by Amelia Wilde
Finn inhales sharply. “Maybe it’s not so much convincing as fortifying. I need to be…” I have him in my fist. “…fortified…in order to face this brunch. And right now, I’m just not there yet.”
“I can help you with that.”
“Not like this,” he growls. “Fully clothed in the kitchen?”
“Kitchen sex can be hot,” I tease.
He takes my chin in his hand and tilts my face up to his. “No. I want you naked, on my bed, with your ass in the air.” Heat starts building and pulsating between my legs. “I’ve never seen you like that before. Exposed. Dirty. Wet.” Holy shit. This is all new. Finn has never spoken to me this way before. We never had a bed like this before, up until last night. And it has me so ready, I might not make it to the bedroom.
“I—I—”
“Not another word,” Finn says, and he scoops me up into his arms.
We’re almost late for brunch.
Chapter Nineteen
Finn
Emily calls her mom on the way over. She looks beautiful. Her cheeks are still flushed from the shower we took together, and she’s braided her dark hair in a style that looks intricate and girl-next-door all at once. “Mom? We’re almost there. Five minutes?” Then she glances over at me. “Yes, he’s with me.” Her mom’s voice rises on the other end of the line. I can’t tell what she’s saying, but Emily smiles. “Good. See you then!”
“Okay.” I grip the steering wheel of my truck a little tighter. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s…brunch,” Emily says slowly. “For Christmas Eve. A traditional Christmas Eve brunch.”
“Is that a tradition?”
She shrugs. “At our house it is.”
“And it’s just regular brunch?”
“Well, brunch with guests.”
That makes me sit up straighter. “What kinds of guests?”
Emily darts a look at me from beneath her eyelashes. “Just friends of my parents. My aunt and uncle. A couple of cousins, if they’re home from college.”
These people could be anyone. I’ve been living and working in Lakewood since I graduated, save for parts of my apprenticeship, and some of them could be clients of mine.
I don’t know which thing I dread more. Is it facing Emily’s parents, or having to make small talk with a bunch of people I’d rather not see if we’re not engaged in a building project?
“You don’t have to be nervous,” she says softly.
“The hell I don’t.”
“Like I said, they don’t—”
“They don’t hate me. That doesn’t mean they’ll approve. And there’s nothing I hate more at brunch than awkwardness.”
“It won’t be awkward,” Emily laughs. “Not unless you make it awkward. And you’re not going to do that, are you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
It turns out, Emily’s right.
Her parents aren’t the same as they were when we were in high school. They’re older, grayer, and more mellow. It strikes me as her dad reaches for my hand to shake that they’re not making choices for her anymore. If they were, I’m absolutely sure she wouldn’t have spent the night with me last night.
“Good to see you, Finn,” booms her dad, practically pulling me over the threshold with the strength of his greeting. While Em’s mom supervises the putting of coats in all the different places for coats, her dad is the one to make small talk. “I saw the work you did on Howie Cole’s mud room. You’ve elevated mud rooms to an art form, son.”
He cracks a smile as he says it, and I can’t help but return it. Who are these people? Oh—regular adults, solidly in middle age.
Em’s mom has an arm through her elbow, talking quietly into her ear, eyes shining.
“Mom!” I hear her say. “You’re gross. Where is everybody?”
“The living room,” Mrs. Powell says, and then I hear it—the low murmur of even more small talk, rising and falling over instrumental Christmas music.
Oh, God.
“You two, come with me.” Her mother fixes me with a no-nonsense look and my feet move without my consultation, carrying me straight to Emily’s side. “It’s so good to see you, Finn. Now. In the living room, we’ve got Aunt Carrie and Uncle Bob—do you remember them from when you were in school, Finn?—and Josie is back from college. The Howitzers are here from down the block—”
She keeps talking, but I’m looking at Emily.
Em looks a little tired, and as her mother speaks I catch her looking off into the distance at least once. Not the far distance, because we’re inside. I want to know what she’s thinking. I want to know it so badly that I almost ask her, but it’s time to greet people.
“They all really missed you at last year’s brunch,” finishes Mrs. Powell. Then she hooks her other arm through mine and pulls us down the hallway toward their high-ceilinged living room, which is decked out in Christmas decorations. There are two long tables on one side, and there is so much food on them that the middles are starting to sag. No joke.
“This is brunch?” I say it in spite of myself, catching the attention of the couple nearest to the doorway.
“Everybody, Em and Finn are here!” Mrs. Powell cries, and an actual cheer goes up.
The couple near the doorway turn out to be Uncle Bob and Aunt Carrie, who are almost morbidly fascinated with the law firm Emily works at and what the working hours are like and how did she ever manage to come home for the holidays?
“We had a few days off,” she says, edging closer to me. “I got lucky this year.”
Aunt Carrie must have a dirty mind, because she flicks her gaze to my face. “I’ll say.”
Emily rolls her eyes. “Oh, my God, I knew this would happen.”
I’m standing right next to her, and I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Come on, Finn. Let’s get a mimosa, or whatever poor substitute they have for beer.”
I lose Emily for the next twenty minutes. Then, out of nowhere, she’s cornered me near the enormous deli plate on one end of the long tables. “Finn.”
“Yes?”
“Do you hate it?”
“I love the food.”
“What about the rest?”
“The small talk I could do without. Why didn’t you tell me there was so much food?” I lower my voice to a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me that your parents have turned into semi-normal people?”
“I tried,” she says with a laugh, stepping closer. “There’s something I need to…show you.”
“What is it?” I scan the tables, looking for whatever mysterious food delight she’s about to point out to me.
“In my bedroom,” Emily says pointedly.
I drop the plate right on the surface of the table and head for the door. Emily wraps a hand around my elbow. “Wait, wait. Walk slower than that, or everybody’s going to know.”
I lean down and whisper into her ear. “I don’t care if they do. Let them be jealous.”
She blushes and follows me upstairs.
Chapter Twenty
Emily
It feels dangerous, taking Finn up to my bedroom, even though I’m a grown adult. It’s dangerous and naughty and hot, and when he shuts the door behind us, I have to take deep, calming breaths to keep my mind steady.
“How long do you think we have?”
“Until what?”
“Until somebody notices you’re missing and follows us up here.”
“They’re not going to follow us.” He puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me, the warmth of his lips on mine still a shock somehow, even after last night. When I resurface for air, I can feel all the little inhibitions I have melting away. “Just to be on the safe side, five minutes.”
“Five minutes,” Finn murmurs, fingers playing at the hem of my shirt. “We probably shouldn’t take this off, then.”
“No.”
“And you should probably stay very, very quiet.”
There’s su
ch an easy dominance in his voice. Nothing like you see in the movies. It comes from his own confidence, and I’m in awe of him. This bedroom used to be a formidable, forbidden place, and now he’s standing here with me like he owns it.
The threat of being discovered is making me twice as hot.
Finn kisses me again, roughly, possessively, but when he breaks it off, there’s an intensity in his eyes that’s covered by an emotion I can’t name at first. Then I see it. It’s pain.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper, pressing myself closer, twining the fingers of one hand through his.
“This place,” Finn says, still looking into my eyes. It looks almost identical to how I left it when I went to college, with most the debris from daily life cleaned out, my precious school things packed away. “It’s like coming home again, only the place you thought you were visiting doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I miss those days, too.”
“It’s more for me than that,” Finn says. “There isn’t a day that’s gone by since I thought of you. Since I beat myself up for not chasing after you with everything I had. And now…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe our lives are too different.”
It makes my core go cold, hearing him say those words. It strikes at the heart of my deepest fear.
I sit down on the bed.
“Em?”
“Maybe it is too late.” I look up at him, and his face twists into a deeper hurt.
“I really don’t think so.”
Finn gets down on one knee next to the bed so we’re at eye-level with each other. “Are you proposing?”
His expression is serious. “I should be.” He swallows hard. “But I’m not. Em—”
I can’t bear to see him like this without settling things, one more time. “Finn, I’m so sorry about what happened at Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m sorry, but I’m also glad that things turned out the way they did. Because I missed you, too. I missed you terribly, every day that I was in college. After a while, I stopped looking you up on all the social media sites.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Hate those things. Always have.”
“I know.” My chin is trembling, but I am not going to cry. “I don’t know why I kept looking.”
Finn doesn’t hesitate. “Deep down, you know you made a mistake.”
His words stop the breath in my lungs. “What mistake?”
Blue eyes on me, burning straight into my soul. “Walking away from me like that.”
Just like that, I’m back there on the football field. It was homecoming, and I was on the cheerleading squad but also nominated to the homecoming court, so during halftime, I went out in my uniform with a bouquet of flowers.
Except it didn’t go according to plan.
Finn, the boyfriend who was never good enough for anyone except me, was supposed to escort me onto the field.
I don’t remember what my parents said that day, only that they wanted me to walk out with Desi Patton, who was the team’s best running back. He was handsome. First string. Popular. And right when it was time, right when I was scrambling to make it to the line, Desi caught up with me.
“Your mom asked me to escort you out onto the field,” he said, flashing that infamous smile at me.
“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve got someone.”
Desi looked around. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“He’ll be here.”
But Finn wasn’t there. He was supposed to be there, and he wasn’t. Irritation gathered at my temples. Where the hell was he?
All of the things everyone had always said about Finn thundered through my mind. He was from a bad family. He couldn’t be counted on when it really mattered. He would never amount to anything. His dad was an alcoholic who had ruined his life. Finn would be the same. They said all these things because he didn’t buy in to everything we did at school, because he wore clothes from the local thrift shop, because he wouldn’t dole out mean hits for the sake of the team on the football field.
It wasn’t until the last possible moment that he appeared, breathless, face white. “Em, what are you doing?” He had to shout the words over the applause from the bleachers while Tori Yates took the field on the arm of the quarterback.
“I got a different date,” I’d snapped, trying to enjoy the biggest moment of my life.
“What?”
“Desi’s escorting me out.” Finn’s face had fallen, and I instantly regretted the words. But he was in the wrong. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”
That last bit was a barb of epic proportions, because Finn and I spent hours texting, late into the night. To dismiss that was cruel and petty and awful, and I did it anyway. I thought I knew then that Finn was never going to be part of my life plan, so when Desi walked me out onto the field, I never looked back at him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Finn
Emily’s looking at me, but I watch the expressions flit across her face and realize that she’s not seeing me as I am now. She’s seeing me as the eighteen-year-old I was, in a dirty football uniform, who was late to take her out onto the field because my dad had shown up at a game.
He never came to my football games, and thank God, because he was usually drunk. In school, people would edge around me acting as if my alcoholic father was contagious, but on the field, nobody cared about anything except the game. It was freedom, for a few Fridays in the fall.
But not that night.
The night that Emily was on the homecoming court, he showed up at the gates, belligerent and out of his mind on whiskey. I’d been making my way to her when one of my teammates had grabbed my elbow. “Hey.”
I’d shaken him off. “I have somewhere to be.”
“No—Wyatt Senior is here.” That’s what everybody in town called him. They still do, but they talk about him less and less now.
“What? Where?” My heart had sunk into my stomach like a stone.
“At the entrance gate. He’s fighting with Mrs. Patterson.”
Mrs. Patterson, the nicest woman ever to grace the halls of Lakewood High. She worked in the front office during the day and sold tickets for all the sporting events.
“Jesus.”
“I know, man.”
So I’d had to skirt the crowd around the gate to the field, and when I got to the concessions stand, Mrs. Patterson was ready to call the police.
“Sir,” she was saying in her firmest, don’t-fuck-with-me voice. “I can’t let you into the football game. If you’re not willing to leave, I’ll be forced to call the authorities.”
“Call them,” my father slurred, sneering, taking another swig from the bottle. “You’re not going to stop me from seeing my boy play in the game.” He dropped the bottle onto the grass. “Bitch.”
Anger, pure and hot, had surged up from my gut to my throat. In that moment, I felt how big I’d gotten from the football practice, and how small and pathetic my father looked, saying that shit to Mrs. Patterson. I lunged for him, taking his collar in my fists, and pressed him up against the chain-link fence.
“Get the hell out of here,” I said, right into his face. “Don’t ever come here again.”
“What the fuck, Finn?” His breath had reeked of whiskey and his eyes could hardly focus on my face. “I came to see you play, and this bitch—”
“That’s Mrs. Patterson,” I roared. “You call her a bitch again, and she won’t need to call the police. Do you get what I’m saying, you drunk asshole?”
“Finn—” she said from behind me.
“It’s okay,” I answered, but it wasn’t. My hands were shaking. Emily and I had been dating undercover for a few months, and this was supposed to be the big moment that we revealed our relationship to the world. Or at least to Lakewood High. She was nervous, because she knew how her parents felt about my dad. She knew how everyone felt about my dad. But if I could just let them see that I wasn’t anything like him, it would all turn out. I let my father’s collar go and turned him around. “Get
out of here. Go home and sleep it off. Jesus, don’t embarrass me anymore.”
“Oh? I embarrass you?” he said, then laughed out loud.
“Go.” I pushed him another few steps away from the entrance.
He turned around one more time. “You’re a piece of shit, Finn.” I followed him out, turned him, and sent him on his way. When he got to the corner of the big school lot, I saw them—the lights from a police car, approaching with no sirens on.
At the concessions stand, Mrs. Patterson had tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t want—”
Shame, sickening shame. “No. I’m sorry that he came here. I never asked him to.”
“I know that.” She leaned out the window of the stand. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Then I’d turned back to the stands. Shit. Everything was starting. The first members of the court were already on the field, and I was missing it.
They weren’t missing me, though. I could see faces turned in my direction. They’d seen everything, and now, behind me in the darkened fall evening, they could see the police car’s lights. By tomorrow, everyone would know that they’d hauled Finn Wyatt’s drunk father out of the football game after he made a scene.
I tried to make it to her in time. I really did.
But when I got there, Emily’s face was tight with anger and Desi Patton had stepped in to take my place.
She walked out onto that field, and she never looked back.
“It was a terrible mistake,” she whispers, sitting in the same bedroom she had back then.
But a realization is dawning for me, too.
Because what did I do for the rest of the year?
I avoided her.
It was a stalemate between us. I shouldn’t have expected an eighteen-year-old girl to see what I’d saved her from. What I’d saved the entire crowd from. All she knew was that I was late, and the stories that went around afterward made me look like an angry ass who brawled with his dad at the football game. It fucking killed me at the time. I was blinded by it.
