In high school, my friends and I mostly went on group dates, doing activities like skating parties and dances. The few guys I’d dated so far in college had taken me on standard dates to dinner or to the movies or to parties. Knowing Finn grew up in a small farming town in the middle of Montana, I couldn’t imagine what he considered an epic date, but my excitement to find out had rocketed to the stratosphere. Anything short of fireworks was going to be anticlimactic.
A thought struck me, and I laughed. If he took me out for pizza and beer at Stromboli’s, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. And it would be the funniest joke ever—ratchet up my expectations and then take me out to a bar. After the thought struck me, I kind of warmed to it. Then he texted me.
Finn: Do you have any food allergies?
Huh. Guess we weren’t going to Stromboli’s.
Me: None. But I’m not a fan of fish.
Finn: Cool. Me neither.
The three dots appeared, disappeared, and then:Six o’clock tomorrow. Epic. Followed by a winky-face emoji. I could absolutely see Finn giving me one of his cheesy winks, which twitched another laugh out of me.
What was it with these guys and their winking? I’d seen Bax wink at Piper from the football field—it was the reason Saylor and I had given her such a hard time about him. I’d also caught Callahan winking at Jamaica—only, the way he did it was panty-meltingly sexy and also a little overwhelming to my taste. Finn’s winks were always silly, like he was trying out a move he knew he could never pull off.
So, of course, they worked.
At least on me.
Crap.
Too much of my headspace these days contained Finn McCabe.
I tossed my phone aside on my desk and pulled out a journal article on orchestrated objective reduction theory. The idea of our brains organically connecting to the universe, that we could experience quantum consciousness, allowing us to be in all places at the same time, fascinated me. I wondered if Finn had been thinking as hard about our date as I’d been thinking about it and if that was what had prompted me to step out of character and text him about it.
Determined to put a certain sexy football player and his epicness out of my head, I cued up my Mozart playlist—the one I’d made to improve my math scores—and started reading. Ironically, Orch OR theory took my mind off Finn and our date for the rest of the night.
By the time six o’clock rolled around the next day though, I was a ball of nerves. Every sweater I owned lay in disarray on my bed. I finally settled on a turquoise boyfriend cardigan over a white T-shirt I tucked into my skinny jeans. Since snow was still blanketing the ground, I opted for my hikers rather than my tennis shoes and hoped I was appropriately dressed for an epic date.
At six on the dot, the front desk messaged me via the dorm intercom system to tell me I had a visitor in the lobby. In the mirror above the sink in my room, I gave my hair one last fluff, slicked a lick of lip gloss over my mouth, grabbed my jacket and wallet, and headed downstairs to meet my date.
With his massive shoulders and six-foot-six height, Finn stood out wherever he went. But in the lobby of an all-women’s dorm, even seated on one of the couches in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, he seemed to take up all the available space. The fact of how handsome he was with his cinnamon-brown hair flirting with the collar of his jacket, his sculpted cheeks, his square jaw, and those laughing whiskey-colored eyes, he couldn’t help but grab people’s attention. I noticed more than one girl checking him out as she walked through the lobby.
“Hey,” I said.
His face lit up as he stood and walked to me. “Hey, Chess.” He leaned down and brushed a kiss over my cheek. “Ready for our rocking date?” Leaning in close again, he inhaled and said, “Mmm. You smell nice. Like, really nice.”
I blinked at the suave guy greeting me and grinned when he morphed back into Finn.
“Thank you.” Smiling, I said, “I gotta admit, my curiosity about what you have planned is dialed to twenty on a scale of ten.”
“Then we’d better take care of that.”
Gesturing to the front doors, he silently asked me to precede him. Though I’d never admit it aloud, I liked how his dinner-plate-size hand rested on the small of my back as he ushered me to his waiting truck. Inside the cab was toasty-warm, and I slid a sideways glance his way. He’d dressed as he usually did: Wildcats hoodie, jeans, and hiking boots. No jacket even though a cold snap had accompanied the late February snow over the past week. I had a pretty good idea he was sacrificing his own comfort to heat up the cab for me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I buckled myself in.
“How many times do I have to say it, woman? Quit fishing.” The long-suffering look he gifted me cracked me up.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I directed my gaze forward and said, “Fine. I’ll quietly await my big surprise.” But I couldn’t quite suppress a grin.
He didn’t bother muffling his laughter. “This is already fun, and the night hasn’t even started.”
Only a few minutes later, he pulled his old pickup into the parking lot outside the football team’s indoor practice facility. Without a word he killed the engine and hopped out, running around to the passenger side to open my door for me.
With a grand sweep of his hand, he said, “Milady.”
Consternation knitted my brows. “Why—?”
