Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Finn
“Thank you,” I tell the worker as she hands me a grease-stained bag filled with burgers and fries. Only one of each is for Riley, but I need a little more sustenance than that.
Riley grabs the bag from my hand, setting it on her lap. “This smells like cardiac arrest heaven,” she laughs.
“Right?” I say, pulling away from the drive-through lane. Burger Hut isn’t a chain restaurant, but the tiny hole-in-the-wall fast-food joint makes some of my favorite food in town.
I like other classier kinds of food, too, but nothing beats a good burger or chicken sandwich with some perfectly crispy fries. I might be a little hungry.
Riley randomly popping up like a daisy in the middle of the parking lot was the best part of my day, hands down.
A piece of my heart settled into place when she so willingly agreed to do something with me. She didn’t even know what she was agreeing to.
In fairness, I didn’t either. I just knew I wanted to spend some time with her.
Whenever we’re together, years ago and now, very little of that time has been spent with just the two of us. One or both of my brothers have always been around. Mav is sprinkled into the mix now, too.
I’ll soak up any time I get to spend with her, regardless of who’s around. You bet your sweet ass I wasn’t going to fumble the opportunity to have some alone time with her, though.
I’m not expecting anything from her other than the friendship we’ve already built. My feelings for her are a problem that I’m working on, slowly but surely.
Keep telling yourself that.
I’m just greedy to spend time with her. Plain and simple, I want to hang out with her. I’m so fucked.
This all makes me sound like a complete sap. Oh… well. I’ve been called worse in my life.
If I’m a sap for her, I’ll gladly take the title and wear it like a badge of honor.
Riley reaches into the bag, pulling out a couple of fries. She shoves one in her mouth, handing the other to me.
Instead of grabbing it from her, I open my mouth. She laughs, setting it on my waiting tongue.
“So, where are you taking me?” she asks.
I don’t know where we are going. I’m just driving. I pulled my truck onto the highway, and we’re just cruising along with no particular destination in mind.
“Wherever the road leads us,” I say with a shrug.
She smiles, eating a few more fries. Fiddling with the radio, she finds the one station we can clearly get in town. We drive in silence for a few minutes.
Her head relaxes against the headrest. She looks more content than she did when she first popped back into our lives.
I’m sure the calming atmosphere of Aspen Springs has a big part to play in that, but I’m hoping I had a part to play, too.
Eventually, she unwraps our burgers as I continue to drive farther out of town. There aren’t many cars on the road at this time of day. With nothing but snow-covered land on either side of us, it leaves space for peace to settle over us.
Her laugh fills the truck when she hands over my third burger. I devoured the first two in six bites total.
“How can you eat so much?” she asks, still finishing up the last of hers.
“Babe, have you seen me?” I gesture down the side of my body.
“Oh, I’ve seen,” she says. “You’re kind of hard to miss, Finn Rivers.”
I give her a wink before looking back at the road. When I turn off the highway onto a side road, I swear her cheeks have a slightly pink hue to them.
Even if she is charmed, it doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of women swoon over the words that fall easily from my mouth, or the simple gestures that are second nature to me.
It’s just who I am. Sue me. I’m a flirty guy. So, her reaction doesn’t mean anything, even though I wish it did.
After a few minutes, I pull into a small parking lot that’s thankfully plowed. I would go further, but I know the snow won’t be cleared much past this point.
This area doesn’t receive much traffic this time of year. The summer is entirely different, with everyone driving up here to go hiking.
“Did you just bring me to a random parking lot in the middle of nowhere?” she asks, eyeing me skeptically.
“Maybe,” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt and turning to face her.
“A secluded spot in the middle of the woods where no one would hear me scream,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “Either you brought me here to fulfil some kind of murder fantasy… or maybe some other kind of fantasy.”
Why is she always thinking about murder? Weirdo. At least she’s an adorable weirdo.
“I guess both of them could have me screaming,” she says with a devilish smirk.
My dick twitches in my pants. I swear she’s trying to kill me right now.
Pressing my elbows into the middle console, I lean toward her. “You want to test that theory?”
She blinks three times, the mischief in her stare growing with each passing second. “You’ll have to catch me first.” Then, in the blink of an eye, she frees herself from her seatbelt and bolts from the truck.
Excitement flares to life inside of me. A laugh bursts from my lungs as I slide from my seat. Riley’s already made it to the far side of the small lot.
She glances at me over her shoulder before she swipes up a handful of snow, making a hasty snowball in her hands.
I slowly stalk in her direction. She launches the snowball. It smacks into the dead center of my chest.
My feet come to an abrupt stop. “You’d better run, angel.”
Her eyes widen before she takes off, running in a wide arc around the outside of the plowed area, and disappears behind my truck. I’m still laughing when I make a few of my own snowballs and sneak over to my truck.
She must be standing near the tires because when I peek under the truck, I can’t see her. Smart girl.
Just then, a snowball falls from above my head. It only misses me by a few inches.
“Riley,” I growl, but I’m having the time of my life.
“Finn,” she responds in her own sexy growl.
Making my best guess of where she’s hunkered down, I toss one of my own snowballs over the bed of the truck. The satisfying splat of the snow and her responding yelp make me laugh yet again.
I only have one more snowball, so I start to creep around the back of the truck. As soon as I peek around the corner, I’m hit with a barrage of snowballs.
When the hell did she make so many of them?
Like a grizzly bear charging through gunfire, I storm toward her. I’m covered in snow when I wrap my arms around her, bringing us both to the ground. We land on our sides, my arm cradling her head, taking the brunt of the fall.
We’re both laughing hysterically as we lie on the icy pavement, completely wrapped around each other. I’ve never felt this free with a woman before.
She makes me feel like I could do anything, and she would still like me for who I am. It’s liberating to know that someone accepts all the parts of you that you rarely let anyone else see.
Most people see a big, burly guy who doesn’t take life seriously and has a Playboy past. While all of that is a part of me, it isn’t all of me.
There’s a softer side. The side that’s currently stroking Riley’s snow-crusted hair away from her face.
It’s the side that has my heart pounding out of my chest from her proximity alone. It’s the side that’s staring longingly into her eyes for endless seconds while our breathing slows.
She brings her hand up, smoothing some of my own hair away from my face. There’s a gentleness in her touch that lingers even after my hair has been smoothed back where it belongs.
Her lips are right there, and I want to kiss them desperately. But I can’t. She was Cole’s girl.
She isn’t now. The voice in my head screams. Maybe it would be okay…
Her thumb grazes over my bottom lip. All my muscles tense with the restraint it takes to keep from closing the distance between us.
Indecision flashes through her gaze before she settles on an answer to the thoughts bouncing around in her brain.
Her lip pressed against mine. Any restraint I had has evaporated. My arms draw her in even closer, so not even a breath of space exists between us.
My tongue slides across the seam of her lips, begging for entry. Her tongue slides against mine, sending a shiver from the top of my head to the base of my spine.
This might be a kiss, but it feels like so much more.
I pull back, kissing the tip of her nose, then her forehead. She snuggles in until her head is pressed against my chest. I’m only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt.
A chill might be settling into my whole body, but there isn’t any part of me that wants to move. Snapping the perfection of this moment would be tragic.
She lets out a contented sigh, and I melt even further into her.
“Finn,” she finally whispers.
“Hmm,” I mumble, feeling more relaxed than I probably should, lying on the snow-packed ground. I should care that it could be hypothermia settling in, but I couldn’t care less because Riley’s still tucked in safely next to me.
“It’s getting really cold out here,” she says. I feel a shiver course through her.
That’s enough to snap me into action. I scoop her up into my arms, carrying her to the truck.
She giggles against my neck. “I could have gotten up on my own, you big brute.”
“Eh… but you don’t have to. Let me show off my muscles,” I say, depositing her in the passenger seat.
She’s still giggling when I jump behind the wheel and start the drive back into town. Her head rests against the back of the seat as her laughter ebbs away.
She reaches over, grabbing my hand and pulling it up onto the console between us. Her slender fingers twine with mine.
“Are you holding my hand?” I ask, the corners of my mouth kicking up.
“Perhaps.” Her fingers give mine a gentle squeeze.
The garage door creaks closed behind my truck. I dropped Riley off at the coffee shop where her car was parked. She said she was going to get some work done there before she came back to the house.
I held onto her hand for as long as I could. I swear I can still feel the comforting heat of her hand cradled in mine. Don’t even get me started about the beautifully haunting feeling her lips left on mine.
I want to kiss her again so badly, I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin. I have no idea how I’m going to be around her and not kiss the crap out of her. At the very least, I’m going to want to touch her in some way.
A hug. A kiss to the forehead. A hand on the small of her back.
Letting out a small groan, I let myself into the house. Flashes of our afternoon together fly through my mind, and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face.
“What’s that smile for?” Theo asks from where he’s sitting on the couch.
I debate lying to him, but I don’t want Riley to be my dirty little secret. She deserves better than that.
It wasn’t the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, but I’m also not ashamed of it. I sit down on the opposite side of the sectional from him.
“I kissed Riley.” The words fly from my mouth before I have a chance to second-guess them.
A moment of surprise passes over him, but it quickly fades to understanding. “I kissed her, too,” he says.
Now it’s my turn for a surprise. “Wait… when?” I ask.
“Yesterday.”
I nod, processing this little tidbit of information. I’m not shocked. The tension between them has always been evident. I’m just surprised it happened.
Theo might lean more in the dominant direction with women once he knows he can trust them, but he’s rarely very forward with them in the beginning.
“I really like her,” he says. His voice is filled with far more emotion than I was expecting.
“I’m not trying to steal her from you.” If there’s even anything to steal. “I know you’ve liked her for a long time.” I pause. “I just… like her, too.”
This isn’t the first time, Theo, and I have had similar feelings for a woman. We’ve even shared women before. Never actual relationships, just a few random threesomes.
To say that I was floored the first time it happened would be a wild understatement. In one night, I learned that not only did my usually quiet brother have a thing for sharing women, but he was also a bit of a dom in the sack.
I think he had to ask me a few times why I kept staring at him like I was utterly confused.
“So, what are we going to do about this?” Theo asks.
“What do you think Cole’s going to think? Because if it bothers him, I don’t want this to go any further.”
I would always wonder what might have been if I couldn’t explore things with Riley, but I would never put that before my brother.
“I don’t give a shit what either of you do with her,” a familiar voice comes from behind me.