“I’ll be fine. I’m a good sleeper.”
“I know you are.” He grins, walking over to his dresser. “You wear a men’s large, right?”
“Excuse me?”
He laughs, holding up a gray t-shirt. It’s several sizes too big, but he tosses it to me. “It’s all I got.”
I sneak a sniff while his back is turned. Freshly-laundered Finn. “Can I, um . . . use your bathroom?”
“I’ve seen you naked,” he teases. “Not a fraction of the times I plan to, but still.”
Sure, right after I’d gotten him good and horny with my mouth. Now, we’re just standing here in the moonlight, and I’m supposed to get naked without any reservations? “I’m still a little shy.”
He gestures for me. “Come here.”
Gripping the t-shirt, I close the small space between us.
“I like you shy. And not shy.” He drops a smooth, lingering kiss on my lips. “And everything else you are or are not.”
I smile against his mouth. “For a photographer, you’re not half bad with the words.”
“I’m not half good, either. I’ll leave that to you.” He turns me by my shoulders to the bathroom. As if I could forget where the shower is after this morning’s peep show.
I change quickly, folding my clothes on the counter. I fix my hair and squeeze his toothpaste onto my finger before running it through my mouth. Instead of drinks with Benny, I’d been planning to run home and grab some things before coming here for the night. Change of plans, though.
A daughter. An eight-year-old daughter. Finn must’ve had her young. Younger than I am now. By my age, he would’ve had a toddler at home. I widen my eyes at myself in the mirror. A toddler!
I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that he’s a dad. He’s had a history, a marriage, and a baby with another woman. It’s too soon for me to decide if it means anything to me, which is just as well. I don’t have time to process it now.
I come out of the bathroom in nothing but Finn’s t-shirt and a thong. I’m glad the hem sits well down my thighs. If I’d known I’d be here tonight, I would’ve worn booty shorts to hide the dimples in my ass.
Finn is splayed on the mattress, his arm behind his head. He takes one look at me, rolls his eyes, and looks away.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, stopping at the foot of his bed.
“That’s the kind of thing you’d wear right after we’d, you know. So it makes me think of . . .” He turns on his side, away from me. “I don’t want to have sex while she’s in the apartment.”
“No, of course not,” I say quickly. “I didn’t expect that. At all.”
“Good.” He doesn’t look back at me. “Get under the covers and pull them up to your chin.”
I laugh.
“I’m not joking. If I see a sliver of skin, I can’t be held responsible for breaking my own rules. Again.”
With what’s beginning to feel like a permanent smile on my face, I pull back the bedspread. Finn shifts over until there’s enough space to fit Canada between us.
“Are you decent?” he asks.
“Not yet.” I tent the covers over us and mirror his position, folding my arm under my head as I turn onto my side. Except that I can actually see him.
Finn’s still in his sweatpants.
Still shirtless.
There’s an adorably sexy smattering of freckles on his shoulders. I trace some with my finger, skimming my hand across his back and then down toward his waistband. “My mom used to do this when I couldn’t sleep,” I tell the space between us.
He doesn’t respond, but I hear him breathing. A car passes outside.
I graze my nails up and down his skin. “I never told Rich that. Or anyone, I guess.”
“You’ve never mentioned her.”
My instinct is to shut down the topic, but Finn shared with me tonight. Now it’s my turn. What’s more—I want him to know. This is an enormous part of who I am. “She died when I was fifteen.”
“That’s when you went on the antidepressants?”
“Yes.”
When I graze his shoulder again, Finn reaches back and scoops my hand into his. He brings it to his mouth, kisses my palm, and releases it. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that what your tattoo means?”
My ears warm. “Yes. I wanted to memorialize her life, not her death. She loved birds.”
“Is it a certain kind of feather?”
“No—that’s the thing. She had birds growing up, all different kinds. She named them after colors. Baby Blue, Pink Polly, Lily Lavender. That’s why the feather’s colored in pastels. But she didn’t care about species or even their actual colors—she just loved them all.”
I resume scratching his back. I can’t believe I’m going here with him. I don’t like talking about it for a number of reasons, and I usually only do it when I have to. I could blame the alcohol for my loose lips, but I’ve already lost my buzz.
“She must’ve been young,” he says. “Was she sick?”
“Car accident.” I swallow. “I was in the car.”
“Fuck. Were you hurt?”
“The other car. Not hers.” My heart pounds. I’m sure Finn can hear it in the silence that follows.
He turns around to face me. “What?”
“We can stop here,” I warn. “It’s not exactly my finest moment.”
“Were you . . .”
“I wasn’t driving. Thankfully, I guess, although it doesn’t change the outcome. My, I don’t know what he was, my short-lived boyfriend, I guess—he was.”
“Drinking?” Finn asks.
“Yes.” It pains me to say it. I could’ve stopped Bobby from having even one beer. I could’ve spoken up after his second, or when he got his car keys from his pocket. I didn’t want him to see me as childish, though. “I wasn’t that kind of kid,” I say. “I really was good until I wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” he says. “What happened?”
I go back to the beginning. “I grew up in Westchester, where my dad still lives. My parents had high expectations, but I always met them. Usually at the expense of a social life.” That’s putting it mildly, but Finn doesn’t need to know just how unpopular I was. Growing up attending Broadway shows, I’d had it in my head I wanted to be a famous playwright like Samuel Beckett, so I joined the drama club. It was the only hobby my parents hadn’t forced on me, and through middle school, I took it seriously. I wrote plays and practiced my lines alone in the cafeteria at lunch, not caring that people snickered and called me a freak behind my back. “Like I told you, I was a little overweight, and I only had a couple friends. I never got asked out. And then Bobby came along.”
“The driver,” Finn says.
I nod. “He was the ultimate bad boy. Every girl in school wanted him, but oh my God, when he asked me to the winter formal—me—nobody could believe it, least of all me.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Finn says. “I’ll bet you were the perfect package and never knew it.”
“I wasn’t. I was an outcast, Finn. Bobby was the first guy to take me out. We dated a short time before the dance. I even cut one of my semester finals. I didn’t care, but my parents did, and they banned me from the dance. So I snuck out, and Bobby picked me up down the street. It was the craziest night I’d ever had. I lost my virginity to him.”
“While he was drunk?”
“Yes.”
Finn watches me closely. He inches closer until we’re almost touching. “He sounds like a piece of shit.”
“In hindsight, he was. Anyway, he drove me home later that night, or by that time, it was early morning, three thirty-seven to be exact. My mom had found me missing from my room. My dad called the cops and she got in the car to look for me. She was less than a mile from the house when . . .” A lump forms in my throat, and I try to breathe through it. I’ve told the story enough times—to my psychiatrist, Dad, Rich, law enforcement—that I can do it without
getting emotional. Just the facts. But it isn’t working at the moment. “Less than a mile when . . .”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“I killed her.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“I’m the reason she’s dead. Same thing.”
He cups my face. I think I hear a lump in his throat when he says, “You made a mistake. You were a kid.”
I cry. I haven’t cried for my mom in a long time. Too long. I’m not even sure it’s her loss I’m mourning.
Finn strokes my hair. “That’s it. Let it out.”
“It happened the weekend before Christmas. Bobby’s dad was a politician and my parents had been regulars on the social scene. They tried to keep it quiet, but it was too juicy. Some local tabloids picked up the story. They claimed I was an out-of-control, sex-crazed teenager who’d seduced the senator’s son and disgraced her poor, widowed father. That’s part of why I’m adamant about staying anonymous.” My classmates were sensitive to my mom’s death until a certain point. Many of them also believed what they read, as if I’d led some kind of secret life that’d killed my mother and made Bobby into a real live bad boy. “I was institutionalized for depression by mid-January.”
Finn stops playing with my hair. “Like a psych ward? Jesus.”
“My dad had to carry me to the car and then into the facility because I couldn’t get out of bed. I was there less than a month, even though I wanted to leave from the moment I stepped in the door. He told everyone I went to stay with relatives.”
“That’s wrong, Halston. You were grieving, not mentally unstable.”
At the time, they were one in the same. At least, that’s how it was put to me. I didn’t get to grieve as hard as my dad, because I’d caused it. Nobody at the institution was compassionate toward me about the accident after they’d heard how I’d been involved.
“My dad didn’t know what to do with me.” I shrug one shoulder, and more wetness leaks from my eyes. “Still doesn’t.”
Finn wipes it from my cheeks with his thumb. “I know what to do with you.”
I can’t help smiling a little. When I look up at him, moonlight and tears make little crystals in my vision. “You do?”
“Mhm.” He pulls the hem of my t-shirt up my belly, just under my breasts. “Turn over and take this off.” Then he adds, sternly, “In that order. Whatever you do, don’t flash me.”
I switch sides so I’m facing his bedroom door, and together, we get the shirt over my head. He smooths my hair out of the way, then begins scratching my back as I’d done for him.
I close my eyes and shudder as I release a few silent sobs. “That feels nice.”
“Just relax,” he murmurs.
I haven’t been touched so lovingly in over ten years.
After what I just confessed, it’s not the reaction I might’ve expected from him.
It confirms what I think we both suspect.
Finn was meant to find that journal. To find me. To be a salve for, and perhaps even heal, a heart I’d worried was destined to ache forever.
16
While I scramble eggs, Marissa makes a case for owning a horse. Thing is, it’s not so far-fetched. She has friends with them. Kendra had one growing up. One of the many reasons I had to get out of that family—horses shouldn’t be standard pets.
“Do you need one to be happy?” I ask her.
“No, Dad, and I knew you’d say that. But a horse would make me more happy.”
“How?”
“I’d get to ride it. You’re always telling me to go outside more. And some girls are so good, they’ll go to college free.”
“Is that so.” I scrape some eggs from the pan to a dish and try not to think about Halston sleeping down the hall. I want to focus on my time with Marissa. “Where are you going to keep this horse?”
“At grandma and grandpa’s.”
I serve Marissa her breakfast. Without my prompting, she’s already packed, dressed in jeans and a sweater with her blonde hair in a neat ponytail. Sometimes I think she’s got it together better than her mother or me. “Look, you know I’d buy you a pony if I thought it was a good idea.”
“Not a pony, Dad. I’m not five years old.”
“Sorry. My mistake.” I turn back to the stove to make myself a plate. “Pets require a lot of upkeep. Are you going to go straight to Gran’s every day, right after school, to take care of the horse? Then go home and do your homework? You won’t have time for friends or fun or anything else.”
“It won’t be that hard if we’re living there,” she says.
I set my plate on the table and sit across from her. “Where?”
She chews, shrugging. “Gran’s.”
“Why would you be living with your grandparents?”
“Mom said maybe. She hates the apartment.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not news to me that Kendra thinks she’s too good for the place I helped her pick out earlier this year. Moving in with her parents, though? Kendra’s beyond help, but Marissa still has a shot at growing up well-rounded and cultured—not sheltered and spoiled like her mom.
And since Kendra’s family is loaded, any job Kendra’s ever had has been for pleasure. I never cared what Kendra did with her days until the divorce went through and left me paying alimony and child support to a woman who has over a million dollars in her trust fund. Marissa needs a dose of reality, and Kendra obviously isn’t going to give that to her. That’s why I wanted to bring her to the city in the first place. But that was before the divorce.
I pour us each a glass of orange juice as I formulate my argument. “Horses cost money,” I say. “A lot of money.”
She picks up a piece of bacon. “Never mind. I’ll just ask Gran.”
“Why?”
“She has money. You’re broke.”
I slow-blink, sliding her juice across the table to her. “Why do you think that?”
“Mom and Gran. I heard them talking.”
I rub my jaw. I can sugarcoat the truth for Marissa like Kendra does, like I used to. Or I can be honest and teach her a valuable lesson she’s never had to learn—money doesn’t appear from thin air. It has to be earned. “Marissa, I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m not broke.” Not yet anyway. “I will always take care of you.”
“And Mom?” she asks, peeking up at me.
“And Mom,” I agree. “At least as long as it’s court mandated.”
“What?”
“Never mind. My point is this: Gran and Grandpa have money because Grandpa worked very hard to earn it. He was good at what he did and he went to work every morning until nighttime.” I have to pause to keep from gritting my teeth. It’s all true, but I have little respect for Kendra’s father, who reminds me of my old boss when I worked on Wall Street. Anything for a buck, no matter who it affected. “So,” I continue, “that hard work made him money, and that’s why Gran and Gramps are rich.”
“You work hard,” she says. “I know you do. I saw you go to work every day when you lived at home and it was always nighttime when you got back.”
I put my elbows on the table. “Yeah, but I didn’t like my job. For most people, that’s okay, but I want to love what I do. So I started over, which means it’ll take me longer to get back to making money.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I smile. “You’re not in trouble. I’m just trying to explain to you about money. You’ve always had it because of Gran and Grandpa, and I know your friends have it too. But not everyone does, babe. Some kids, most kids, would never even dream of owning a horse. When I was your age, I had to mow lawns in my neighborhood and give my parents the money I made to buy groceries.”
She widens her eyes. “You didn’t have food?”
“We did,” I say. “Because your Grandpa Frank had a steady job, and I pitched in.” Marissa doesn’t see Kendra working, and Marissa’s grandpa is recently retired. I pinch her nose with my bacon-greasy fingers to ease th
e wrinkles in her forehead. “Don’t worry. I promise, we’re all going to be fine. I just want you to go home and think really hard about whether or not you need that horse, and if you can’t live without it . . .”
She bounces in her seat. I guess she knew I’d give in one way or another.
“Ask Gran for one for Christmas.”
She giggles. “All right.”
Once Marissa’s fed, I put her in front of Netflix. “I’m going to make sure all your stuff’s packed,” I tell her.
“It is,” she says, eyes glued to Fuller House.
I head down the hall to my room and knock softly before opening the door. Halston is seated on the edge of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chin. Thankfully, she’s pulled my t-shirt over her legs, blocking anything of interest, or I’d be in trouble.
“You’re awake,” I say. “How do you feel?”
“A little hungover.” She glances behind me. “I was going to shower, but I didn’t want to make noise.”
“Kendra’ll be here any minute, so I’m going to get Marissa’s things and take her downstairs. Get some water from the fridge. You know where the shower is.”
She smiles with closed lips. “Is it still okay that I’m here? Or do you want me to go?”
I close the door behind me and walk over to her. When her text woke me last night, I’d panicked. I was sure she’d come in here, find Marissa, and run for the hills. Halston is only twenty-five. She doesn’t need to get involved with a man who has an eight-year-old kid. But, selfishly, I didn’t want to turn her away. Luckily, her drunkenness had given me an excuse to make her stay.
“The weekend’s just starting,” I say. “If you go now, I’ll be extremely upset.”
She bites her bottom lip. “Extremely?”
“I’ve slept next to you twice and kept my hands to myself.” Lifting her chin with my knuckle, I free her lip with my thumb to lean in and kiss her. “I don’t want to keep my hands to myself anymore. When I get back up here, be ready.”
She shivers, actually shivers, and grips the hem of the t-shirt in two fists. “I’ll be waiting.”
Her words go directly to my cock, her gaze even dropping for a split second. I leave the room to avoid a boner that’ll make my encounter with Kendra very awkward.
Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set Page 88
