and electric. “I’m still mad at you.”
His lips quirk. He’s still the playful Finn I knew all this time, but there’s more gravity in his eyes now. More awareness of the pull between us. “You’ll forgive me, though.”
