9. Finn
CHAPTER 9
Finn
Hot grains of sand fell freely into my sandals. Chatter rose around us to battle the neverending hum of the sea. Waves rushed and rolled, making children giggle and run and making adults sigh with pleasure. To my right, there were endless rows of beach beds facing the sea, and to my left, the crescent beach extended far into the distance.
I glanced at the man walking next to me. His billowy shirt was half undone and his feet dragged through the sand every so often. His hands were in his pockets, dark sunglasses on his face, and a light, salty breeze in his sun-kissed hair.
He really didn’t see any difference between himself and the mass of bodies sprawled out on the beach, swimming in the sea, playing volleyball on the sand, or drinking cocktails and chilled wine and coffee on the sandy terraces of the countless cafes that dotted the right side of the beach.
The tension that I could almost see clouding the space between us was my doing. Then again, I wasn’t about to take that USB drive with us to the beach and risk getting it stolen, wet, filled with sand, or hundreds of other disappointing fates I’d predicted for it. There was a very powerful man in New York City who wanted that drive destroyed. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. But perhaps concealing things from Percy while staying in his home, sharing his bed, and getting to know his family wasn’t the best way to kick things off, either.
I resolved to make things right some other way. Telling anyone—even someone as charming and sweet as Percy, who I did not know so well at all—about the drive was out of the question.
“Now, why does a billionaire entrepreneur move through the mass of commoners when he has a beach under his window?” I asked in my cheekiest voice.
Percy chuckled. It was warm and sweet, but slightly distant. It was so hard to notice the gap I’d created between us that I might have imagined it, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. “One, because it’s also a public beach,” he said, reminding me of what Alicia had already explained to me. “And two, you’ve met my family.”
“And three, you like being around people,” I suggested.
Percy rolled his shoulders. “I’m hardly your party-going extrovert,” he said. “But…ah, yeah, I like crowds where I can be like everyone else.”
“You know, you’re nothing like any billionaire I’ve ever met,” I said.
Percy’s dark eyebrows rose above his sunglasses. “And you’ve met many?”
I tilted my head this way and that. “You’d be surprised.”
He shook his head lightly. “Finn, hardly anything can surprise me coming from you.”
Whatever that line meant, I didn’t get to ask further. We had neared the wet slope where waves licked the beach and my attention darted from Percy to a few screaming, laughing children. A wave twice or three times as big as any so far rolled and roared and splashed us both as high as our knees. Laughing figures floated with it, got dunked, and were pulled further out as the sea retreated. My feet sank into the wet sand and I heard myself yelp in surprise.
Percy spread his arms wide to catch some balance, then grabbed my wrist to hold me steady. He laughed hard as he pulled his feet out of the soft, mud-like mass that pulled us a few inches deep. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to throw me off balance completely.
His fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist and my heart leaped out of my chest. I looked at him, my gaze dropping from my reflection in his dark sunglasses, landing on his smooth, bare chest, and falling to the sand that sucked my feet in.
Slowly, I pulled one foot out, and the other followed, the wet sand around the footprints was already packed hard. I waited for the next wave to wash off the sand from my sandals and watched as Percy did the same. When he was free, he pointed to a path of dry sand ten paces away from us. “That’s as good a place as any, I think,” he said.
I agreed.
We spread out a single, big beach blanket and Percy brought over some rocks to keep the corners from getting lifted by the breeze. It was white with a traditional Greek pattern that symbolized eternity and the ocean’s waves, woven in blue. And although it was large enough for three or even four people—if the four were very intimate and didn’t require personal space—Percy and I sat down close enough to almost touch.
He undid the rest of the buttons of his shirt and tossed the thing into the basket. I pulled my T-shirt off, too, and felt the heat of the sun on my chest in an instant. There was no shade here, but Percy, whose skin was fairer and far more prone to burning than mine, seemed content. He produced a bottle of sunscreen and started rubbing it in while my throat tightened and my mouth dried.
Percy was rough and quick about it. His movements were short, terse, and driven by purpose, yet I couldn’t pretend not to see the particular way his left hand rubbed the sunscreen over his right pec. The defined muscle lifted slightly as he kneaded it, massaging the lotion over his skin. He covered his abs until they glistened under the unfiltered sunlight, then handed me the bottle with a little smile touching his lips. “Could you do my back?”
It took me a moment to force my arms to move. I accepted the bottle, poured a good amount of cream on my fingers, and told myself that it was just sunscreen. We were on a beach and I was twenty-six goddamn years old. I wasn’t a teenager anymore. Such things shouldn’t have excited me the way they did.
Percy shifted away from me and leaned forward.
I rubbed the sunscreen between my hands and neared him, holding my breath. My hands hovered over his back for a few heartbeats before I dared myself to touch him. And when I did, it was like my stomach was hollowed.
I’m doing fine, I told myself as I freely touched all of his back at his request. It took effort to hold in the symphony of sounds that welled in my chest and the thunderous shudders that threatened to rock my body.
“Why am I different?” Percy asked in a strange voice. “From the others you know, I mean.”
I needed a moment to remember I was on Earth and then another to remember what he was talking about. “Oh, um, you just are,” I said, my hands reaching his lower back. The devil himself made Percy produce a satisfied sigh that sent shivers up my arms. I cleared my throat and hoped to God I wouldn’t spontaneously combust. What I needed was to dunk myself in the sea as soon as I could. “The way you eat food with your staff and pick the most public beach to blend in. It’s not what I expect from a billionaire, that’s all.”
Percy let out an amused laugh. “You know, being a billionaire isn’t a personal trait.”
“Oh yeah? Tell that to all the billionaires out there. It’s almost as if the weight of all that money leaves no room for any brains.” The words tripped over my lips before I could stop them. But Percy only laughed and asked me to tell him more. “I mean, have you seen the news? Two billionaires challenged each other to a cage fight on Twitter. Another freaking imploded. One was shooting money into Earth’s orbit and another wanted to dismantle a whole bridge cos his yacht was too big to pass under it. I know of three that eat nothing but McDonald’s burgers. Should I go on?”
“Oh, please, don’t ever stop,” Percy said, laughing harder. The boom of his voice vibrated through his body and I felt it under my hands. His shoulders shook and I watched the back of his head like it was the most intriguing place on the planet. His hair was cut neatly and the back of his neck was shaved to smooth perfection. I wondered if it would be a little salty if I licked it.
Stop that , I snapped at myself and realized I was rubbing his back long after I ran out of cream. My arms shot back to my sides.
“Some call it eccentricity, but I think it’s more serious than that,” I admitted.
“How so?” Percy asked, intrigued. He turned to look at me and I almost wished he hadn’t. Touching him so intimately left me all flustered and I worried he would see that. How the hell would I keep playing the part if I made things awkward between us? The single most important rule to pull this ruse off was to make sure he was comfortable. So, don’t be a creep , I reminded myself.
Sighing, I shook my head. “When you get to be so rich, it’s isolating. You’re not like everyone else any longer, right? But that doesn’t mean you don’t want connections. It’s just so much harder to find it when your life looks nothing like everyone else’s. The circle narrows. You become too powerful, and people who enter the circle are scared to voice their opinions, so they form an echo chamber around you just so that they don’t lose their access.”
“That’s a fairly dire way to look at it,” Percy mused.
“It’s not far off the mark, though,” I said. What I didn’t tell him was that the perversion of desires that came with the limitless power was something I very nearly experienced in my own skin.
Percy mulled over it. “It feels like it, yes.”
We shared a moment of silence, facing one another. He turned his head slightly away from me as if gazing into the distance behind those concealing sunglasses. “But you’re nothing like that. Or you haven’t been in the days since I met you.” Percy pressed his lips tightly together and stretched a smile. I had a feeling he wasn’t comfortable with compliments. Even so, I continued because when had I ever stopped talking if it felt like the wise choice? “You know everyone’s names, you’re not bossing people around, and the last I checked, your yacht was actually just a personal sailboat.”
“And my jet?” Percy asked with a dose of irony.
“Ah, well, you hate that tin can,” I said. “So if the revolution comes and we eat the rich, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“You promise you won’t eat me?” Percy asked. A beat of deafening silence made my heart stop and then Percy buried his face in his hands and cried out. “Ohmygod.”
“Oh. My. God,” I said simultaneously.
“That’s not…that’s not what I meant,” he moaned.
My cheeks were on fire as I turned away from him. I absolutely wouldn’t mind eating him , but that had nothing to do with the revolution. “You can rest assured,” I said in a voice that sounded nothing like my own, “I won’t eat you.” Unless you ask me to , I added internally. A beat passed as the waves came to shore and washed away the awkwardness of the previous moment.
“Should we flip?” Percy asked in a light, casual tone.
“Um, what?” I blinked at him, my heart lurching. It wasn’t like I wouldn’t consider it.
Percy lifted the sunscreen.
“Oh.” A frown crossed my brow briefly. “Right.”
“What did you think I said?” The innocence in his tone infuriated me.
“Aren’t you a little nosy?” I growled tightly, or whatever it was that my voice did that was close to a growl.
He opened the bottle and began pouring the thick, white cream over his fingers. It was completely non-erotic, yet I fought hard not to wheeze. “It’s just that your face is gonna give me sunburns.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not well-practiced in the art of pretend-dating,” I said in a stern, decisive tone. “Excuse me if the lines appear blurry.”
His hand touched my bare back, and I snapped my mouth shut, trapping a moan deep in my throat. My muscles tensed, but Percy massaged the sunscreen hard over my skin, forcing me to relax despite my best efforts to remain brittle.
“It’s on me,” he said softly. “I had all this arranged—well, Kim had it arranged for me —and I didn’t create the boundaries as I should have.” He inhaled deeply, audibly, and exhaled slowly until the cool wind of his breath reached my back. “To be perfectly honest, you’re doing me a much bigger favor than I realized.”
“How so?” My voice was so soft now that I felt like a kitten that was about to fall asleep.
“I needed a display boyfriend so I don’t look silly around my family,” Percy explained, “but I didn’t realize how much I needed a friend to get me out of the house.”
“They’re really not that bad, Percy,” I said, a moan bursting out of me when Percy’s thumbs touched a spot under each of my shoulder blades. “Fu-ack.”
He snorted. “They mean well, sure,” he agreed, “but they never consider how the things they say sound from someone else’s perspective. Like Richie…ah, it doesn’t matter. They’re just very blunt.”
I was able to follow him, but the descending thumbs making circles along my back were distracting me. Was this the best way to apply sunscreen? I didn’t think Percy fully knew he was full-on massaging me. And I was absolutely certain he didn’t know what that did to me. “They’re being themselves,” I purred, wishing I could control my voice a little better.
“Don’t get me wrong. People shouldn’t be ashamed of who they are. But my parents can come across as rude and call it brutal honesty, acting like it makes them superior.” The pressure on my back grew stronger. “I’ll bet you anything they scared him away. They didn’t do it intentionally. They were just brutally honest until he realized there was no way in hell he’d want to live in this mess.”
“Ow!” I slid away from Percy when his thumb slipped and pressed harder under my right shoulder blade. “What’s this about?” I asked as I turned around to face him.
Percy had an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry about that. Ah, I’m just rambling.”
“Tsk. You’re obviously bothered, but you’re not people-pleasing me, sunshine. These are my work hours, so tell me. What happened?” My no-nonsense tone clicked, apparently, because Percy pulled himself together and nodded.
A silence followed as Percy gazed out at the horizon. He inhaled, exhaled, and slouched again, but he didn’t start another conversation. He searched for words, then visibly surrendered. “I used to think I had it all figured out. Richie…” he hesitated. “We became really good friends right away. By the time we started coding our first failed project together, chemistry was building more and more. And when we learned that our idea had already been done, we got blind drunk and, stupidly, tried to hook up. Word to the wise, don’t try to lose your virginity when you can’t stand on one foot without falling down.”
I snorted. “Noted.” My virginity was long gone, but that wasn’t important right now.
“Anyway, it opened a door to several years of this undefined situation-ship that culminated with us becoming ridiculously rich and sort of getting together. But then, he spent two weeks here with my family. And everything went downhill after that.” Percy shook his head. “Ever been dumped by someone, Finn?”
“Oh boy, it’s the story of my life,” I replied.
“We should form a club,” Percy said with a cheeky smile that didn’t completely hide the sliver of pain behind it.
“Eh, it’d probably result in a sad orgy and we’d all get dumped again,” I said, seeing it already.
Percy laughed as he nodded.
“So you blame them for getting your heart broken?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”
Percy’s nod turned into a shake of his head. “I don’t think that’s what they went out to do, but they sure weren’t gutted when I informed them that I was single. Do you know that ‘aww’ when the corners of your lips just stretch and lift? That was their reaction. Because they planted this idea in Richie that our relationship was way more than it was. And then they scrutinized everything that didn’t fit into their definition of a healthy relationship.”
I only needed to lift an eyebrow to get another impression of Alicia Davenport.
“‘Are you having sex regularly? Nektaria hasn’t washed those sheets in three days, darlings. That’s no way to be young and in love.’” Percy rolled his eyes.
I cringed. “I’m looking forward to being on the receiving end of that.”
He waved his hand. “Don’t worry. I do my own laundry here.”
“And this Richie? He couldn’t take it?” I asked.
Percy’s eyes narrowed for a split second. “He got the impression that I’d told them we were some happy couple. Mind you, that was the first time I realized we weren’t, but I was happy to play along. He just didn’t want to get too serious. They scared him off before I had a chance to…”
“Reel him in,” I supplied helpfully.
Percy shot me a sharp look. “For the lack of better words.”
“Are you still in love with him?” I asked, something slowly dawning on me. “Am I here to make him jealous?”
“What? No.” Percy tensed. “Of course not.”
“I could,” I offered. “If that’s what you want, I’d do it.” When had I become so submissive? Ah, but this was a free, all-inclusive vacation to Greece. I could pay him back by making some ex-boyfriend jealous.
“Not at all,” Percy said. “I’m well and truly over him.” His chin quivered as he looked away. “We’re still in touch. I admit, we don’t talk as much as we used to, but he’s still the guy who made all this possible. Had it not been for him, I’d never have sold a single line of code. He was the one who wowed the executives in pitch meetings. And for that, he deserves an invite.” I thought I heard him mutter, “If he doesn’t cancel at the last minute like always.”
I nodded. He most definitely wasn’t completely over this guy. Was he still madly in love? I doubted it. But getting dumped sucked and it wasn’t easy to get used to the sensation. I’d had plenty of practice and it still didn’t sit well with me. And that is precisely why you won’t get involved with Percy. This voice of reason surprised me. It wasn’t like Percy was going out of his way to seduce me so that I would need to resist him. He was simply magnetic and so very human that I couldn’t help but be drawn to him.
“You can count on my help, Percy,” I said. “For what it’s worth.”
He looked at me with unfiltered surprise in his eyes. “It’s worth a lot, Finn.”
Whatever else I had meant to say was gone from my head. My mouth opened, but I shut it and nodded. I hid the surprise as best as I could, but the sudden realization that he was telling the truth, that I wasn’t just a billionaire’s accessory item for a brief exhibition, made my heart beat a slightly different tune. “Well, then,” I said lightly in an airy voice. “That’s settled.”
Percy’s gaze darted away from me. He glanced at the distant buoys and then shot me a challenging look. “Can you swim, Finn?”
“Of course I can swim,” I said.
He hopped onto his feet before I knew it and pointed to the buoy. “I’ll race you there.”
“I’ll bet you ten bucks you won’t beat me,” I yelled after him as I scrambled to stand.
Percy was already near the sea when he looked over his shoulder and grinned at me. “Deal!” With two long paces, his feet splashed into the shallows.
Seven and a half minutes later, I chided myself for the gross lack of self-confidence that stopped me from making that a million bucks instead.