by Laura Drewry
Surely Finn didn’t want to spend any more time out there than absolutely necessary, so she needed to push herself to do more, to go deeper, and tonight was the night.
She moved with purpose all the way up the trail, and even though she was sure she was about to have a heart attack, she grabbed Finn’s hand and marched straight into the water until she was waist-deep again.
Without a word, she took a huge breath, closed her eyes, plugged her nose, and dropped. Finn’s hand instantly tightened around hers as the water pulled her down, pushed her sideways, and he held on, just like Tracy had that day.
Panic clawed at her, and her lungs burned, but she fought it, found her balance, and shoved herself straight up, breaking through the surface, gasping for breath.
Finn was right there, and before she could even reach her free hand out to him, his arms were around her, holding her tight, safe and strong.
“Holy shit.” His half-choked breath, warm against her neck, sent shivers racing down her spine, which made him tighten his hold even more. “Are you okay?”
Unable to speak yet, she fisted her hands into the back of his T-shirt and nodded shakily against his shoulder.
“Are you sure? Do you want to get out?”
God, yes, she wanted to get out, but she forced herself to shake her head.
“I—I need to d-do that a-again.”
And before she could talk herself out of it, she did it again. And again. And then again. When she came up for air the fourth time, Finn didn’t give her a chance to go under again; he just scooped her up and walked her straight out of the water, something she would have kissed him for, right then and there, if her teeth weren’t rattling and her lips weren’t trembling so hard.
Once he had her towel wound around her, he lifted her sweater off the rocks, then led her over to a fallen log and sat down. At first she thought he was going to pull her down beside him, but instead he tugged her onto his lap, set the huge sweater over her, then wrapped his arms around her good and tight.
It should have been awkward sitting there like that, because as close as she and Finn were, they’d never been close like this. This was almost…intimate, but Jessie didn’t care.
She felt safe and protected from the nightmares that plagued her, and when was the last time she’d felt anything close to that?
Shifting slightly, she pulled her feet up so they rested on Finn’s thigh, then tugged the sweater around her legs and finally let herself expel the rest of the breath she’d been holding.
“I don’t know if that was incredibly brave,” Finn muttered, dropping his forehead just above her ear, “or batshit crazy.”
Jessie didn’t answer, because she didn’t think she was either brave or crazy; she’d been determined, that’s all, determined to get through this as fast as possible.
But sitting there with him like that made her start rethinking her strategy. The sooner she got through this, the sooner she’d no longer need Finn to meet her out at the lake, the sooner their time together—alone—would end.
Stop that! Stop thinking about him any other way than the way you’ve always thought about him.
It was Finn, for crying out loud, not only her friend but her boss. Granted, she didn’t exactly have a normal employee–employer relationship with any of the O’Donnells, but at the end of the day this was their place, not hers. And she’d have to be out of her bloody mind to do something stupid like…like press her lips against Finn’s neck where she just knew he’d be warm, where she knew he’d smell so good and taste even better.
Whew.
Stop thinking about it. Think about something else…anything else. Like Sam!
Right. Sam. Sam would be here next month. Sam, who’d made it sound as if he might be thinking they should get back together. Sam, who’d clearly said if everything worked out, it would mean having Hooked film here every year.
And Jessie needed to help make that happen, because she had no idea what she would have done or where she would have gone if it hadn’t been for Jimmy giving her a job thirteen years ago. What started out as a hiding place soon turned into so much more, and she’d do everything she could to protect this place.
Just because she didn’t feel all swoony over Sam, she still liked him, and she could still be friendly with him. But she needed to find a way to be friendly without him thinking she was being that kind of friendly.
She sort of wished she could work up more feelings for Sam, because the more she saw Kate and Liam together, the more she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever find someone to love like that. Someone who’d have her feeling everything she read about in books, from the crashing bolts of lightning to the kind of warm, constant love that held steady no matter what.
Someone like Finn.
No! Not him. Anyone but him, actually. And it’d be a hell of a lot easier to convince herself of that if she wasn’t still curled up on his lap. So she forced herself to stand up, on shaky legs, and smile down at him.
“Sorry I got you all wet.”
He looked a little confused for a second, then blinked and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You okay?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t even a lie. Sure, she was still sort of wobbly, and, no, she wasn’t terribly keen to go back in the water tomorrow, but she’d dunked her head under four times, and that was better than she thought she’d do.
The fourth time she’d gone under, the image in her mind of Tracy had actually faded a bit, and that in itself was huge.
“Come on,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go in; I’ll make you some coffee.”
They made their way to the lodge in silence, changed into dry clothes, and met in the kitchen, where Jess pulled out the percolator and brewed him a fresh pot.
Doug and Connor were in the great room, watching the first Lord of the Rings movie, so Jess took them out a couple of cups plus a plate of cinnamon buns, then tiptoed out of the room so she didn’t disturb them.
Finn was still standing in the kitchen when she got back, but instead of heading in to watch the movie, as she thought he would—it was Lord of the Rings, after all—he waved her through to the office, then pulled the pocket door closed behind them.
No one ever closed that door.
He waited until she was as comfortable as she was going to get in her desk chair, then pushed things aside on the top of the credenza and slid his butt up on that. He hadn’t touched his coffee; he leaned his elbows on his knees, wrapped his hands around his mug, and stared down at it.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “What?”
His mouth pinched tight for a few seconds, and just when she thought he was going to say something, he blew out a hard breath and shook his head.
“Are you okay?” she asked, fighting past the burst of panic even after he nodded. “Then what? Come on, Finn. It’s me, you can tell me any—”
“I’m the reason Ma left.”
For a second she thought she must have misheard him, so she closed her eyes and tried to clear the fog from her mind. But when she opened them again, the vulnerability etched across his face nearly broke her.
After all these years and all the opportunities he’d had to talk about it, he chose right then, when she was still trying to recover from both being under the water and having his arms around her so tight, to trust her with the one thing he’d never trusted her with before.
And after all these years and all the times she wished he’d tell her, Jessie wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to hear it, not if it was going to hurt him as much as she thought it would.
“She hated it here, and why wouldn’t she?” A harsh grunt ripped out of his throat. “Stuck out in the middle of nowhere, halfway around the world from everyone she knew, and married to a man who never made a meal or washed a dish until after she’d left.”
“Just because she hated it here doesn’t mean—”
“I heard her say it, Jess.” That raw ache, the same one she’d heard when he called to
tell her about Jimmy, scraped up his throat.
“What?” Unsure if that one terrified word made it off her tongue loud enough for him to hear, she forced herself to ask again. “What did you hear?”
He tipped his head a little and blinked his gaze away for a few seconds.
“It was late. I got up to use the can and I heard them fighting. Wasn’t anything new, but it was louder this time and Ma’s crying was like…I don’t know, like a dam had burst and she couldn’t hold anything back.
“At first I didn’t understand what she meant when she said she couldn’t do it anymore, that running this place was hard enough when it had just been Ro and Liam underfoot, but when I came along less than a year after Liam…”
Finn stopped, swallowed.
“Whatever,” he muttered. “She said she’d done as much as she could for as long as she could but three was too much.”
He hesitated, sat back against the wall, and all Jessie could do was wait him out as the storm of that memory blew across his eyes and then lingered in their depths.
“Their door was closed, so I couldn’t see her, but…” He pressed his fist against the middle of his chest and rubbed. “I could feel it vibrate inside me every time she let out one of those god-awful sobs. I remember…I was standing in the middle of the hall crying, too, not only because of what she said but because she was so sad. It was like…shit, I don’t even know; I’ve never heard anyone cry like that.
“Stuff just came pouring out of her, how she was so tired of waiting for Da to be the man she needed him to be. And then she said my name…like…like it burned her tongue or something, like she couldn’t spit it out fast enough….She said having me made everything too hard. I was always getting myself into trouble or getting hurt, I asked too many questions, and I—” He stopped again, but only for a second. “I always needed her attention, I got on Liam’s and Ro’s nerves, and I never did what I was told.”
He cocked his jaw to the side and chuckled, low and dry. “She was right, too, about all of it. God, I was a pain in the ass.”
Every word out of his mouth stripped another layer off Jessie’s heart until it was left bare, exposed. She ached to crawl back onto his lap, to hug him and tell him his mother was a bitch from hell who didn’t deserve him or his brothers, but before she could form the words, his right eye twitched. It was the one tell all three O’Donnell boys shared, and it could only mean one thing: There was still more to come.
She waited while he rubbed his hand around the side of his neck, then she leaned forward and eased his mug out of his other hand before he dropped it.
“What else did she say?”
He didn’t answer at first, and for a second she thought he might not answer at all.
“Shit.” The word blew off Finn’s tongue in a regret-filled whisper, and then there was nothing but silence as his gaze roamed slowly over Jessie’s face. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
She’d seen that torment in his eyes before, and it ripped her just as much now as it did then. And now she knew what he’d meant when he’d described what it was like watching her relive her nightmare. The only difference this time was that it wasn’t her reliving it, it was him, and by the anguish in his eyes, he was seeing and hearing every single thing exactly as he had all those years ago.
After another muttered curse, he cleared his throat, licked his lips, and blurted it out.
“She told Da she wanted to take Ro and Liam with her.”
Jessie’s mouth fell open, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t force out a single sound.
“Yeah. Da just about lost his mind. He told her there was no fuckin’ way she was going to leave one of her boys behind, so if she wasn’t going to take all three of us, she wasn’t taking any of us.”
“Finn—” She started, but he shook his head.
“She walked away from Ronan and Liam because of me. They had to stay here…with Da, and…what he did because…”
Jessie knew exactly where that was going but she couldn’t do anything about it, because she understood that guilt. Jimmy hit his boys when he drank, and he drank because it eased the pain of having his wife walk out on him. On all of them.
And since Finn blamed himself for Maggie leaving, of course he’d blame himself for everything that happened because she left. It was no different from Jessie blaming herself for what happened with Tracy.
“You have no idea how many times they took his shit just to protect me because I was the youngest and the smallest. And every time he’d lay a beating on one of them, I knew it should’ve been me getting it, that it was my fault he was doing that to them, and that if it hadn’t been for me they’d have been long gone with Ma to wherever the hell she went.”
“Finn, no. Oh my God, no.” Without a moment’s hesitation, she reached for his hands, sandwiched them between hers, and pressed her forehead against them. It was no wonder he never talked about this; that was a lot for one kid to carry. “You know your brothers better than that; the only way Maggie would have got them off this island was if she hogtied them and dragged them off, kicking and screaming.”
“Maybe.” The flat smile he gave her looked pained and forced. “But we’ll never know that for sure now, will we?”
“I do know it for sure. This place is in your blood, like it’s in Ronan’s and Liam’s. The only reason any of you left here was because you were pushed out by a man who had a serious problem.”
Finn gave a half-snort and started to glance away, but she jerked his hand hard enough to bring his attention back.
“Don’t. Don’t do that. We both know Jimmy said horrible things to you, things that no kid should ever have to listen to. I was there, remember? I heard it with my own ears.”
The clouds in his eyes darkened; of course he remembered.
“But you know he only did that when he was drunk—and I’m not saying that excuses it, because it absolutely doesn’t. I’m just saying he wasn’t in his right mind when he got to drinking. But you didn’t make him drink, Finn; that was his choice. Every time he picked up that bottle, it was his choice; it had nothing to do with you or either one of your brothers.”
She dipped her head a little, forcing him to look at her again.
“Did he ever once say anything like that to you when he was sober?”
Finn cocked his jaw to the side a bit, then shook his head slowly.
“You see? I mean, don’t get me wrong, even sober, your father could be a hardheaded son of a bitch when he wanted to be, but, oh my God, he loved you guys. He was so proud of everything you did, strutted around here like a freakin’ peacock telling any guest who’d listen how his boys had helped build this place, that you’d all turned out to be hardworking men with huge flashy futures ahead of you. And you know how much he regretted the things he’d done when he was drinking.”
Jessie had been there that excruciating Christmas Day when Jimmy sat his three adult boys down in the great room and, with tears streaming down his round ruddy face, took full responsibility for everything he’d done and begged them to forgive him.
It wasn’t easy or fast, but with help, eventually all three of them had come to understand that it was the disease that made Jimmy do and say all those horrible things. Even so, they’d all been warned that forgiveness was the easy part; repairing the damage and forgetting what happened would be harder.
It had been especially hard for Finn. And now Jessie understood why.
No matter how hard Finn worked to erase the memories of what Jimmy had done and to heal those wounds, the underlying gash Maggie left in his young heart must have been so deep that it didn’t matter if Jimmy hadn’t meant any of it or not: She’d meant every word.
If his own mother couldn’t love him, if she was willing to give up her other children just to get away from him, how was he ever supposed to believe any other woman would feel differently?
That, coupled with the fact that both his brothers had divorces behind them…Go
d, it was no wonder he didn’t trust women.
And yet…
He’d trusted Jessie enough to tell her this, and now…now she had no idea what to do with that, so she did the only thing she could do: She pushed his rapidly cooling mug back into his hands, scooted her chair closer to him, and kept talking.
“Did your folks know?” she asked. “Did they know you were out there, that you’d heard everything?”
“I didn’t hang around to hear everything,” he said, his cheeks pinking a little. “I mean, jeez, the bladder’s only so big, and if I didn’t get to the can pretty soon, I was going to whiz all over the floor. But by the time I’d finished, I had a whole plan worked out to make Ma stay.”
“It must have been brilliant,” she teased gently, “since it clearly worked out so well.”
By this time he was almost smiling. Weird.
“It seemed simple enough: If I wasn’t there, she’d stay, right?”
“Of course.” Jessie added an eye roll for good measure.
“I’d watched Da enough that I knew how to pilot the boats, but it was pretty dark and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see out the front window, so that wasn’t going to work.”
“Kudos for figuring that out before you got halfway to Japan.” She lifted her mug, relieved to see him copy her, and took a sip. “I assume there was a Plan B?”
“There’s always a Plan B.” Finn swallowed a mouthful of his coffee, then exhaled a long breath of contentment before saying anything else. “The rowboat.”
“You didn’t.”
“Damn right.” Every sip of his coffee seemed to relax him more. “Problem was, I’d sprained my wrist the day before, so I couldn’t wrangle both oars evenly and kept going in circles.”
It wasn’t funny, the image of him in his pajamas (which, in Jessie’s mind, were superhero long johns), trying to row himself away from the Buoys, so why were they both laughing?
“Da found me out there the next morning, curled up in the bottom of the boat, drifting around the cove.”
“Oh my God—what did he do?”
