‘I guess they miss her.’
He chews his lower lip, scowling.
‘Talk to me,’ I implore. ‘You never talk to me about her. You never speak about your childhood.’
‘That’s because I’ve spent my life trying to forget it.’
‘But it might help you to work through these things. Not just with a therapist, but with a friend.’
‘Argh, Liv!’ he snaps with frustration. ‘What do you want to know? That my mum used to do crack at the kitchen tableright in front of us? That I’d sometimes walk in on her fucking strangers in the living room? That she hit me once because I asked why we had no food in the fridge?What do you want to know?’ Anger has exploded across his face and his voice has grown increasingly irate with every question that has flown from his mouth.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say with shock.
I didn’t realise how close he must have already been to his threshold because it seems I’ve just pushed him over it.
I reach for his hand, but he reels away from me.
‘My childhood was fucked up and my mum was fucked up and Tyler and Liam are probably going to be fucked up and there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m fucked up too!’
‘Finn.’ I breathe out his name, desperately wanting to comfort him.
His chest is heaving, his expression wild, and I ache to lay my hands on his body and soothe him, put out the fire that’s raging deep inside.
You don’t go through something like that and come out the other side unscathed.
My mum’s words come back to me.
And then, suddenly, he deflates. He presses the heels of his palms roughly to his eyes and when his hands come away, all of the wind seems to have been sucked out of his sails.
‘We should get back,’ he says flatly.
I step forward and engulf him in my arms, but his returned embrace is lacking in strength.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’m very gentle with Finn after our talk on the beach, but he seems to have no intention of dwelling on it and is soon back to his old self. I try to follow his lead because it’s clearly what he wants me to do, but the memory of his pain is difficult to shed. I feel closer to him, even though I suspect that he’d turn back time and avoid our ever having had that conversation if he could.
We fall into a rhythm as the weeks pass. He often comes into Seaglass while I’m at work, chatting to me at the bar, and then we go home and kiss and cuddle and talk late into the night, followed by lazy mornings and breakfasts in bed. It feels natural, a vision of what life could be like, though when thoughts like that surface, I tamp them down.
We have an unspoken understanding to stick to safe subjects like our friends and our careers. He confides that he’s been writing a lot, and when we hear the downstairs guests going out for the day, he plays some of his compositions to me on the piano, which has been relocated to my living room. I’m beyond proud to hear that his meetings have finally come to something and that a major label wants him to put out a solo album. But he’s unhappy about their terms and conditions and doesn’t want to be tied down to a multi-record deal. He hates the thought of someone having control over hiscareer, dictating what he does and even what he wears, when he could be a relatively anonymous songwriter. He’s thinking about recording something with a small indie label to give himself a bit more freedom.
Eventually, he does begin to confide in me about his family and friends in America. I drink in every detail, learning more about his brother and sister, as well as his boisterous little nephew, Jimmy, who has just turned four. He tells me about his dad and his dad’s new girlfriend, and it warms my heart to look through photographs with him and see the people who mean something to him.
He also fills me in on the outings he goes on with his brothers. I give him space to talk about his childhood, but I won’t pry again, not like I did that day on the beach. I hate the thought of him associating his bad memories with me – he said I was the only thing that made his trips here bearable and I don’t want to jeopardise that.
I do wonder how we can have a future if he can’t stand the idea of living here. Though I suppose that’s the truth I’ve been shying away from – we can’t.
It’s with this new headspace that I decide to spend the morning of the anniversary of my parents’ deaths on my own. Finn is still asleep when I wake up and I manage to pull on clothes and leave the house before he comes to.
But he finds me sitting on a bench on the cliffs west of St Agnes, not far from the place where he brought me the first year after they died.
‘Hey,’ he says, his expression grim as he approaches.
I’ve become better at living with my grief, but on this one day, it hits me like a ton of bricks and I just need to cry it out.
I’m not sorry to see him.
He sits down next to me and opens an arm. I don’t ask how he knew where I’d gone and he doesn’t ask why I left without telling him. I slide closer and rest my cheek against his shoulder, breathing in shakily.
