“Being mean to you?” Mandy scoffed.
“You hurt my feelings,” James deadpanned.
“Oh, I’m going to hurt your feelings,” Mandy said.
James met her gaze evenly, sharing an unspoken conversation with the feisty blonde that spanned at least sixty ticks of the second hand on the clock. Suddenly, he climbed to his feet and hoisted her up next to him. “Well, I think we’re going to call it a night.”
Grady laughed. “Yep, I think we all saw that coming.”
Mandy waved haphazardly as James led her out of the bar at a quick pace. Once they were gone, Grady couldn’t stop his guffaws. “How much do you want to bet they don’t even make it home?”
“Someone better look for fogged up windows in the parking lot before we go,” Finn agreed. “We don’t want them to get arrested for public lewdness or anything. That would just be undignified.”
DURING the ride back to the apartment, Finn was lost in thought. The trip to the bar had been fun, relaxing even, until the altercation. Even then, the fight hadn’t been more than a few loud words and a brief scuffle.
So why was Emma so upset?
Finn risked a glance at her over the console. Her gaze was pointed to the window, watching the businesses on the road skim by as he drove. She was a prisoner in her own mind – and Finn was pretty sure the thoughts trapping her were deep and dark.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Emma glanced over at him. “About what?”
“I know something is wrong,” Finn said. “It might help if you talked about it.”
Emma inhaled deeply. “Have you ever been afraid?”
“Of course.”
“No, I mean really afraid?”
“I served a tour in Afghanistan,” Finn said. “I was afraid more often than I would like to admit. You can’t help it when you’re in the trenches. You either have to learn to live with the fear, overcome it, or you just succumb to it.”
“And yet you survived,” Emma said. “You did your job. You didn’t fall victim to it.”
Finn waited.
“I’m always afraid.”
Finn kept his eyes on the road, worried that even the slightest shift would force her to retreat inside of herself. “What are you afraid of?”
“Everything,” Emma said. “I’m afraid of everything.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I know the easy answer,” Emma said. “I’m afraid because I always believe the rug is going to be yanked out from underneath me. That every time I get traction, real traction, I’m somehow going to lose it.”
“Because that’s what happened when your dad got arrested?”
“Because that’s what happened my whole life,” Emma said. “It’s not like things were good before he got arrested. People seem to think that, but it’s not true. It’s not like we were some happy family and then our lives were shattered. Things were always bad for us.
“And yeah, sure, things got really bad when my dad was arrested,” Emma continued. “They were never going to be good, though. Not in that house. Not with my family. We were all already ruined before the police even knocked on our door.”
Finn’s heart squeezed. Life in the Hardy house wasn’t perfect, but there was love and laughter. No one ever doubted his or her place in the world. Emma had never had that – and he wasn’t sure how to give it to her. He just knew he desperately wanted to.
“What you said about Mandy tonight, that she saved you and was brave,” Finn started.
“She was.”
“She is brave,” Finn said. “She didn’t save you. She mouthed off and handled the situation. That’s not saving someone.”
“That’s as close to a rescue as I’ve ever seen,” Emma said. “Mandy saved me tonight, and you saved me at the boat show. Those are the only two times in my life anyone has ever tried to save me. Those are the only two times anyone has ever cared enough to save me.”
That admission made Finn indescribably sad. “I don’t know what to say to you, what you need to hear to feel safe. I keep trying and I keep failing.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “You haven’t failed me one time since I’ve met you.”
“That’s not how it feels, Emma,” Finn said. “It feels like I’m constantly failing you.”
“That’s because I’m damaged,” Emma said, her voice without a trace of guile. “That’s because I’m broken.”
Finn swallowed the lump in his throat. “We’re all damaged, Emma. All of us. Mandy is damaged. James is damaged. I’m damaged. You can’t go through life without being damaged. But you are not broken. I’ll never let you break.”