Frustration clawed at her, along with the nameless need that she didn’t want to stop and examine right now. “You know what I mean. You can’t...you can’t sleep together and not have things change.”
It was all in direct contradiction with everything they’d talked about before. But frankly, what was happening between them was in direct contradiction with that too. Like he’d said, she had to change. She had to drop her guard, give him parts of herself that she had held back before. So why didn’t he have to? He could talk all he wanted about how his feelings hadn’t changed, because he always wanted her, but their actions had changed and that had to count.
She’d had physical relationships that hadn’t contained any real intimacy. But when it came to Finn, he couldn’t go deep inside her body without going deep into her soul too. She couldn’t have known that beforehand. And even if she could have, she might have ignored it. Might have ignored all the warnings and the potential consequences so that she could have what she wanted.
As a great many red-blooded women would have.
But she had reached that point. That point where she could no longer ignore the potential consequences. Where she could no longer ignore all the changes this new intimacy was effecting inside of her.
It was only now that she felt so close to him that she was conscious of the distance he kept between them. When she was hiding too, she hadn’t fully realized that he was doing it. He had seemed like her dependable, easygoing friend, and she hadn’t looked much deeper than that.
But now that she was stripped bare, now that she had told him everything. Now that she had laid it all on the table, brought herself closer to him, determined that she wanted all the empty spaces between them closed, that she wanted to be pressed up against him, as close as two people could be, she could see what was preventing that.
It was him.
“That’s all?” she asked. “You’re having me? That’s the beginning and end of it? Am I supposed to be flattered by that characterization?”
“It was good enough for you last night.”
She shook her head, furious. “No, it wasn’t. But I assumed that all of the things that were changing in me were changing in you too.”
“What things, Lane?” His blue eyes were sharp, dangerous.
She felt something weighing her down, pressure building in her chest. She didn’t want to be in this conversation. Didn’t want to be in this argument. Didn’t want to have to dig deep enough to find an honest answer to his question. All of the feelings that were currently howling through her like wind in a storm were difficult for her to pin down. Difficult for her to identify. She didn’t want to. She just wanted to feel them. And she wanted him to understand them.
“I don’t want to be nothing to you,” she said, knowing that she was being overdramatic.
“You’re not nothing to me,” he said. “You know that. You’re very important to me. If you weren’t, I would have kissed you the day I met you. Instead, I resisted for ten damn years, so don’t talk to me like you believe that.”
“Fine. Then maybe I just don’t want to be on par with Mark. Except you make out with me.”
He shifted, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “You know that you’re not like Mark.”
“Why?” she asked, feeling desperate now. “Because you’re having sex with me? Because that feels like two different things. Two things that are on the opposite end of the spectrum with a massive gulf between them. Like we’re friends over here, and doing it over here, and that doesn’t work for me.”
“You seemed fine with all of this not long ago.”
“I know. But things are changing. I’m changing. That whole thing that happened down by the lake... And I realized when I poured all of that out to you how much I keep from everyone. How almost nobody that’s in my life that I consider a friend knows me at all. And when I got over thinking about myself, thinking about how all of that applied to me, I realized that it was true for you too. I don’t know you, Finn.”
“That is the second most ridiculous thing you’ve said. Along with saying that you don’t matter to me.”
“You’re avoiding the question. Why don’t you want to get married?”
“You know all this, Lane. You know why. My damned father went and made a new family rather than staying with me. At least that wasn’t unique to me. He did it to Cain too. But you know, getting abandoned by one parent can be random. Getting abandoned by both at different times? That’s a little harder to ignore. I just don’t want anything to do with having a family in that way. My father never married my mother. They were both terrible parents. The thought of trying those types of relationships again—even on the parent side—just doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
She didn’t really know what to say to that. Because part of her wanted to ask if he honestly believed that she would abandon him too. If a marriage and children would really be so bad, so toxic, as long as there were no bad and toxic people in it. But she didn’t want to put that out there. Didn’t want to put herself out there like that.
“Finn,” she said, the words muted, “just because your parents left... I... It’s not the way everyone will be. It’s not the way everything will be. You can’t let one thing...stop you from being happy.”
“But you can?”
She bristled. “That’s different.”
“Maybe it would be best if you went home tonight,” he said, the words falling heavy between them. She could still fix this. She could still say something. But there was always the chance that what she had to say would break things even more.
All that thinking about rebuilding. And now here she was. But then, it was entirely possible that this was new construction. That the old building, the one that housed their friendship, was condemned. Had nothing to do with what they had now. What they would have in the future.
Suddenly, it all seemed black, blank. She couldn’t see back; she couldn’t see forward. She was far too different from whom she’d been. And so was he. Well, no. He wasn’t different. That was the problem.
He turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her standing there by herself. She stayed there for a moment, completely immobilized. Surprised by the turn that things had taken.
She shook her head, getting a grip on herself before striding out the way that Finn had just gone. He was halfway up the stairs, headed toward his room, she imagined. She frowned. She looked toward the front door, and then she looked back toward the stairs.
She thought about leaving. But then she asked herself when the hell Finn had ever made it easy for her. He had pushed and pushed and pushed when he had decided that he wanted her and he was going to do something about it. He hadn’t listened when she told him she wasn’t ready.
Why should she give him courtesy he hadn’t offered her?
She made her way over to the stairs, taking them two at a time to try to catch up with him. By the time she got to his room, the door was closed firmly. She thought about knocking. But, in the grand spirit of not respecting his agency in the least, she figured she would just barge in.
She did. But he wasn’t in the room. She heard the shower turn on in the bathroom. She didn’t even have to think about what she did next. She stripped her shirt off, throwing it onto the floor. Followed by her bra, her jeans and her underwear. She kicked them both to the side and took a deep breath.
Finn had seen her naked more times than she could count now. Actually, if she thought about it she probably could count them. She remembered every time with him. Absolutely every time. Because each one was unique, each one had changed her in some way. Had stripped another bit of her defenses away.
And that was why it was so maddening to realize how much of his were still in place. Defenses he didn’t even seem bothered by. He had demanded that she tell him everything. That she give him everything, and all the while he had not intended to do the same for her. He didn’t even think he needed to.
She didn’t want to make love to a brick wall. Not when she herself was so reduced.
Thankfully, she knew there was more behind it. Knew there was more to her friend. To her lover. To the man who could very well become everything.
She pushed the bathroom door open, and Finn was already in the shower. She paused, looking at the long, lean shape of him that was visible through the glass door. She couldn’t see the details of his perfect, honed body. This was like an impressionistic rendering of Finn. And as gorgeous and artistic as it was it wasn’t enough.
She padded over to the door and pulled it open. He looked up, an expression of surprise on his handsome face. “Move over,” she said.
She didn’t wait for him to comply. Instead, she simply stepped inside, closing the door behind them, enveloping them both in warm steam.
“I told you that you should probably go,” he said.
“And you’re the only one who gets to break rules? I have to respect personal boundaries? Screw that, I say. You need to be pushed. So I’m pushing you.”
His expression hardened, but that wasn’t all that hardened. His body didn’t mind that she had joined him in the shower, no matter what his lips might say.