Chapter Fifteen
Poached
That night, once the truck had been dragged out of the garage and the Ducatis scrapped off the ground, Finn found himself alone in his first-floor room.
He was sitting on the floor against the wall, wondering what in the world had come over him to kiss Flora the way he had.
He had promised it was all over. That kiss crossed the line. That more than crossed the line.
How could he have let this get so far out of hand? Why would he have initiated those kisses?
His brain developed a heartbeat. He couldn’t believe what had happened. He kissed Flora, on his own accord, with no prompting, no agenda. He chose to do it. In fact, he couldn’t rightly help himself when the feeling had come over him.
He tried to imagine Flora leaving on a jet to Paris in less than forty-eight hours, he couldn’t bear the way he once would have been able to. And yet, there was some part of him that assumed he could control it all, just the way he wanted.
But he truly couldn’t.
And to make matters worse, he couldn’t just tell her he’d been using her in some long scheme to keep her away from Roman and that was it. Not now. Not after yesterday.
“It would appear that I am continually digging my own grave,” he muttered.
He tried to go back to the office but got nothing accomplished. The guilt was beginning to eat him alive. He was lying on the couch the next day when his mother burst in.
“Finn? What’s wrong? Is it your arm? Your ribs? Your heart?”
“I’ve made a grave mistake.”
“What sort of mistake, dear? You never make mistakes.”
There was a silence.
“I did exactly what you told me not to with Flora, and I can’t say how horribly this will end when it does.”
“What did you do? How far did you take it?”
“Too far.”
Mrs. Woodhouse went dead silent.
Finn was an adult, and her angry words were about as useful as her telling him that he was in love with Flora and didn’t know it.
Because that was the entire thing, wasn’t it.
“We’re in much deeper than we imagined,” Finn added.
“Who’s we?”
“The company.”
“Fix it, Finn. There is a way to undo almost everything.”
Problem was, Finn didn’t know how to fix it. Between Holly, the wedding, the merger, and Flora, it was all becoming completely unmanageable.
Flora wasn’t clingy. She never had been. It’s not as if she’d popped in to ask about yesterday. So everything was just boiling over still.
He moved to the patio, trying to come to terms with going to find her and tell her what he’d done. He wanted to fling himself off the nearest cliff into the sea.
Right as he stepped out, Jane passed by the edge of the grass from Roman’s section of the house. She was walking with someone.
Flora.
She was carrying her paint set, talking animatedly, and Jane was laughing. Flora had a way of making everyone laugh.
Poor, unknowing Jane saw him and waved.
“Finn!” she called, bounding across the lawn. “You’ll be so proud of me. I worked a deal with that awful caterer. Got a huge discount. Flora helped though. She can be very cunning when she wants to be.”
Flora was looking at the ground, unable to meet his eyeline.
He couldn’t look at her either. Not after that kiss.
The kiss that would live in his head for years now.
“Well, between the two of you, I’m sure that awful man had no choice but to give in,” Finn replied, taking another quick glance at Flora despite himself.
She was looking at him too.
The eye contact sent an electric jolt down his spine.
“Finn, is Holly coming to the dress rehearsal?” Jane asked, completely unaware.
Finn nearly flinched at her name. Flora looked down again.
“No. She has moot court, so she won’t be flying in until the morning of the wedding.”
“How sad.”
Jane did not sound the least bit sad.
“Yeah…” Finn muttered. “A first-rate Greek Tragedy.”
Flora looked at him again now, staring intently this time.
She and Jane quickly left after. Jane cited her final fitting with her dressmaker.
Finn knew it had to happen. He had to tell Flora.
He had no other choice.
“I really do hate that girl,” Jane said as they walked away.
“She’s so rude. I didn’t want her at the wedding, but Roman said we had to.
She’s so… goodness, I don’t know, just awful!
She acts like she’s a Mrs. Woodhouse already and she hasn’t even gotten a ring yet.
I’m the one with the ring. And Finn doesn’t seem to like her. ”
“I would stay as far away from her as I could if I were you,” Flora said quietly. “Something about her feels dangerous to me.”
“Dangerous? What kind of dangerous?” Jane asked.
Flora shook her head slowly and squinted. “Honestly? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she just seems… like she’s got some insidious ulterior motive.”
“Yeah! To get his money!” Jane paused. “To be honest, I think he likes you.”
Flora cleared her throat. “As a friend.”
“I meant as in he’d like to be with you. As in he’d like to be your boyfriend. He’s never as animated when anyone else is around,” Jane said, trying to lead Flora to a confession. “And the hospital thing was kind of wild.”
“I like Finn as a person,” Flora replied honestly. “But we could never be together. I’m too unserious.”
“He needs unserious.”
She and Jane spoke for a while longer about the last-minute wedding plans and how Roman was an idiot for driving into the garage. Then she hopped in her Mercedes, off to her very last dress fitting. Her dress had been custom made through a couture atelier, of course.
“See you!” she called. Risk by Gracie Abrams came through the speakers as she pulled out. “I love this song!”
Flora laughed and waved, surrounded by a cloud of dust.
The entire estate was bustling in wedding prep, despite it being three weeks away. Clara was putting the tent up now to see if the size was right, people were milling about taking measurements of miscellaneous things like flower beds and walkways.
“There’s not enough room for the swans here!” someone shouted as she walked by.
Swans?
Wedding prep and swans aside, Flora was in a state of complete shock, happiness, and disappointment over yesterday’s events.
She hadn’t told a soul, not even Allison.
Allison would be mad at her for giving in, but there wasn’t even a chance Flora had the self-control not to. She had wanted to kiss Finn since June.
That kiss had been something for the memory scrapbook. She’d never forget it as long as she lived and was still getting butterflies thinking about it.
But that was all it’d ever be. And that’s what made it so awful.
She was dancing between wishing it had never happened and wishing it could happen again. Flying to Paris tomorrow was, of course, making things feel worse than they were. In forty-eight hours, she’d be in a flat in Paris, hanging with Amandine, Manon, and Camille.
And there was the leftover mess with Alex. She wasn’t sure she’d say anything to him about being there. There wasn’t any point. She loved Finn now. Though, maybe it would fade… maybe she should at least tell Alex she was coming.
“What a tangled web we weave…” she sighed.
She was lost in thought as she wandered off to the hills again. Her last walk before she left for months. She’d miss this place, but now she really needed to leave.
She had been out for several hours, thinking in circles and walking in circles, when she finally convinced herself to go back and face the music. She had to finish packing, say goodbye to Allison, and go to dinner with her dad.
She knew her dad was sad she was leaving, but relieved—he’d seen the Holly-Finn headlines and was picking up on the undercurrent.
It all felt familiar. Sent to Paris again to get away from a Woodhouse Boy, but this time for the other Woodhouse Boy.
“At least this time I chose to leave,” she consoled herself.
As she thought about what a mess it all was, she heard crunching on the trail.
“Finn?”
He stood in front of her, completely still.
“Finn… what’s wrong?” Flora asked. “What are you doing out here? Your ribs are still broken.”
“Flora,” he said. “I have something to confess.”
And suddenly the gorgeous October day was feeling colder.
“And yesterday makes it worse.”
Flora said nothing.
“Everything since May has been based on a lie. I thought you were going to blow the Brooks Merger, so I did whatever I could to keep you away from Roman, from ruining the wedding. I saw you getting close to breaking it all up.”
Flora felt her heart begin to pump faster.
“So, I decided to distract you until they got married,” he continued. “Carmel was the beginning of it.”
Her breath caught and her throat tightened.
“I never thought it’d get this far out of control. And it’s so far out of control that not even I can fix it.”
Silence stretched.
“So,” Flora said, her voice low, “so, when did it become real?”
Finn looked caught off guard.
“I—I don’t know if…”
His voice trailed off.
“You don’t know if it’s real?” Flora asked, her voice flat.
“I’m sorry…” he whispered. “I am sorry, so sorry. I was out of line. I got too wrapped up. I blurred reality. I should have stopped long ago.”
“I gathered that,” she said dryly. “Finn, can I ask you something?”
The wind picked up, knocking the flowers from her backpack, sending orange and red petals flying in the wind and scattering across the trail.
He nodded. “Anything.”
“Why did you kiss me yesterday?”
“I—Flora, I obviously find you very attract—”
“So, you think I’m hot and nothing else?”
“No, that’s not—” He stopped, gathering whatever there was left to gather. “That’s not what I meant. I just—the lines got blurred. It’s better this way. It has to be this way.”
“Why did you come to the flat all the time to be close to me?”
Finn’s eyes darted toward the ocean.
“Why did you seek me out and tell me your secrets?”
He looked back to her.
“Why did you buy over fifty grand worth of jewelry?”
Silence still.
“Why were you freer with me?”
No response.
“Why did you wake up from a comatose heart attack when I sat with you in the hospital?”
Again silence.