Falling for Finn (19 page)

He picked up the glass, downed it. The alcohol burned a hot path to his gut and it felt good. A quick and easy way to the dull the pain and the anger that sat inside him, gripping him so tight he could barely breathe.

Another? Sure. Why not? He could drink the whole damn bottle and it wouldn’t matter.

The glass filled, the liquid shining like melted gold.

He’d spent the whole day out on his board, out at Piha, catching wave after wave. Trying to find his calm, trying to find a way out of the web of anguish he’d got himself caught in.

But it hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. He felt as shitty now as he had after hearing the apartment door slam when Anna had left two days ago.

Still as full of rage. Still as full of hate. At her. At himself.

Restlessly, he picked up his glass, then picked up his phone. Perhaps he should call a mate. Go get trashed. Then maybe find some groupie for a night of hot sex.

Or maybe not. He’d tried that once. Hadn’t worked then, probably wouldn’t work now. Yet something else Anna had ruined. Maybe he should just stick to finding a mate and getting trashed.

He wandered over to the couch, sat down and pulled out his phone, going through his contact list. But there wasn’t anyone on it he wanted to see.

Finn threw it aside, stared blankly across his apartment.

He felt like a black hole had opened up inside him, sucking away all happiness. All light. So pathetic.

Closing his eyes, he took another deep swallow of Scotch.

Look at you, drinking yourself into a coma. Sorry, pathetic piece of shit. And all because your so-called friend walked out on you.

Finn opened his eyes again and found the red velvet armchair in the middle of his vision.

Memory fell through him: Anna arched back on it, her mouth open, brown hair stuck to her pink skin. Her arms around him. Holding him so tightly.

I love you. I love you so much.

The cracked sound of her voice had whispered in his ear, and he’d felt like a supernova had burst open inside his heart, filling him up with light and heat and happiness. All the things that had been missing in his life. All the things he’d ever wanted.

Then she’d fucking run. Again.

He gritted his teeth against the remembered anger. She always ran from him. Always. He’d been so sick of it. So angry. All those old feelings opening up inside him again. Why? What was so wrong with him? What was so very terrible about loving him?

Since we started sleeping together, all I’ve had from you is anger and contempt.

Finn took another swallow of whisky, feeling the burn. Wanting it.

Liar. She was so full of shit. Yes, he’d been angry, but that was because she kept running away from him. Who wouldn’t feel angry after that?

Yet for some reason, the justification felt hollow. All he could see was her face as he’d lifted his head, staring into her green eyes, full of amazement at the words he’d just heard from her. And then he’d seen stark, desperate fear.

To which you responded so eloquently by calling her a fucking coward.

Cold began to seep through him. He took another desperate swallow, wanting to get rid of it but it wouldn’t go away.

He was used to pushing fear. Used to pushing limits. That’s what he did. That’s what he was good at. And he knew from past experience that sometimes Anna needed pushing.

But, shit, you couldn’t push all the time. He knew that too. Sometimes you had to pull back. Sometimes you had to take a softer approach. Be gentle. Be tender.

He never had with Anna.

You break me down…. You strip me of my defenses…

And he had broken her down. He’d also made no allowances for the fact that she’d been scared. Made no allowances for the fact that she was a creature of habit and routine, self-containment and cautiousness, and that perhaps she might find this sudden change in their relationship frightening. On top of a trauma she was still trying to come to terms with.

Jesus Christ.

She was right. She’d been scared and all he’d given her back was rage. That wasn’t what you were supposed to do with someone you loved.

It had just never occurred to him to give her tenderness. He’d never been given any himself. His parents had always viewed him as something of a failure. Their embarrassing secret. The dyslexic son doing some stupid little program on TV about extreme sports. He’d told himself he didn’t care. Couldn’t give a shit what they thought of him. But he had. Desperately so. And then Anna had filled the gap. Given him what he’d never got from his own parents. Love. Respect.

And have you given those to her in return?

No. He’d called her selfish. He’d called her a coward.

Fuck.

Slowly, Finn put down his glass, forcing himself to remember that night. Forcing himself to look back on his anger. Rage that she’d rejected him. That she’d called him a stranger. That she’d wanted her friend back. The old Finn. The one he’d been trying and trying to leave behind. The man he’d been before he’d found his success.

The success Anna had given him.

He let out a long, slow breath as something suddenly became clear to him. Something he’d been trying hard not to see but inescapable all the same.

Anna had done so much for him. She’d had to teach him how to read. She’d found him a job. She’d seen him getting shit from his parents and she’d been the one to stand up for him. And she’d been the one to see what was left of his pride slowly disintegrate in front of his eyes. She’d seen him bleed, and what had made it immeasurably worse was that she’d helped him. And he’d
let
her. And then, even worse, he’d fallen in fucking love with her.

The shame of it. He’d never, ever forgiven her for that. He’d never forgiven himself.

Finn blinked. Was all this just wounded pride?

“Shit.”

Her voice rang in his head.

When are you going to lower your defenses? When are you going to lay your heart at my feet?

All this time he’d been guarding himself because she’d seen him at his lowest and he’d never forgotten. He'd never wanted her to see him like that again.

Too bad. He had to do it.

Perhaps it was too late for them. Too late to fix the mess he’d made. But the least he could do was give her what she’d always given him. Because he loved her and she was worth any price.

He would strip himself bare. He would lay his heart at her feet.

Anna tried to pay attention. Across the restaurant table, Adrian was discussing something animatedly with the client, something Anna knew she should be taking in but was having difficulty concentrating on. It annoyed her. She’d been so much better at work for the past couple of weeks, and she didn’t want to lose it now. Work was just about the only thing she had in her life at the moment.

Sad, Anna. Really, really sad.

Irritated, she pushed aside the thought. No, it wasn’t sad. It was dedication. Commitment. Nothing else. And anyway, she’d been out, hadn’t she? She’d gone out to dinner with Lily a couple of times. Pushed herself really hard and even made it into the pub. Okay, so she hadn’t stayed long, but it had felt like an achievement. Like she was finally, at long last, moving on.

Adrian asked her something and she replied, and it must have been the right thing because he nodded like he agreed, the client nodding right along with him.

Great. If nothing else, at least she could fake it.

A familiar sound caught the edges of her attention. She couldn’t immediately identify it, and a cursory scan of the lunchtime crowd didn’t leave her any the wiser.

She tried to direct her attention back to Adrian and the client, but the sound came again, the echo of a familiar voice.

Everything in her went still and quiet, pain unfolding dark wings in her chest.

No, she wouldn’t look. Wouldn’t check to see if it was him. She’d been doing it for the past two weeks and it never was. He’d excised himself so completely from her life he may as well have never been in it. Apart from the gaping hole in her chest from where her heart used to be.

Finn’s voice and she couldn’t help it. She looked.

It wasn’t him. A woman sat at a table, her iPad raised, watching something on her screen.

Anna’s breath caught. An episode of
Wild Life.
A recent one from the looks of it, because it wasn’t one she’d seen before and she’d seen all of them, at least until a couple of weeks ago.

She couldn’t seem to look away. Finn was onscreen, his blond head bent, a piece of paper in his hands. A frown creased his forehead, his finger running along the paper. It looked like he was reading, and from the way his lips moved, it looked like he was reading aloud.

Anna blinked. Reading aloud? On camera?

No, it couldn’t be. He hated doing that. She knew how badly he’d been teased at school about it. Knew how much he hated anyone knowing about his dyslexia. So, no. It wouldn’t happen. Would it?

She wanted to go over to the woman, pick up the iPad and look for herself.

Then she heard him say her name.

She froze. Rooted to the spot. Staring at the tiny iPad screen as he lifted his head. As his dark eyes seemed to find hers. As he said her name.

“Anna?”

No, that wasn’t Finn. That was Adrian. With an effort, she turned back to her boss. “S-sorry, Adrian, what did you say?”

He frowned at her. “Are you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”

“Actually, no, I’m not,” she heard herself say. “I’m feeling quite sick. Would you mind if I went home?”

The abrupt request seemed to take him by surprise. “I…well….if you’re not feeling the best…”

She’d already got to her feet and started gathering her things. “Thanks. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

Blindly, she turned, Adrian and the client already forgotten. She had to get home. Get home, fire up her computer and see just what on earth Finn was doing.

Impatience ate at her. She’d been doing so well not thinking about him. Not thinking about the anger in his eyes, the sneer that had twisted his mouth. The things he’d said.

You want that pathetic, piece of shit…

She didn’t understand how he could think that about himself. Because she’d never seen him that way. Never seen him as pathetic. He’d always been strong, and she’d helped him because he’d been her friend and she loved him.

Yes, she loved him. And now one look at that screen had made her so hungry for the smallest glimpse. For the sound of her name spoken in his voice. For anything.

She took a cab home and as soon as she got in, she pulled out her laptop and fired it up, going onto the TV website where old episodes of programs could be watched. Then she clicked on the most recent episode of
Wild Life.

The theme of the show was “facing your fear” and featured a whole lot of hard-out extreme sports people doing the thing that scared them most in the world. For one guy it was the act of getting into a car after years of being terrified of driving after a car accident. For another it was flying. A third tried a snowboarding stunt that had gone wrong once and that he hadn’t been able to do again.
 

After the third guy had successfully pulled off his snowboarding stunt to a cheering crowd, the camera came back to Finn. Clearly, they were up a mountain, skiers and boarders behind him, the high sides of a half-pipe just in shot. He grinned and her heart came to a shuddering halt, pain like a lance taking her full in the chest.

“Since everyone else has had a go at their fears, I guess it’s my turn,” he said to the camera. “You wanna know what mine is? I have dyslexia, and the thought of reading aloud to anyone scares me shitless.”

The last word had been beeped out of course but the crowd around him cheered, roaring their approval.

“So you know what I’m going to do?” He pulled something out of the pocket of his snowboarding jacket. “Here’s a little something I prepared earlier.” More cheering. “I wrote this…uh…well, a week ago. All you dyslexics out there know what that means, right?” Someone said something and everyone laughed.

But Anna didn’t laugh. She knew. She’d sat at his side helping him write on more than one occasion. Knew how a few lines could take him hours and hours.

Finn cleared his throat, and even in the snow she could see the sweat sheening his forehead. Recognized the self-deprecating smile on his face, the one he always used to use to cover how much he hated doing something he wasn’t very good at.

Her heart squeezed inside her chest.

“Anyway, I can’t remember exactly what I wrote,” Finn went on. “It takes me so long to write anything, and I’m usually concentrating so hard on getting the letters right that I tend to forget the content.” A slight shake in his hand as he lifted the bit of paper. “Okay, so I’m also nervous.” Another sickly looking grin. “Deal with it.”

He paused, his throat moving as he swallowed, looking down at the paper in his hand. Then he began to read, slowly, haltingly. “This is for…Anna. I w-wanted to tell you, on…national TV, that I was…worn? No, shit, wrong. That I was wrong.” He stopped, frowning, his finger following the words. “Y-you were…” A long hesitation, his lips moving as if he was sounding out the word first. “You were….right.” A nod, brow clearing. “S-s-so this…is…me. No…” Another long, painful hesitation. “Defenses? Yes…this is me. No defenses.” He nodded again, one hand coming up to wipe his forehead. “My…h-h-heart is at…” His hands were shaking more obviously, the paper trembling in his grip. “Your?” He sounded out the word again as if puzzled by it. “Yeah, okay, my heart is at…your…feet and I w-w-would do…” People behind him began to shift, restlessly. “A-a-anything for…you to…” He stopped again, sounding it out. “Pick? Pick it…up.”