Finn thought about it. A punch in the face felt about right. “Okay.” He pushed to his feet and held both arms open at his sides. “Give it your best—” His head snapped back, and immediately blood poured from his nose. His hand flew to his face as he cupped the wound. “Jesus, Charlotte. Where’d you learn to hit like that? You almost broke my fucking nose. It was one of the few good features I had left.”
When he brought his head down, he stared into the appalled face of Charlotte Devlin. She was frozen in shock, still holding her fist up.
“Charlotte?”
“Oh, God.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned her back, and threw up into the grass. Finn raced to her side and held her hair. He grabbed the back of his T-shirt with his free hand and pulled it over his head. She took the offering and wiped her face.
Finn led her to the stream. “The water is drinkable. You can rinse your mouth.”
When she had recovered, she plopped down on the grassy bank and buried her face in her hands. “I have never in my life hit anyone.”
Finn sat beside her and clasped his hands around his knees. “Well, maybe no one deserved it this much.”
“That’s for sure. How could I do this to you? Are you serious? If anyone did anything to anyone, you did it to me.”
He shot to his feet. “No, no, no, no, no, Charlotte, you don’t understand.”
“What could I possibly misinterpret about that?” She looked up at him from her spot on the grass.
Finn tugged his hair again and released a sound of frustration. “Can you imagine someone offering you everything you’ve ever wanted in the world?” He knelt and ran a hand over her petite form.
“Everything,” he repeated. He stood and paced as he spoke. “And knowing you can never have it?”
She wrinkled her nose, an expression that never ceased to warm his heart. His tone softened as he continued. “In my dreams, I imagine that one day, somehow, I could be the man you need, be a husband. But a father?” He looked to the darkened sky. “Jesus, it’s snowing on the Equator again.”
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s just something I said to May. She died, by the way. She had cancer,” Finn rambled as he paced through the leaves and grass.
“Who’s May?”
“She was… a friend. I wanted you to meet her.” Finn took his T-shirt back and wiped the corner of her mouth.
Charlotte rose and took his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe she’ll drop by. This whole fucking town is haunted.”
“Finn,” Charlotte cautiously touched his arm. “I think you need some time to process this. Why don’t you take a beat?”
“Yes, process,” Finn repeated. “I need to embrace the time between stimulus and response.”
Charlotte looked surprised. “Yes, that’s exactly what you need to do.”
The forest was just coming alive with spring blossoms and new leaves. Life. Finn knelt by the icy stream and splashed his face. He hated the way he was feeling, hated how he was acting. He pictured May’s image in the rushing water staring back at him, her words filling his head: it’s a hell of a lot easier to say you hate something than to say you’re afraid of something.
That was it, plain and simple; he was afraid.
He stood and faced Charlotte, taking her hands in his. “I know I’ve been an ass, but there was never a time when I stopped caring, no matter what it seemed like.”
“No matter what it seemed like?” she shouted, snatching her hands back. “After a year-long separation, you brought a prostitute to meet me! After writing to me every week for a year, the emails just stopped. Whenever you showed up at Bishop Security, you looked at me like a one-night stand you regretted. Tox and Steady and the guys would all hug you like a long-lost brother while I sat there and died inside. I never told any of them what you did. I didn’t want to diminish you in their eyes any more than you were doing yourself.”
Finn hung his head, awash in regret. “Charlotte, I’m so sorry. I’m ashamed of the way I acted, but I can’t go back and change it. All I can do is try to be better. Do better.”
“I’m afraid of you, Finn. You have too much power here. I don’t think my heart can take another beating.”
“If you think you don’t hold as much power as I do, you haven’t been paying attention. When I was injured, the first time I looked in a mirror, I thought of you, and the words running through my head were: obligation, disgust, resentment. The truth was, we didn’t know each other well enough to weather a storm like what happened to me.”
Twitch shot to her feet and stood over him. “You never gave me a chance to try! I wanted to be there for you. The injury didn’t matter to me. But the way it changed you? That mattered.”