“Everyone?” I snorted, letting the car behind us pass before the dude started camping out in our trunk. “Hardly.”
“Yeah,” Finn said softly, a hint of something shining through that I couldn’t place. Wistfulness? Which—right. Go me for dragging down the mood.
“I might tell Shane you snore,” I said, deliberately light. “Might add some creative descriptions of drool, just for good measure.”
Finn’s expression brightened. “Best friend, right?”
It was strange—the things we knew and didn’t know about each other, random trinkets of intimate knowledge at odds with missing basics like the people closest to us.
“Best friend, yeah,” I confirmed. “And former roommate. Also the owner of this very car, so if you accidentally sit on a glitter glue stick, that’s because he’s an elementary school teacher.”
“You seem very close.” Finn sounded curious, warm.
“We are.” I thought about leaving it at that but—hell. This day was about getting to know each other with our clothes on. Clothes that weren’t scrubs, at that. “He’s seen me break downafter a bad shift. I got him off his sofa after he split from his girl of six years. It’s… I don’t have a lot of close friends, you know? Easy to lose touch when you’re elbows-deep into your residency. So, yeah. Shane is the person who knows me best.”
“Better than your parents?” Finn asked.
I drew a breath to answer, then thought better of it. We had all day. The idea stretched bright like the first rays of a sunrise. “Hold that question, okay? Nap now. Once we arrive, you’ve got at least six hours left to quiz me and be dazzling.”
“Dazzling?” He laughed, low in his throat, then stretched his legs out, head tilting back against the seat. “Makes me sound like a handful of fake diamonds.”
“Or a faux hooker.” I tagged on a grin to show it wasn’t a slight, and he winked at me, dimples pressing craters into his cheeks.
“Guilty as charged.”
“Sleep,” I told him.
“Fine.” His eyes drifted shut. “Wake me when we get there?”
“You got it.”
“Thanks, Jesse.” A slow blink and a glance from beneath lowered lashes. “Looking forward to the day, you know?”
“Me too.” Simple honesty.
He smiled without opening his eyes, mouth soft around the edges, and just like that, the air in the car shifted. While the city began peeling away in layers—brick and fire escapes giving over to chain-link fences, then maples streaked with rust-red leaves—his head lolled toward the window, features relaxed, lashes dark against skin still a touch too pale from long hospital hours.
Another ripple of warmth along my nerve endings. I tightened my hands on the wheel and kept driving.
A curve in the road brought the lake into view, silvery blue and still, framed by a ragged ring of maples. I parked in the gravel lot and killed the engine. Sudden silence pressed in—nothing but the faint whisper of leaves.
Beautiful.
I turned to Finn, allowed myself a minute to truly study him. His lips were slightly parted, face smooth and unguarded, sunlight catching on his cheek and trickling down the curve of his jaw.
Beautiful.
“Hey,” I murmured.
He didn’t even stir.
I cupped his face with a light touch. “Finn, hey. We’re here.”
A small frown before Finn blinked like someone climbing out of a dream, sleep clinging to the wispy tips of his lashes. He squinted at me as if I was a little too bright for him—then he smiled, slow like a secret. And, oh. I could have had this the first morning. Maybe not this exact smile or the warm, trusting way he looked at me, but something like this moment, Finn sleepy and soft, with nothing to prove. If I’d stayed rather than slipping out like a ghost, leaving money on the nightstand like an afterimage. I would have if I’d already known him then, past the magnetic body and quick-witted charm.
But I hadn’t. I’d only known the surface. This, now… It wasn’t anything like that.
“Morning,” I said, low like an admission. “Again.”
