He wanted to know why. Was desperate to find out what had snuffed out the bright, vibrant flame of the Willow he’d coerced out of her shell all those years ago. And she could shoot as many dirty looks his way as she wanted, but he wasn’t going to stop until he found out why his spirited Willowtree was back here again, under her daddy’s thumb. Living a life less than she deserved.
First her office, then Ropers, then right across the street from town hall. And not just across the street, but across the street while half naked, ripped chest and corrugated abs glistening from him working so hard…
Whew, was it hot in here?
Finn was unavoidable, that much was clear. No matter what Willow did, he kept popping up again, leaving her on edge every minute of the day because she just couldn’t escape. And now she had those images from earlier burned into her brain, the sight of him on that ladder, his back muscles flexing, ass looking delectable in a pair of worn jeans, haunting her every waking moment.
After her workday was done, she stormed into her and Mackenna’s place, slamming the door behind her. The walls of the guesthouse on their parents’ property rattled, but she couldn’t muster up an ounce of care. She tossed her purse behind her without concern for where it landed before chucking her heels to either side, grumbling under her breath the entire time.
“Will?” Mac called from upstairs. “Is Ella with you?”
“No,” she snapped.
“No? What’s all that bangin’, then?”
Yeah, okay, so she was acting like their seven-year-old niece. Point taken. Still, she couldn’t get her feet to let up as she stomped upstairs and into Mac’s room.
“All that bangin’ is me losing my ever-lovin’ mind.” Willow threw herself facedown on Mackenna’s bed.
“Umm…”
“Umm?” She turned to glare at her sister where she sat with her back against the headboard, magazine forgotten against her chest. “My world is ending, and all you have to say is, ‘umm…’?”
Mac rolled her eyes, then poked Willow in the side with her toe. “I hardly think your world is ending, Will. Dramatic much?”
“Sure as hell feels like it. Especially when Finn won’t stay out of my life!”
“Uh oh…you had another run-in?”
Saturday night at the bar, Mac and Avery hadn’t questioned Willow’s urgent plea to bail immediately. They had, however, cornered her the following day and asked what the hell had happened. She’d spilled all the details, cringing as she’d relived every minute of having Finn’s body pressed against her own. Avery’s and Mac’s faces had been sympathetic, and they’d agreed they’d do what they could to minimize the time she’d need to see Finn while he was in town. So freaking much for that plan.
“Yep. Bastard made me go over to his building so he could sign some papers. He’s just tryin’ to mess with my head.”
“Oh, honey, c’mon now. I love you, but you’ve gotta get a grip. I highly doubt that’s what’s goin’ on. We didn’t tell anyone where we were goin’ on Saturday, so him bein’ there was just a coincidence. And today…well, I’m sure it was innocent enough.”
More snippets of a bare-chested Finn flashed in her mind, and no. There was definitely nothing innocent about that man. He’d been downright indecent. He’d managed to render her speechless, her jaw nearly unhinging as she’d stared at him dragging that old cotton shirt across his muscle-packed chest, down the washboard ridges of his abs…
“Um, Will? I know we’re close and all, but I don’t wanna know what your sex face looks like, so I’m gonna have to ask you to stop thinkin’ ’bout whatever you are.” Only a second passed before Mac gasped, her eyes going wide as she flew up from her reclining position. “Did you sleep with him?” She hissed the question, like they were seventeen and eighteen again, back in their parents’ house while divulging all the sordid details of Willow’s whirlwind romance with the bad boy of Havenbrook.
“Lord, no.” Willow squeezed her eyes shut against the remembered flush of awareness that’d flooded her body in Finn’s presence. Mac didn’t need to know the thought had crossed Willow’s mind too many times to count since he’d made his appearance back in town. Honestly, she didn’t even want to admit it to herself, let alone say it aloud to someone else.
“Okay, then everything’s fine.” Mac waved a hand in the air. “There’s no need to panic. I know Havenbrook’s small, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna be running into him every day or anything.”
Except, if the past week was anything to go by, she would be. She took a deep breath and sat up, tucking her ankle under her leg as she faced her sister. “He seems hell-bent on making that happen. And since Gloria’s on maternity leave until August, I’m the one and only person he’ll be in contact with as they renovate. I don’t know how long they’re plannin’ on staying, but according to Rory’s latest voice mail, the Thomas boys have taken up residence in the apartment above the storefront.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, oh shit.” Willow pushed up from the bed and walked across the hall to her own room as her sister continued with platitudes that were doing exactly nothing to reassure her. She whipped off her sleeveless blouse, then unzipped and tugged off her skirt. As she went to her dresser to grab a pair of yoga pants and a tank top—screw doing anything tonight but bingeing on Ben & Jerry’s—she caught a glimpse of herself in the floor-length mirror that stood in the corner of her room. A tiny fleck of black peeked out of the waistband of her low-cut bikini panties, and she tugged them up her hip—a force of habit as she hid the last bit of Finn Thomas she still had in her life.
The tiny bit of Finn Thomas she’d carried on her skin every day for the past decade.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was why he still affected her so much—because no matter what she told herself, no matter how many different men she’d tried to have a relationship with, she’d always had this what-if in the back of her mind, courtesy of the brand she wore of his.
You still have my bird on you, Willowtree?
She closed her eyes against the whispered words he’d said to her in Ropers, wanting desperately to blink and have this thing off her body. She walked over to stand in front of the mirror, then tugged down the front of her panties until the entire tattoo was visible.
It might’ve happened ten years ago, but she remembered it as clear as if it’d been last week. The weeks leading up to it, all the planning that’d gone into them—both hers and his. Sketch after sketch after sketch until she’d gotten them just right. This act—getting tattoos together—was symbolic of so much more than the actual symbols on their bodies. It was the physical representation of them starting their life together, taking the leap with nothing but their love and a few prayers setting the foundation.
What a fool she’d been.
She’d willingly marked her body forever for a boy it turned out she’d never really known at all. Because when he’d walked away, he’d negated every word he’d ever said to her, every whispered confession of love, every promise of a future.
So now, when she looked at her tattoo—a bird in flight on her hip—instead of reminding her of everything she should soar for as intended, it only served to remind her of all the flying Finn had done to get away from her.
Well, no more of that. She’d lived with this for far too long, and it was time to do something about it. She snatched her phone from the pocket of her discarded skirt, then queued up Ty’s name—Finn’s friend who’d done the tattoo in the first place—and shot him a quick text. She hadn’t talked to him other than a hello around town for so long, she hoped it was still his correct number. But she hadn’t needed to worry. His reply came almost instantly, letting her know she could swing by his place tonight and they’d talk about her options.
Whether she covered it up with something else or removed it completely, she didn’t care. As long as it got the image of Finn’s bird off her body once and for all.
LORD, why was she so nervous? T
his was her choice—a decision long overdue, to be honest. She’d lived with that black mark on her skin for too long, and now that she’d finally decided to do something about it, butterflies battered her insides. Placing one hand over her stomach hoping to quell her nerves, she clutched Mac’s hand with the other as they walked up the front path to Ty’s house.
“I feel like we’re doing some kind of shady drug deal, going to his house after hours instead of the tattoo shop,” Mac said.
“Yeah, well, you know as much as I do if I even stepped foot in that shop, the entire town’d be talkin’ about what Willow Haven was doing in a seedy place like that. It’d get back to Daddy in a heartbeat.”
It was a miracle she’d managed to keep her little act of teenage rebellion a secret as long as she had. The handful of souls who knew about the tattoo she’d gotten with Finn were Mackenna and the men Willow had been intimate with—which, admittedly, hadn’t been many.
“Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep up the image,” Mac said. “I get it.”
As one of the middle Haven girls, Mac did get it. It was what made the two of them so close. Rory soared far above her sisters, the picture-perfect woman in their daddy’s eyes, married to her college sweetheart and raising two flawless children. And Nat, their youngest sister, hadn’t given a damn about this town or what their daddy thought, soaring in a different way and getting the hell out as soon as she’d graduated high school.
Willow and Mac stopped on the front stoop, both of them staring at the door. The blare of a television, interrupted sporadically by murmured voices, seeped out from inside.
Finally, after standing for long moments, Mac squeezed Willow’s hand. “Ready?”
Not even a little bit.
“Yeah,” Willow managed to get out through the invisible fingers wrapped tightly around her throat. She didn’t have to actually do anything tonight, but at least when she left there, she’d have a plan one way or another.
Mac raised her fist to knock but paused and glanced over, giving Willow one last chance to back out. When Willow didn’t speak up, Mac brought her knuckles down on the door in a quick rap.
“It’s open,” someone called from inside.
“No going back now.” Mac turned the doorknob and stepped over the threshold.
While Willow was friendly with everyone in town, she wouldn’t exactly say she and Ty were friends. As such, the last time she’d been to his house had been ten long years ago, and he’d done some upgrading since then, moving on from the trailer he used to have to a small ranch home. It was cleaner than she’d expected it to be, nicer too. A TV mounted on the far wall blared a video game, and as large as it was, it looked nearly minuscule compared to the massive couch that took up the majority of the room.
Ty sat sprawled out on one side, and Willow lifted her hand in a wave before glancing to the other occupant. Her hand froze in midair along with the smile on her face, her feet refusing to move.
Lord, couldn’t she catch a freaking break?
The person sitting all the way on the other end, smiling up at her, was none other than the man who’d dominated nearly all of her thoughts. Finn freaking Thomas. He looked so relaxed there reclined against the back cushions, his legs spread, fingers loosely wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle resting on his knee, like he hadn’t teased her with his body and his words earlier in the day. Like he hadn’t rocked his erection against her ass on the dance floor mere days prior.
Willow’s stomach bottomed out, seeing him there as if he didn’t have a care in the world when the tornado of butterflies in her stomach just got kicked up to a Category five hurricane. She tightened her grip on Mac’s hand until her sister let out a squeak of protest and dug her fingernails into Willow’s skin in retribution.
“Looks like I picked the right night to stop by,” Finn said, his eyes stuck to Willow.
Willow blinked and shook her head. “Stop by…” She narrowed her eyes at Finn, who only returned her glare with a smile. Of course, she’d known Ty and Finn were friends—they had been their whole lives. Really, it was her own damn fault she hadn’t anticipated this, especially considering the past few days. Ropers may have been a coincidence, but there was no way this was. No freaking way. She had half a mind to stomp her foot right there and cuss Ty out.
Instead of doing that, she settled on shooting daggers his way, a finger jabbed in his direction. “Tyler Owen Kenning Junior, you traitor. Your momma know what you get up to with boys like him?”
Ty laughed, resting an arm against the back of the couch as he tipped his beer bottle toward her. “My momma thinks I’m an angel and doesn’t listen to nothin’ anyone might say otherwise.”
“Mm-hmm,” Willow said, dropping Mac’s hand to cross her arms over her chest. “So this is the kind of professional you are, huh? When someone asks for an appointment, you invite all your friends to the show?”
“Appointment for what?” Finn asked, watching her like a hawk. Did she imagine how his eyes flicked down to the vicinity of her hip and the black bird hidden under layers of clothes?
Ty held up his hands in surrender and spoke as if Finn hadn’t said a word. “Hey, you said you just wanted to talk about your options. Didn’t think it’d be a problem when Finn said he was gonna stop by, too.”
“What kind of options?” Finn asked.
She couldn’t tell if he was playing dumb, or if he really didn’t know her reason for being there. Either way, ignoring him was in her best interest. To Ty, she said, “And I bet his stopping by had nothing at all to do with me being here, huh?”
Ty looked away from her, focusing on the TV. “I don’t know nothin’ about that. That’s between y’all.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about what you’re doing here,” Finn said. “Someone wanna fill me in?”
Willow ground her molars together. “I told you earlier, you weren’t gettin’ anything out of me, Griffin.”
He clenched his jaw, no doubt over the use of his full name. Good. It was dumb and childish, but at that point, she needed to hold on to every bit of distance she could put between them. “You thinking of getting some more ink on that pretty skin?”
She ignored the shiver his words sent down her spine. “How do you know I haven’t already?”
His gaze heated even more, and she wanted to slap herself for being such an idiot, for walking right into his trap. He lifted one eyebrow and did a slow sweep of her from head to toe. “Guess I don’t. You offering to show me, Willowtree?”
Those handful of words coming from Finn’s mouth—the seductive, almost lilting way he said them—had the temperature in the room rising at least ten degrees. And she wasn’t the only one who felt it if Mac’s reaction was anything to go by.
“Oooookay.” Mac side-stepped Willow and plopped down next to Ty on the couch. “You two kids work out whatever you need to work out. I’m gonna play this game until you’re done.”
What the hell? Willow had brought Mac along for support, and as soon as the temperature got cranked up, she bailed. Some freakin’ wing-woman she was.
“We don’t have anything to work out,” Willow said. “All I need to know is—” She cut herself off. Why was she discussing this when Finn was sitting right there?
More importantly, why did she care if he was there when she did?
Steeling herself, she straightened her shoulders and addressed Ty, doing her best to ignore the way Finn bored holes into the side of her face with his eyes. “The tattoo you gave me. I want it gone. What’re my options?”
As much as she tried to ignore Finn, she couldn’t help the way her eyes darted over to him as soon as the words left her mouth. The crack in his facade was subtle, but it might as well have been a flashing marquee for as loudly as it screamed at her. He was good and pissed if the tightness in his jaw and shoulders was any indication. But, really, what did he have to be pissed about? She was the one who’d been left behind.
“All right,” Ty drawled, glancing at Finn out of t
he corner of his eye before focusing back on Willow. “Well, you can always do a cover-up. Your original tattoo’s not very big, so it’d be pretty easy to do.”
“And if I don’t want it there at all?”
“There’s always laser removal, but, Will, that’ll—”
“I have a few options you should consider,” Finn said.
Willow’s eyebrows shot up her forehead as she looked over at him. Was he for real? “I’m not all that interested in your opinion, considering you’re the reason I’m here in the first place. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna listen to what Ty thinks is best since he’s the professional.”
Finn stood then, setting his beer on the side table, and took a step toward her, then another and another. And, all right, it probably didn’t help her case the way she took equal steps back for every one he took forward, but she couldn’t be that close to him again—could not. Except she didn’t have a choice because soon her back was pressed against the wall, and he wasn’t stopping—didn’t stop until he stood directly in front of her. So close, she could feel the heat emanating off his body, could smell his delicious Finn scent. She snapped her spine straight and commanded her body to hold herself upright so she didn’t do something horribly embarrassing like faint at his feet.
And then she did something she absolutely shouldn’t have. She took a deep inhale of him—fresh and clean, like the air on a summer day—and just…looked.
Lord, he was pretty. He’d hate that descriptor, but it was accurate. His eyes were like butterscotch candies surrounded by the lushest eyelashes she’d ever seen, a total waste on so much masculinity. His nose wasn’t perfect—he’d gotten in too many fights for there not to be a bump or two—but it was perfect on him. The scruff was new to her since he’d stayed mostly clean-shaven when they’d been together, but she could admit she liked it on him now. It made him look even manlier—which was nothing but trouble, because Finn certainly didn’t need any help in that department.
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