“Your point?” I ask.
Finn halves the distance between us, shifting across the bed. He lifts a hand, and his thumb traces a line up and down my jaw. My skin ignites everywhere he touches.
“You might lose me. And I might lose you. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” His smile is goofy. He tucks the hair behind one of my ears.
Every instinct screams its head off, urges me to be anywhere but here. I’ve spent so long listening to that voice. And it may have kept me alive for the last eight months, but I don’t know if I was living.
Screw it.
I throw my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. His arms slip around my waist and grip me tight. It’s a little awkward with the IVs and monitors and my cast, but we make do.
He presses his lips to the crown of my head and says my name like a prayer, the word muffled against my hair.
I wish I’d met you when you were real, Finn, I told him the night of Nora’s party. And now he is real. I just have to be brave enough to let him in.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I curl my fingers into the collar of Finn’s shirt, pull him toward me, and kiss him.
For the span of a heartbeat, Finn is still. Then he exhales against my lips, and his arms wind around my waist, pulling me flush against him. And he kisses me back.
My hand skims up the curve of his elbow, across hiscollarbones, down his angular jaw. One of his hands is tangled in my hair, and the other grips my waist.
Finn pulls back, eyes flicking toward the door, like he’s double-checking Ava—or worse, Nora, who will never let this go—isn’t peeking through the window. A wry smile plays on his lips.
He leans in once more, and this kiss is different, soft and gentle, a brushing of lips. He meets my eyes, and he’s never looked more like the eighteen-year-old boy he is. All mischief and confidence and infectious energy.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he says. He hasn’t let me go—his hands press into the small of my back. Like he’s worried I’ll disappear if he removes his fingers. We share that fear.
Even now, the taste of him still on my tongue, I’m not convinced he isn’t going to vanish.
I roll my eyes.
“It’s too late to change your nickname to Romeo, Casper,” I say.
He snorts, and the sound is so much sweeter when I can feel his chest rumble and his breath hit my chin.
“I’m serious. The second you sat down at that piano the first time, I was done for.” One of his hands disappears from my back, leaving a spot of cold behind it.
I think of the night of the party. Of finding him on the lawn, waiting to see me come home safe even if he wouldn’t admit it. Of admitting to the things I wanted and couldn’t have.
I take Finn’s hand in mine.
Fear pushes through me like an oil spill, spreading into my limbs and down to the tips of my toes.
“Speaking of…” I say. “I found your song.”
“Our song,” Finn corrects.
It’s such a small word.Our. But it carries more weight than I know how to carry alone. Though I guess the whole point is that I don’t have to.
It feels like a confession when I say, “Our song.”
And as terrifying as that admission is, the smile on Finn’s face makes it worth it. At least for now.
Forty-Five
“Next time,” Nora says, leaningbetween the front seats of my new—new to me, at least—car, “I’m driving.”
The car was purchased three weeks ago. My dad volunteered to take me car shopping, and we spent two hours at the used-car lot in Evergreen, near his new apartment. I expected two hours of awkwardness, but by the time we made it to the lot, we’d slipped into something comfortable. Calm. Not an old dynamic, because we’ve spent too long apart to even remember one, but something new.
