And then I socked him in the chest. Hard.
“What the fuck?” I demanded. “Your family didn’t know! You said you left a note, but you didn’t, Finn! They had no idea why you left!”
He blinked at me.
“It’s true though.” Livvy shot me a significant ‘we’ll talk about this later, cuz’ look, and then turned to Finn. “Claire’s been a mess. What the fuck, Finn?”
“How do you?” He pointed from me to Livvy. “Are you -?”
“Cousins,” I said flatly. “I have family too. And I didn’t leave mine to think I was dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“No, I -.” He shook his head. “I left a note. I told them. I did, Sky. I swear I did.”
“Why are you here? What are you doing?” My voice was rising because, like always, I was skipping right over the thing that was too difficult to deal with and focusing on the tiny details. “What were you doing with that girl, anyway?”
“Sky.” Susanna’s voice cut through my questions like a knife. She smiled and gestured for me to follow her. “I want to show you something.”
I glanced at Finn who was still looking down at his feet. His mouth was working silently, but I thought I caught the words, “I swear.”
“Sky,” Susanna called again. “Come on.” She paused. “You too, Finn.”
I had no fight left in me to protest. I followed Susanna back into the office. I stood in the middle of it, surrounded by my cousin, my brothers and --- whatever Finn was. It was like having every moment in my life happen simultaneously.
Susanna sat down in the chair J.D. had abandoned. “Tell her,” she ordered Rocky. “She’s family.” She cocked her head at Finn. “And he’s involved too.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, twisting around to stare at Finn. “Is this about the girl?”
“Anna,” he supplied. “Her name is Anna.”
Susanna let out a whoosh of breath and sat back in her chair. “So it was her. She sure grown.”
“You know her?” Finn asked.
But Susanna was looking at me. “You’re not for around here, are you?”
“No shit,” I replied testily. This secrecy was setting my teeth on edge.
“You though.” She turned to Livvy. “I’ve seen you before. And you too, Finn.”
Livvy was shaking her head. “I’m sorry… I don’t…”
“My hair was longer,” Susanna said crisply. Rocky moved to her side.
Livvy widened her eyes.. She looked from Susanna back to Rocky. “You’re Chosen?”
“Not anymore,” Rocky said, a possessive gleam in his eye.
“And there are others like me too,” Susanna added. “We help them. We give them a place to stay.”
“You run the safe houses?” Finn demanded.
“House. Singular,” Rocky corrected. “Only one safe house.” He turned and glared at me. “Our Dad’s place.”
“He was always gone,” J.D. piped up. “He was too selfish to even notice we’d started doing this behind his back. He didn’t need it.”
“Not like we do,” Rocky added.
“You mean... my house?” I gasped.
“Our Dad’s house.” J.D. looked at me then swiveled his finger in a circle. “Our Dad…”
“No.” I shook my head. “But it’s mine.”
“Sky.” Finn spoke softly.
But I shook my head. “It’s mine!"
“Don’t be selfish,” Rocky snapped. Susanna laid a finger on his wrist and he immediately calmed at her touch.
“Sky,” Finn said again. “These people need help.”
“How do you know?” My brain was swirling. “How do you know they need help?”
“Because I’ve been helping them.”
The silence was so immediate that it was like the sound cutting out of a movie.
It was Livvy who finally spoke. “You, Finn?”
Her surprise didn’t anger him. He seemed to accept it as fair. He raised his head and looked at each person in the office in turn. “Since Sky left the camp, I’ve been working with Dinah. She called it the Chosen Underground Railroad. I’ve moved -," he counted on his fingers. “Seven people by myself, and helped Dinah relocate two other families.” He leaped forward and planted his hands on the desk. “Adam and Esther, were they in your safe house? Are their girls okay?”
“They are.” Susanna smiled up at Finn. “Charity just said her first word, too.”
His face crumpled with happiness and relief. “Thank you,” he whispered, and stood back up again.
I stared at him. “Finn?”
He turned and looked at me.
“Finn? You’ve been helping -,” I swallowed. “These people?”
He ducked his head. “I know that probably surprises you, but I’ve changed, Sky. I hope that…”
His words were swallowed up when I kissed him again. “How did I miss this?” I whispered against his mouth. “Where were you hiding?” I reached up and pressed my hand to his chest, over the space where the heart he kept hidden from everyone beat huge and good.
The corner of his mouth tipped up. He’d just started to smile when the clang of the alarm bell made us all jump again.
Susanna was the closest, so she pressed the button on the intercom.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” came the shrieking bellow from the call box. Susanna clapped her hands over her ears.
I swallowed and looked at Livvy. “Did we forget to call her?”
Livvy looked like she was going to faint. “We forgot to call her.”
“Shit, uh, Finn?” I looked down as he came back over to me. “Hey uh, you know the reunion you need to have? With the family who has no idea what happened to you?”
“I get it, Sky,” he sighed. “I got a little distracted, sorry.” He touched his finger to my lips again.
I shook my head and pulled back. “No.” I pointed to the call box. “It’s about to happen.” I looked at the man I’d thought about every single day since the day I’d left him. He said he’d changed. I’d soon know how true that was. “Get ready,” I warned him. “And I’m really sorry.”
I reached over the desk and pressed the button to let Claire in.
Chapter Forty
Finn
There are three things I hope I never have to face again.
The inside of the hospital room where I was held on suicide watch.
The sight of Sky’s car pulling away from me as I stood helplessly in my trailer.
And my baby sister’s face when she saw me standing in the lot outside Knights’ garage.
Claire rage was white hot. Incandescent. And I got exactly nowhere with her before she got back into her beloved Jeep and went squealing out of the lot.
The last thing I saw was her shoving her phone against her ear and I knew the moment of truth was at hand.
I had to go home.
“Sky,” I said, turning back to the woman I had to lose to realize I loved her. Every cell in my body screamed to stay here with her. But I swallowed hard and said what I had to say. “Can we start over?”
Sky tipped her face up to mine. Her wide blue eyes were heavy-lidded with a sadness I didn’t understand. “Again?”
I took her hand in mine. “I know. We’ve done this before.”
“What are we now, Finn? Are we friends again?”
I shook my head. “There’s no way I could be your friend.”
She looked stricken. “Why?”
“Because I’m in love with you.” I pressed my lips to her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes widened. She gave a little squeak. She reached up to pull me to her, but I gently caught her wrists in my hands and lowered them back down. “I love you,” I repeated. “So that means I’m going to do this right.” I checked her face. “If you’ll let me,” I amended.
She searched my face. “How do we do it right?” she whispered. Like she genuinely wished to know.
I did too. “I’ll see you,” I kissed her hand again. “I
’ll see you again, really soon. Okay?” I nodded. “I have to do something now, and it’s going to suck, but it has to be done.”
Her eyes filled with tears but she nodded. Cupping my face with her hands, she pressed a sweet, gentle kiss to my cheek. “Go see your family,” she whispered. “And then come back to me.”
I straightened up and squared my shoulders. Taking a deep breath, I nodded again. “How do I look?”
She touched my shoulder. “Like a new man.”
Her words echoed in my head the whole drive across town. Thankfully. Because the closer I got to the moment of truth, the harder I had to fight to keep from turning around.
I never meant for it to be like this. That was the hardest part. The old me would have raged about the injustice of it. How could they even think I would have left without at least telling them why? What right did they have to be angry with me when my intentions were so good?
I finally understood that my intentions meant nothing. Not if my actions were those of a callous, unfeeling asshole.
The wind caught the fallen leaves and blew them across the long driveway that wound back to the house I shared with my twin. When I'd left, they were still on the trees that surrounded it, forming a green curtain that hid the house away.
Now, the bare branches meant that I could see the house the whole time I approached. And for some reason that made me laugh.
Even the house we shared was sick of secrets.
I pulled in to my usual spot, took a deep breath and reminded myself that I had changed. “A new man,” Sky had told me.
Hopefully one who could be with her when this was all over.
I climbed out of my car and stretched, rolling my neck from shoulder to shoulder.
“You’re here.”
I looked up sharply. Beau stood on the deck with his arms folded across his chest. A stranger might think he looked calm and composed.
But the crossed arms betrayed him. Beau didn’t close himself off unless he was trying to keep from getting hurt.
He was closed off from me… That little whisper left of the old voice in my head told me to get defensive. To wonder aloud what his problem was. To sarcastically needle him about being happy to see me.
“I’m back,” I said instead. And then cleared my throat because that wasn’t enough. “And I am so, so sorry.”
He stiffened slightly in surprise and I wondered if I'd ever truly apologized to him before. Not the fake ‘sorry you got your panties in a twist’ apologies. But sincerely admitting I was wrong. “I’m not trying to make an excuse,” I went on, holding up my hands in surrender. He kept his eyes on me as I walked up the stone steps to the side yard. “Just telling you that I, well, I didn’t leave without saying goodbye.” I lifted my foot and placed it deliberately on the first step that led from the yard up to the deck. When he didn’t stop me, I took another step. “I left a note. Explaining.”
“Yeah, there was no note,’ Beau sniffed.
I climbed the last step and suddenly we were face to face. Eye to eye. Mirror images. The face I knew better than my own. “Claire told me,” I sighed. “I don’t know what happened to it, but I’m sorry Beau. You must have been losing your mind.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed and he ducked quickly away. “We called the police.”
“Shit.”
“They opened a missing persons’ case.”
I let out an explosive breath.
“Mom cried every time she said your name.”
I staggered back and gripped the railing.
“Finn. Note or no note, why the fuck would you ever leave?”
I dug my nails into the wood of the railing. “I wrote it all down,” I told him. “And I’d need to find it to be able to explain.” My voice caught. “Because to be honest with you, I don’t even know why anymore. Other than I felt I had to.”
Beau glared at me, the only evidence of his anger the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. Then he brought his palm down on the railing with a loud smack. ”Okay then,” he said roughly. “Then let’s go find this fucking note.”
I nodded and followed him, half mortified to be doing this. And half relieved that he was even letting me in the door.
He stopped short in the living room and made a ‘go ahead’ gesture.
I took a deep breath. “The refrigerator.” I walked over to the kitchen and glared at the stainless steel appliance like it had betrayed me. “Right here.” I lifted the magnet with the library hours printed on it. “I put it right under here.”
Beau shook his head.
Panic rose in my throat and I fought the urge to throw up my hands and demand to know what else he wanted from me. Instead I closed my eyes.
An image of Sky flashed across memory, her quick, capable hands stitching up the hole in my shirt. Finding a solution for the problem I’d wanted to give up on.
“Maybe it fell,” I said slowly, still keeping my eyes closed. “When I opened the door?”
I opened my eyes and Beau was still watching me, expressionless.
I went down on my hands and knees. “Somewhere. It’s gotta be somewhere.”
“I know this is surprising to hear, but we’ve actually cleaned a few times since you… left. And we didn't see anything.”
My brother’s sarcasm cut me deeper than his silence. I pressed my lips together and redoubled my search. I slid my hands along every crack and crevice in the kitchen. The space between the counter and the oven. Under the dishwasher. Behind the toaster.
Nothing.
“Fuck,” I whispered and whirled around to stare at the fridge again.
Seized with sudden inspiration, I yanked open the junk drawer. I rummaged around until I found a penlight printed with the King Brothers’ logo. Then I dropped to my knees and shone it under the refrigerator itself.
“It’s there!" I called. “Way back in the back. See it?”
For one terrible moment, I thought Beau wouldn’t come. That he’d stay standing with his arms crossed, refusing to believe I was telling the truth. That I’d used up my last chance and lost him forever.
And then he was there, dropping down onto his knees next to me. He bent his head to the floor right next to mine. “Where?”
“There.” I jiggled the penlight. “Caught in the coils.”
Beau jumped back up again. “We need like, a coat hanger or something. Or maybe… I know! Tongs!”
As my brother fashioned a tool to fish the note out from under the fridge, I closed my eyes and tried not to cry like a fucking baby. But when he knelt down again, ready and willing to help solve a problem he didn’t even create, I actually did cry. A little. One tear hastily wipe away before anyone could see it.
“Got it,” Beau grunted. He sat back up again, dragging out the note I had written what felt like a lifetime ago. It was covered in dust bunnies, and a smear of something that might have been oil.
I had a distinct urge to reach out and grab it from him. Snatch it away before he could read those old words from a man I barely recognized as myself anymore.
But I held still, keeping my hands by my sides. It was hard to watch him read it - to see the combination of disbelief and sadness on his face - so I looked away.
I knew he'd finished by the way his breathing changed, and waited for him to say something. Anything. But when the silence stretched out long enough for my knees to start aching, I couldn’t help trying to break it. I turned back to my brother. “So?”
He was still staring at it with his lips pressed into a thin white line. After another heartbeat, he flicked the edge with his finger. “So yeah.” He exhaled long and hard. "Yeah, this might've changed a few things. I mean, I’d still say you were fucking stupid for doing it, obviously.” He looked up. “And I would have come after you and told it to your face.” He swallowed. “But I wouldn’t have, well -,” he coughed and looked away, blinking rapidly. “Maybe I wouldn’t have felt like you’d carved open my chest with a butter knife.” I winced. “Maybe I w
ouldn’t have walked around the past month feeling like I was missing a limb.”
It hardly made sense to me anymore. It was like explaining something I'd done in a dream. "In my head, I was doing it for you."
"You are such an asshole," he said on an exhale.
His Secret Heart (Crown Creek) Page 20
