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The moment the words leave his mouth, the van that was trailing us creeps around the corner two blocks back, the headlights swinging into and illuminating the interior.
Fin ducks down on the seat and I follow suit as the vehicle passes, surrounding us in darkness before the passengers can see inside.
When it’s finally out of sight, Fin busts a U-turn in the dark and takes off back to the main roads.
41
ARIA
Darkness envelops us for most of the ride except for the sparsely placed street lamps along the way.
Tree lines and brush whiz past us like black blurs in the dead of the nighttime, broken up only by the occasional concrete barrier where people have tended to veer off-road, and despite how terrifying Fin looks, along with his fucking attitude, the drive has lulled me into some weird sense of calm. My trust for the driver growing with each minute he doesn’t pull us into an abandoned lot and murder me.
Fin’s presence is alluring in a way that makes him soothing so long as he doesn’t speak.
Fuck, I still don’t know where we’re going.
In this moment, though, it doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that I’m still just the widowed girl on her way to making something of herself and leading her sisters to a dream none of us ever thought possible.
My heart, however, palpitates at the thought of not having Rex in that mix. Of not feeling loved and seen for me without all the drama of a dead husband and years of mental healing.
It’s got me picking at my nails, two of which have already broken and sit discarded in my lap.
Rex says that I make him feel like a man, but he makes me feel like a human again. Something I didn’t even know I needed until he stomped in with his heavy boots and that sexy cocked grin.
The way he touched me at the photo shoot, held me, and laughed with me …
Pictures I haven’t even had the heart to look at yet.
Reality slams into me when Fin comes up close to the only other car on the road and taps his brakes a little rougher than I was prepared for.
Memories of the first car chase flood me as my heart rate kicks up, a deep knowing that this is the life I’m going to have if I keep Rex in the picture.
Fame that isn’t mine.
Paparazzi in my face, stealing private moments for their own gain.
Security around the clock at my store.
Fucking car chases and cameras that don’t belong to people I trust.
Hand to my heaving chest, I try to steady my breathing when the wave of nausea rolls over me.
“You’re gonna be alright.” Fin coos from the driver’s seat and switches lanes to pick up his speed in the free space.
I feel the word vomit almost as sure as I feel actual bile building in the back of my throat.
“I don’t know how, Fin. I don’t know how in the hell I’ll still be me without being attached to him for the rest of my life.” I wring my hands in my lap when the pressure does my chest no good.
“Isn’t that any relationship, though?” Fin asks as he eases back into the seat with a wide spread to his legs, a single hand steering the vehicle. “Take out the fame and you getattachments. One person doesn’t know where they end or begin.”
“I don’t believe the whole ‘incomplete without you’methodology,” I mutter, huffing at the past I knew all too well, knowing the work I desperately put into making myself better after all of it.
But he’s right. Part of a relationship is give and take.
I spent years consumed by Chip’s illness that I lost all the things that defined me. When he died, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Where I began or he ended. Or what part of me died with him. It took the photo shoot to really start breaking the cycle after years and years of mental torment. To start to feel like myself again. Like I deserved something more out of this life. And Rex leaving for me to truly embrace it.
