The Comeback Kiss

by Lani Diane Rich

  “You...” She blinked against the tears in her eyes. “You were the one who made me laugh when I had a crappy day. You were the one I vented to when I was mad, the one I shared all the good stuff with. You always knew when I was full of crap, and you always called me on it. You were smart, you were funny, you were good-looking. You were mine. And then, suddenly, you weren’t.”

  He stared at her, not sure what to say. He thought he’d done her a favor. And he had.

  He was sure he had.

  Hadn’t he?

  “I knew every day exactly what I’d lost,” she continued, her voice tight and quiet, “and I missed you every day and I believed in you every day, and my heart broke every day. That’s the big favor that you did for me. Thanks so much.” Finn kept quiet, kept his focus on the door. Tessa took a step closer to him, their bodies practically touching as she spoke in quiet tones.

  “Here’s the kicker,” she said, a bitter laugh in her voice. “You weren’t even protecting me. You were protecting yourself. If you’d given half a thought to me, you would have said good-bye.”

  He looked at her, could feel the emotion curling around his neck like a noose, and something inside him urged him to say something, to do something. Reach out to her. Hold her. Tell her everything. Instead, he stood there and did nothing.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said finally. He watched her as she snatched her coat and keys and fled, leaving the door open behind her.

  Finn wasn’t sure how long he stood there, frozen in the hallway. It was long enough that the chill finally snapped him out of it, and he walked over to the door and shut it. He ran his hands over his face, closed his eyes, heard her voice.

  You weren’t even protecting me. You were protecting yourself.

  All he’d wanted to do was return the stupid car. How had he managed to fuck everything up so monumentally in the process? Every instinct he had was wrong, every word he said was an exercise in stupid. Yet, as he stood motionless in Tessa’s hallway, his gut told him to go after her, to say more to her. To say everything.

  “God,” he said under his breath, running his hand over his face. “All I wanted to do was return the fucking car.”

  He plodded up the stairs and made a beeline for Izzy’s room, knocking gently twice.

  “Come in,” Izzy said.

  He opened the door to see Izzy, Margie, and Vickie sitting around the PlayStation, stricken expressions on their faces. He pulled on a tight smile.

  “Guess you guys caught the show, huh?”

  Izzy shook her head. “We heard, you know, voices.” She paused for a moment. “She’s really mad, huh?”

  “You could say that,” he said. “If you’re into understatement. Look, I’m, uh... I’m gonna go after her, try to talk to her.” He looked to Margie and Vickie. “Can you guys stay with Izzy until Babs gets home?”

  Margie nodded, smiled lightly. “Sure. You bet.”

  Izzy huffed. “I don’t need babysitters.”

  Finn walked over to her, knelt down in front of her.

  “I know,” he said. “I need them. I made a promise that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, and it’s a promise I intend to keep. Think you can humor me on this one?” Izzy smiled. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Okay,” he said. He straightened up, kissed her on the top of her head, and let his leaden feet carry him downstairs, out the door, and into the cold in search of Tessa.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Finn sat down at the bar in Riker’s and checked his watch. Tessa had been gone for over an hour, and every minute that went by without her made him edgier. She wasn’t skating at the lake, she wasn’t hiding in the shack. She wasn’t on the swings in the park, and she wasn’t wandering around town. He knew; he’d cruised every street in town twice looking for her. She probably had just taken the Thing for a long drive.

  “Let me guess,” Surly said, settling a bar napkin in front of Finn. “Pepsi?”

  Finn shook his head. “Get me a Jameson’s.”

  Surly raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything as he pulled the whiskey off the shelf. Finn knew he shouldn’t drink. He got stupid when he drank. Then again, given the events of the night, it wasn’t like he could get much stupider.

  Surly set the Jameson’s down in front of Finn. Finn tossed a ten on the bar and slammed the drink back. It was sharp and hot going down, and it reached out into every corner of Finn’s being, pushing away the crazy that Tessa had put there.

  Hmmm. Maybe there was something to drinking after all. He raised his glass to Surly. “Keep ’em coming.”

  A hand landed on the ten and pushed it back toward Finn.

  “I’ll cover that.”

  Finn glanced up. “Mr. Dale.”

  Mr. Dale smiled. The glass eye was actually a quality piece of work. As a matter of fact, if he hadn’t known to look for it, Finn might not have even noticed.

  Mr. Dale settled onto the bar stool next to Finn’s. “I heard you were back in town.”

  “Funny thing about rumors,” Finn said as Surly poured another round. “On occasion, they’re true.”

  Mr. Dale chuckled lightly. “I’m glad I bumped into you. I never got the chance to thank you.”

  Thank me for what? Finn thought, but a split second later he put it together. Tessa. The money. Helping people. Glass eye.

  “So,” Mr. Dale said, “thank you.”

  “It was nothing,” Finn said, which was true, since Finn had nothing to do with helping Tony Dale.

  That was all Tessa.

  Tessa. Who loved him. Who, for whatever reasons beyond all logic and common sense, loved him. The only woman Finn had never been able to shake told him she loved him and he said... nothing.

  Finn downed the second whiskey.

  “It wasn’t nothing.” Mr. Dale took a sip of his beer, then settled it down on the napkin in front of him. “It meant a lot that you’d help me out, especially after I almost flunked you in geometry.”

  Finn chuckled. “Yeah, you almost did that, didn’t you?” He clinked his glass with Mr. Dale’s. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Dale?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  Shut up, Finn thought to himself, but he kept going. “You know how there are women, and then there are women?”

  Mr. Dale gave a brief smile, then waved to Surly. “I think we’re gonna need another round here.”

  “So, here’s the thing, Mr. Dale—”

  “You can call me Tony, you know,” Mr. Dale said.

  Finn looked at him for a moment, tried to imagine his old geometry teacher as Tony.

  “No, I really can’t.” He took another sip of his drink. “Mr. Dale, there are a lot of women in the world.”

  Mr. Dale nodded. “Yep. Sure are.”

  “And they’re great. Pretty, funny, smart. Great. Right?”

  “Yep.”

  “And then...” Finn shook his head. “Then there’s the girl... the woman...” He clenched his fist, then released it. “The one that makes you crazy. The one that makes every breath so fucking hard, but even if you only got one moment with her a day, she’d still be worth it.”

  Mr. Dale sipped his beer, sighed knowingly. “Yep.”

  “You can’t be with her, you can’t not be with her...” Finn sighed, shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Dale said after a moment. “Was there a question in there somewhere?”

  Surly set another Jameson’s in front of Finn, and Mr. Dale dropped some more cash on the bar. Both men lifted their glasses and drank.

  “She told me she loved me,” Finn said after a moment, “and I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well,” Mr. Dale said thoughtfully, “do you love her?”

  “I’m sitting at a bar drinking Irish whiskey and pouring my heart out to a one-eyed geometry teacher,” Finn said. “It’s not looking good for Finnegan.”

  Mr. Dale laughed. “No, it’s not.” He took another sip of his beer. “Listen, Finn. I’ve been dating for a ver
y long time, and in all these years, I’ve learned exactly one thing about women.”

  “Yeah?” Finn twirled his whiskey under his fingers. “Then you’re one up on me. What is it?”

  “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.”

  Finn took a second to absorb this. “Yeah? You think?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Mr. Dale said, suddenly animated. “Look, we say stuff to women all the time. We say we’ll call them, then we don’t. We tell them they’re beautiful, then we spend the evening looking at other women. We say we don’t love them when we do, and we say we do when we don’t. Christ, if I was a woman, I wouldn’t listen to a goddamn thing any man ever said to me.”

  “You make a good point there, Mr. Dale,” Finn said, “but it doesn’t help me. See, the only way for me to show how much I love her is to get out of her life.”

  Mr. Dale went quiet for a bit, then shrugged. “Well, then, you’re pretty much fucked.”

  “Yep.”

  They each stared off into space for a while.

  “So, what happened to yours?”

  “My what?” Mr. Dale said. “My woman?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mr. Dale sighed. “She married an ophthalmologist.”

  Finn was horrified. “A what?”

  Mr. Dale gave an ironic snort. “An eye doctor.”

  Finn stared at Mr. Dale, and clarity suddenly fell over him. In that moment, he knew with more certainty than he’d ever known anything in his life that he did not want Tessa to marry an ophthalmologist. His heart started beating erratically, and he couldn’t sit still. He hopped off the bar stool and clapped Mr. Dale on the shoulder. “I gotta run. Thanks for the drinks, man.”

  Mr. Dale continued to stare out into the middle distance. “Yeah. No problem.”

  Finn walked out of the bar and into the cold air, breathing it in deep, hoping it would smack the effects of the alcohol down. He had to find Tessa. He didn’t know what he’d say to her once he did, but he could cross that bridge when he came to it. He knew he couldn’t be with her, couldn’t stay, but damned if he was going to let her marry a fucking ophthalmologist.

  He stopped where he was, at the edge of the Riker’s parking lot, and realized he’d fully lost his mind. He couldn’t talk to Tessa like this. If he did, he’d screw things up even worse. No, the thing to do was hike into town, hole up at the shack, something—anything—that would keep him away from Tessa until morning, when he’d gotten his sanity back.

  Which would have been a good plan if the Thing hadn’t pulled into the parking lot at just that second, whipping into a spot at the side of the building and trapping Finn in the glare of its headlights. He froze there, momentarily blinded as the lights shut off. By the time his eyes adjusted, she was standing in front of him, leaning against the grille of the car.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Tessa said. “I came back, Izzy told me you’d run out. I’ve been looking for you all night.”

  Finn stuck his hands in his pockets and laughed a weird, nervous laugh. Christ, he was gonna mess this up bad.

  “Well, you found me. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” He glanced around. “I’m just gonna go for a walk, or something. See you tomorrow.”

  Her eyebrows twitched toward each other, and she pushed herself up off the grille of the car and walked toward him.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Pffft,” he scoffed, then shrugged. “Mr. Dale bought me a whiskey, yeah.”

  A smile spread over her face, and her eyes seemed lit from within. How had he never noticed that about her before?

  “Tony Dale bought you drinks?” she asked.

  Finn chuckled. “You can call him Tony? See, I couldn’t do that.”

  Tessa shrugged. “I’ve known him as an adult a lot longer than you have.”

  Their eyes met and held for a moment. A slight smile curled on one side of her face. God, she took his breath away.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, reaching up and touching her face with the backs of his fingers and it felt so good, she felt so good. He leaned forward until their foreheads were touching.

  “Don’t marry the ophthalmologist,” he said.

  “What?” She pulled back, looking at him like he was crazy, and the moment was broken. “Okay, Hoss. I’m taking you home. We’ll come back for the other car tomorrow.”

  “I love you, Tessa.” He breathed it more than said it, but he knew she heard it, because she took a step away from him and stared at him with an unreadable expression.

  “Are you kidding me?” she said. Then, louder, “Are you kidding me?”

  Suddenly, the expression was readable. She was pissed off.

  “Tessa—”

  “No,” she said, waving her finger at him. “No. You do not get to go out, get drunk, and say that to me.”

  “That’s not—” Finn started, then regrouped. “Well, okay, that is what happened, but I’m not just saying this because I’m drunk.”

  “Then why?” She put her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and sighed. “I can’t deal with this right now. Look, Finn, if you have to come here and get stoked up on tequila—”

  “Irish whiskey, actually.”

  “Whatever,” she said through clenched teeth. “If you have to get drunk in order to tell me you love me, then you don’t love me. So let’s just drop it, okay?”

  She turned to go back toward the car, but he caught her by the arm and spun her around to face him. There was no point in going back on it now. She was already pissed off, and honestly, now that he’d finally said the words, he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Tessa,” he said quietly, “I love you.”

  She pulled her arm from his grip. “Let’s go home. You can sleep it off. And in the morning, if I don’t kill you in your sleep, of which the odds are fifty-fifty, we’ll talk about this then.”

  “No. I need to say this. In the morning, I might not say it all, and I need to tell you...” He paused, took a breath, and dived in. “You were right. Back then, when I took off, I was protecting myself. I didn’t want ten years to go by with you regretting that you’d ever stayed with me. I thought you deserved better.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have such a deep, deep desire to clock you one right now.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and licked his lips. His mouth was dry, but he knew that if he didn’t say it all now, he never would. “And maybe, yeah, maybe I was being a big idiot, but Tessa, you married the ophthalmologist and you’ve gotta get out of that.”

  She squinted slightly at him. “Exactly how many drinks did Tony Dale buy you?”

  “You don’t paint anymore,” Finn said. “You don’t laugh, you don’t cause any trouble, you don’t have any fun. You work hard, I know you do, and I have no idea what it’s like to raise a kid alone when you’re barely more than a kid yourself. I know I don’t understand anything you’ve been through and I’ve been a big asshole, but Tessa—you just... you gave up.”

  She inhaled like she was going to say something, but then didn’t. He took the opportunity to keep going, to get it all out before he sobered up and chickened out.

  “I love you,” he said. “And yeah, maybe it took a drink or two for me to be able to admit it. Maybe I’m not a guy who always knows what’s going on in his own head, but I know that I love you. And I will cop to being an idiot and a jackass, but don’t tell me I don’t love you, because there is no other explanation for what you do to me.”

  Tessa’s eyes brimmed with tears, glistening in the moonlight. She swiped at her cheek, then looked up at him again.

  “Yeah?” She sniffled. “What do I do to you?”

  “I’m not a noble guy,” Finn said. “I’m in it for me and me alone, and you know what? I’m okay with that. But you... being around you...” He exhaled, tried to wrap his mind around the whirling mass of thoughts running wild in his head. “Mr. Dale just bought me drinks because he thought that I’d helped him. And you know what? It f
elt good. It felt good to know I’d helped someone else, done something unselfish for once in my life. I’ve never felt that before. That’s not me, Tess. That’s you.”

  Her fingers tightened slightly on his. He looked down at her hand in his. “There is nothing in the world I want more right now than to wake up in your bed every day with the chance, just the slightest chance, of being the man you believe me to be.” He raised his head back and looked into her eyes. “If that isn’t love then it’s insanity and what’s the fucking difference, right?”

  She watched him, her mouth slightly open, just showing the tips of her bottom teeth and suddenly the reality of everything he’d said fell over him.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I just dumped all that on you. I know that’s not fair. I’m just gonna... Whew. I’m gonna walk back to the shack, you know, sober up a bit—”

  She put her fingers to his lips.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She slid her hand to the back of his neck, her fingers twirling in the hair there, and a moment later pulled Finn into a kiss that made the rest of his world fade away.

  Oh, my God, Tessa thought as the kiss took them over. It started out soft and gentle and moved to a house on fire in 3.5 seconds flat. She could feel his hands going under her coat, fisting her sweater at the base of her back and...

  Oh. My. God.

  Her hands were in his hair, his arms were gripping her tightly, and they twirled like they were the center of a cyclone until finally they bumped into the side of the Thing, Tessa pulled back a bit to regain her balance, but Finn reached under her sweater and his hands were cold on her skin and...

  Oh. God.

  “Let’s sit in the car and talk,” she said.

  Finn sucked at the hollow of her neck. “Talk?”

  “Or, you know, whatever,” she said. She turned toward the Thing, trying to unlock the door as Finn stood behind her, his hands running over her abdomen, traveling lower...

  Yeah. That works.

  She pulled the door open and they both crashed inside, crawling over and pulling at each other until they were in the backseat, the very place where he’d first charmed her out of her underwear ten years before. He sat in the middle and she straddled him, hiking up her skirt until she could comfortably press against him. She put her hands on either side of his neck and kissed him, shifting slightly over him...