“Finn?” She spoke softly. “What’s going on?”
He sat at the foot of the bed and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
She hugged her knees to her chest and let him find the words.
“I’m going away for a while.”
“How long?”
She observed his unmarred left profile as he lifted his head and stared out the window.
“I have to get right. I don’t know if I can, but I have to try.”
She nodded in the darkness. “I’m glad.”
“I don’t want you to hold out hope for me. Even if I manage some kind of normalcy, I’ll never be…” He tugged on his sandy hair. “I can’t be responsible for your happiness when I can’t even find my own. You have to take that burden off my shoulders.”
She didn’t wipe her tears. Didn’t pause to ponder his choice of word,burden. She simply nodded again. “It’s okay, Finn.”
“Is it?”
“No.” She laugh-cried. “But it will be. I do have hope for that. I’ve always believed in you. That won’t ever change.”
Finn shook his head slowly as if she had spoken in another language. He gently slapped both thighs and stood. Twitch lifted her face to him as he moved to the head of the bed and bent down. Then, ever so gently, he placed a kiss on her forehead.
“You need to give all that love to someone who knows what to do with it,” he said.
She turned her head away. Too late.
He squeezed her delicate hand, stood to his full height, and turned to leave. Twitch held on and quietly said one word. It was the last word spoken in her room that night.
It was a word that said, I have faith.
It was a word that said, I forgive you.
It was a word that said, Goodbye.
“Stay.”
He kissed her with every ounce of pent-up passion in his being. She felt his scars with her lips and under her fingers as she grasped his face. Twitch pulled his shirt over his head, breaking their kiss, and ran her hands over his damaged body. She felt the shrapnel scars along his left side and the surgical scar where doctors had repaired internal damage and removed his spleen.
Finn moved down her body with a finesse and tenderness that belied his rough exterior. No part of her escaped his attention. He moved from her aching breasts to her flat stomach to her hip bones and finally buried his head between her legs. After leveling her in the best possible way, Finn lifted his head with a wolfish grin. The moon lit the unscarred side of his face, and Twitch looked down at the man she had known seven years earlier.
His smile faded, and Finn moved back up her body, parting her thighs with a rough jerk of his knee. He held her face in his hands and pushed his considerable length inside her. Twitch gasped. It had been so long. He felt so right joined with her, skin to skin, his powerful thrusts bringing tears to her eyes. Sealed in this perfect moment, they peaked together, cried out together, collapsed together.
Finn held her in silence until she fell asleep. When the morning sun lit the room, he was gone.
She had given her heart to Finn McIntyre, and the gift was not returnable: no refunds, no exchanges.
She entered the code for the device she had installed on Finn’s phone. She could track his phone with standard software if he turned it on. This chip was a backup safety feature for the Bishop Security operators. It could locate the phone even if it had been powered off or damaged. A month ago, she had spotted trouble when she discovered their teammate Cam Canto’s smashed phone in a Harlem bar. And yes, technically, Finn was not a Bishop Security employee, blah blah blah.
She snuggled into the couch and pulled the cashmere throw around her shoulders. The concentric circles pulsed as the map shifted on the screen. After another few seconds, a solid green dot appeared in the West Virginia foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
She didn’t know why Finn was there—maybe he was just passing through—and she didn’t care. Twitch had always found solace in technology; it was a reliable, quantifiable aspect in her chaotic childhood. As she got older, she took comfort in ones and zeros when people confounded her.
Numbers were complex in an organized, understandable way. Humans were a conundrum.
That flashing green dot wasn’t the same as feeling Finn’s strong arms or looking into his beautiful blue eyes, but just seeing it there, knowing he was out there, was a comfort. Alone and missing that beautiful, damaged man, that tiny green dot provided a modicum of solace.