31. Finn
31
FINN
I walked the path from the lighthouse down to the beach, hoping I would find Olive there. Lars texted us earlier that she was eating dinner at his house before heading back home. I’d knocked on the cottage door, but she hadn’t answered.
My feet hit the sand, and there she was, sitting on a large, flat rock.
Anxiety surged through every part of my body as I approached her. She glanced up at me and then looked back at the horizon.
“Can I join you?” My voice was like gravel.
“Oh, you’re talking to me now?”
My chest tightened with shame. No matter how confusing my mixed-up feelings were, there was no excuse for how I’d treated Olive the past few days.
I stopped a few feet away from her, scuffing the packed sand with the toe of my boot. “I’m sorry. For all of it. How I treated you in the movie theater.” My throat was so tight it was painful. “You didn’t deserve that. I should have held you close and made sure you were okay, then cleaned you up and walked you home. I panicked, but it had nothing to do with you. And I’m so sorry for ignoring you afterwards.” My words felt so small and inadequate .
The faint moonlight highlighted her figure enough for me to see her shrug. “It’s fine.”
Her voice was quiet, monotone. Nothing like the lively omega I’d spent the evening with at the movies, or the one who laughed and talked with my brothers.
“No, Olive, it’s not. I’ve been all messed up inside, but it’s no excuse for how I’ve acted.”
She didn’t say anything, but she scooted over a tiny bit on the rock, leaving me space to sit down. My heart leapt, and I quickly sat before she changed her mind. The rock was icy, even through my jeans.
“Are you cold?” My eyes had adjusted enough to the light to see that Olive was bundled up in an oversized sweater that I recognized as one of Lars’s. My alpha rumbled as I was struck by the overwhelming urge to see her in my clothing.
“I’m fine.” Her eyes were fixed on the waves. I wanted to lecture her for being out here alone in the dark, but I understood the draw of the quiet beach. How many nights had I sat in this same spot as my grandma grew sicker inside the house?
“It’s hard for me to be at the lighthouse,” I blurted out. All the warning systems that told me to keep everything locked up neat and tight, to never let my vulnerability spill over, were blaring. But no matter how much I tried to deny it, Olive mattered to me. The idea that she thought I disliked her or didn’t want to be near her? I couldn’t stand it.
She turned towards me, her head tilted. “What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t used to expressing myself… of doing anything that made me vulnerable. But in this moment, with Olive’s sweet scent mixing with the salty air, I thought it was time to be brave.
“I grew up here. In that house. My mom was a single mom. She’d gotten pregnant during a one-night stand and never found the guy again. I don’t have many memories of her because she died in a car crash when I was two. My grandpa was the lighthouse keeper, and he and my grandma raised me. I grew up in that lighthouse, spent my childhood on this very beach.” My eyes burned with memories. The ghost of my grandpa chasing me in the waves. My grandma teaching me how to swim. Sitting at the top of the lighthouse, watching storms roll in with a cup of hot chocolate and my grandpa’s deep voice explaining weather patterns and the coastal rescue system for lost boats.
Now, it was my turn to keep my eyes on the waves as I did my best to keep my voice from shaking. “I met Easton and Lars in elementary school and we just fit together. Our childhoods were spent here and at Lars’s home. We were inseparable, spending our days and most of our nights together—usually causing chaos.” I snorted, remembering all the trouble we got into. “We were little shits. But we loved each other and loved this town. We all revealed as alphas around the same time. I’m not sure we even had a conversation about becoming a pack—we already were. We were all excited to find an omega to complete our pack, but then I went to college, and we started our company, and things just got so busy.” I didn’t tell her that Lars had become obsessed with a no-longer-mysterious omega years ago—that was his story to tell.
“And then, about a year ago, my grandmother got sick—cancer. The first two chemos they tried didn’t work, and she kept getting sicker. She decided to stop treatment.” My throat was so tight, each word like a razor forcing its way through. And then Olive’s hand surrounded mine, anchoring me. I interlaced my fingers with hers, and the tightness in my throat and chest eased.
“I stayed with them those last few weeks. My grandma and grandpa spent every minute remembering . They told story after story of their early courtship days, memories of my mom, some I’d never heard before. One of the last things my grandma said to me was that losing her daughter was the greatest tragedy of her life, and there were days she hadn’t known how to keep living under the grief of it. But I had become her reason for living. She said raising me had been the greatest gift of her life.”
Tears rolled down my cheek and I quickly wiped them off, embarrassed. Olive leaned into my side. Her scent swirled around me, settling into my very skin and bones like it was always meant to be there .
“My parents died on the same day,” Olive said softly. “I had to go back to our house all alone. I lasted a couple of months before I moved. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Sometimes, I wish I could go back there, but I just couldn’t stand being there without them. So I get it, the not wanting to remember.”
I tightened my hold on Olive’s hand as my grief expanded to include her loss. My Olive. Alone in the world.
“When did they die?”
“Five years ago,” she said. “I’ve had a long time to figure out how to live in the world without them. Sometimes it’s still hard.” She hesitated for a moment. “Why did you take on this project, knowing you’d have to be back here?”
A small smile tugged at my lips. “Easton applied without telling Lars or me.” I found I couldn’t summon any of that anger I’d had at his actions with this sweet omega pressed to my side.
“Well, that makes a lot more sense,” Olive said. “I was wondering why you were…”
“An asshole?” I supplied.
Olive turned to me and grinned. “Maybe.”
“Easton shouldn’t have done it, but he knew I would have refused to apply for the grant. I also think he knew that, ultimately, I would have been devastated if anyone else did this work. I also think he was eager to do some matchmaking.”
I wished it was lighter out so I could read Olive’s face. There was a burst of sweetness in her scent, but she didn’t meet my gaze.
“He can be very insistent,” she finally said. “But…” She sighed deeply, chewing her lip. “I don’t know that pack life is for me. My parents ruined me for love.” Her voice was a low whisper.
I shifted on the rock and wrapped my arms around her shoulder. For a second, her body was stiff and I thought she’d pull away, but then she softened into me.
“What do you mean?” I kept my eyes on the distant horizon, the velvet blue sky speckled with bright stars. I wanted to look at her, hold her face in my hands, but I kept still, unwilling to disrupt the moment.
“My dad was an alpha and my mom a beta. One time, when I was ten, I asked my dad if he ever wanted a bigger pack or more kids. He stopped everything he was doing on the boat and cupped my face. He said, ‘Why would I ever want more when I have perfection in front of me?’” Olive sniffed and wiped a tear off her cheek. I held her closer, pressing my face to the top of her head. “He never treated me differently when I revealed as an omega. Never made me feel like there were things I couldn’t do.” She cleared her throat, as if speaking this aloud was painful, and I knew how that felt.
“When I started having some, um, medical issues, it was right in the middle of the busy season. I felt like I was losing my mind. I couldn’t be on the boat. My mom stayed home with me, making sure I was never alone. I felt so bad that I wasn’t working. My dad had to hire extra guys to help him, which was money we didn’t have. The next time I had an episode, my dad stayed home with me.”
She was crying steadily now, her voice hitching on each word. Panic filled my chest at the mention of health issues. I fought the urge to ask her for more information, to set her up with the best doctors, but she was already working so hard to be honest with me now, I didn’t want to push for more yet.
I awkwardly shifted so I could get a wad of napkins out of my pocket left over from lunch. She took them, but it wasn’t enough. Before I could overthink it, I pulled her onto my lap. Surrounded her with my arms. Curled my body around hers. Wishing it was enough to shield her from her grief.
Olive didn’t push me away. She pressed her face into the side of my neck and breathed deeply.
“I was so upset that he stayed with me that day. I kept yelling at him to leave, that he had more important things to do. But he didn’t leave my side. He said—” Her breath hitched, and it was a moment before she could speak again. “He said he was right where he needed to be. The boat could wait. The lobster could wait. Everything could wait, because the most important job in the world was being my dad.”
My heart clenched at the pain in her voice, but there was gratitude there, too. Gratitude that Olive had grown up with parents who loved her, gratitude for my grandparents doing the same for me .
“So you see, they ruined me. How am I supposed to go on living knowing there’s love like that out there? How can I settle for anything less?”
“You don’t,” I said fiercely. “You don’t ever settle. One day, you will feel love like that again, and then you’ll know.”
Olive wrapped her arms around me tighter, and we fell quiet as we listened to the crashing waves and our heartbeats.
“What about you?” she asked, her voice soft as she trailed her fingers along my jaw.
My jaw automatically clenched as if trying to stop the words from getting out. What I hadn’t admitted to anyone. But here, cloaked in darkness, maybe it was safe enough to release them.
“I always wanted a relationship like my grandparents had. They were high school sweethearts. My grandpa started courting my grandma when they were fourteen. She died right before their seventieth anniversary of becoming girlfriend and boyfriend. My grandpa lived another month after she passed, but he wasn’t really there. Looking back, he was preparing for the end, and he didn’t seem remotely upset by the idea. His life wasn’t worth living without his bonded, and that fucking terrifies me. To give another person that amount of power over you that the grief of them takes you under? Is that really the best way to live?”
Olive hummed as she traced her fingers down my chest. “I used to think grief was the worst thing in the world. And it is, at least in the beginning. But now, five years out, I’ve befriended my grief. It connects me to the two people I loved most in the world. It’s all the memories I had with them, how they made me feel so important , even as a little kid. Grief is the price we pay for love, and at some point along the way, it started feeling beautiful instead of ugly, like there’s something sacred in the midst of the agonizing pain.”
Tears streamed down my face. Could my grief for my grandparents become something beautiful? Maybe love wasn’t the thing that killed my grandpa. Maybe it was what gave him peace to face the end.
“I think you know Lars and Easton are courting me, but I would never come between them and you. You’re brothers. You’ve lived so much life together. I don’t ever want to ruin that. ”
“Sweet girl, you could never ruin anything.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead and breathed her in fully.
She clutched at me, her fingers twisting in my shirt. “I’m just saying, if you’re not ready, Finn—if you don’t want this, or at least not right now, that’s okay.”
My heart melted. “It’s hard to believe you’re real, darling. I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready.” She stiffened in my arms, so I quickly continued. “But maybe that’s the point. We won’t ever feel quite ready to risk ourselves for love, and we should do it, anyway.”