13. FINN
Chapter thirteen
FINN
I’m in trouble before Bailey says yes to another dance.
Not casual trouble. Not the kind I can skate around with a joke, a grin, and enough confidence to make everyone forget I started the mess in the first place.
Real trouble.
The kind that wears a dark green dress, and keeps looking at me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m still the bad idea she thought I was.
I should help her decide.
I should give her every reason to stay safely on her side of the line.
Instead, I’m standing beside her at the edge of the dance floor, thinking about how she felt against me during the last song.
Her hand in mine.
Her waist under my palm.
The way she relaxed by degrees, like she didn’t mean to trust me with the rhythm of her body but did anyway.
The reception has loosened into that warm, messy part of the night where the formal edges soften. Ties come loose. Heels get kicked under tables. The band has settled into a groove. Champagne has made everyone either sentimental or overconfident.
Bailey is neither.
She is still sharp-eyed and steady, but something in her has eased since the ceremony. Since dinner. Since Evan made one last polished comment, she answered him without questioning herself.
I liked seeing that.
She didn’t look to me. Didn’t smooth the edges for him. She answered him, calm as hell, without giving him the softer version he was probably expecting.
I didn’t say a word.
I just stood beside her.
Backup.
That was the job.
Across the room, Evan lingers near the bar with a drink in his hand, still polished, still composed, still glancing this way often enough to make it obvious while pretending it isn’t.
Bailey notices once.
Then doesn’t look again.
Pride moves through me, warm and sharp.
“You’re staring,” Bailey says.
I turn my head. “At you?”
“At Evan.”
“I was assessing.”
“Assessing what?”
“Whether he knows you stopped caring what he thinks.”
Her mouth softens, but she looks down before the smile can fully happen. “That’s a generous read.”
“It’s what I saw.”
Bailey is quiet for a second, and I wonder if I’ve pushed too far. Then she takes a slow sip of champagne and leans her shoulder against the wall beside me.
“You were good tonight,” she says.
I look at her then, because the words sound different when she isn’t teasing. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You didn’t rise to anything. Not even when Evan was trying to unnerve me.”
For a moment, the noise of the reception moves around us without really touching us. Music, laughter, glasses clinking, someone calling for Lily near the cake table. Bailey stands beside me, calmer than she was last night, but not untouched by any of it.
“When he asked if hockey players think about what comes after the game, I almost said something,” I admit.
“I know. Your jaw did this thing.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “I’ll have to work on that.”
“Don’t.” Her voice is softer now.
“I didn’t want to make it about me.”
“You didn’t.”
Her certainty feels better than it should. Better than the room laughing at one of my lines. Better than being the guy everyone expects to keep things easy.
I look back toward the dance floor before I do something stupid, like let her see all of that on my face.
“I’m trying very hard to stay within the terms of this arrangement,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “How’s that going?”
I glance at her. “Honestly?”
“Preferably.”
“Mixed results.”
She laughs, and there it is again, that thing I keep wanting from her. The real laugh. The one that slips out before she can filter it. The one that makes me feel like I’ve won something I didn’t know I was competing for.
The band shifts into a slower song, not quite slow enough to look like a seduction attempt, but close enough to be dangerous. Bailey notices at the same time I do, her eyes flicking toward the dance floor before coming back to me, and I know I should leave it alone.
I don’t.
“One more?” I ask.
She tilts her head. “You already got one.”
“I’m greedy.”
Her smile lingers, and I hold out my hand.
For a second, she doesn’t take it. She looks at my palm like she’s weighing the decision with more care than one dance should require.
Then her fingers slide into mine, and I lead her onto the floor.
The first dance was easy to explain. Wedding manners. Cover story. Backup duty.
This one is harder to excuse.
No one is watching closely now. Her parents are talking at their table. Lily and Caleb are making their rounds. Aunt Diane is occupied with the photographer.
This one is because I asked, and she said yes.
We both know exactly what the first dance did and decided to do it again anyway.
I set my hand at her waist.
Careful.
Respectful.
A lie, honestly.
Because there is nothing respectful about the way I’m thinking about her right now.
Bailey’s hand settles on my shoulder, warm through my shirt. Her other hand remains in mine, fingers light but not hesitant. She’s close. The kind of distance that looks appropriate from the outside and feels like a dare from where I’m standing.
“You’re quiet,” she says.
“I’m concentrating.”
“On dancing?”
“Among other things.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “That sounds unsafe.”
“It is.”
The words come out lower than I intend.
Her breath changes just slightly, but it’s enough that I feel it.
The song moves around us, soft percussion and a woman’s voice singing about wanting something she shouldn’t. Fitting. Subtle as a brick through glass, but fitting.
Bailey’s thumb shifts against my shoulder.
I know she doesn’t mean anything by it.
My body doesn’t care.
I guide her through a slow turn, and her dress brushes my leg. My hand flexes once at her waist before I make myself settle. She notices, because Bailey notices everything. Her gaze drops to my mouth, quick and gone.
My control is slipping.
“You okay?” she asks.
I almost laugh.
Not because it’s funny.
Because I’m so far from okay, I might need a new word for it.
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Trying to be a gentleman.”
“That’s different from being okay.”
“It’s as close as it’s going to get tonight.”
Her eyes hold mine, and the room around us goes blurry at the edges. There are people nearby. A full ballroom. Her family. My common sense, allegedly.
None of it feels close enough to matter.
“You don’t have to keep checking yourself every three seconds,” she says.
I swallow.
“Bailey.”
“I’m not saying don’t behave.”
“Important clarification.”
“I’m saying I know you are.”
Bailey sees me holding back, and instead of making a joke or looking away, she stays right there with me. Her eyes are warm, steady, and too honest for a crowded dance floor.
I pull her a fraction closer. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for both of us to feel it.
Her eyes don’t leave mine.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
“Yes.”
One word.
No hesitation.
The hand at her waist wants to pull her all the way against me. The hand holding hers wants to let go and touch her jaw, her hair, the bare curve of her shoulder.
I do none of it.
I keep us moving.
Slow. Controlled. Torture in formalwear.
“You know,” she says, voice quieter now, “when I agreed to this, I thought you’d be the easy option.”
I try for a smile. “I usually am.”
She looks down for a second, then back up at me. “I thought you would make the weekend lighter. Fun. Manageable.”
“That was the pitch.”
“It was.”
“And now?”
Her fingers shift in mine.
“Now I’m not sure what to do with you.”
There is no joke for that.
So I give her the truth, or as much of it as I can manage in the middle of a ballroom with her family ten feet away.
“Same problem over here.”
Her eyes soften, and for one dangerous second, I think she might say something else. Something honest enough to change the whole night.
Then the song ends.
Applause rises around us, scattered and warm.
Neither of us moves right away.
The band starts another song, faster this time, and the moment should break.
It doesn’t.
It thins.
Stretches.
Waits.
Bailey finally steps back, and my hand falls away from her waist before I make a terrible decision in front of a hundred people and a buttercream wedding cake.
She smooths one hand down her dress, a nervous little motion that makes me want to catch her fingers and bring them to my lips.
“Thank you for the dance,” she says, very polite, very Bailey, and very much not what either of us is thinking.
I lean closer, just enough that my voice stays between us. “Anytime.”
Her eyes lift, and there’s heat there now. Not imagined, and not hidden well enough for either of us to pretend.
Then someone calls her name from near the head table.
As she walks toward Lily, her dress moving around her legs, her hair falling over one shoulder, I stand at the edge of the dance floor and understand one thing with brutal clarity.
This is not about Evan anymore.
It’s not about backup, the rules, or the version of this weekend we agreed to when we were both pretending we knew how to keep it simple.
I want Bailey Sutton, and tonight, for the first time, I think she might want me back.
***
By the time Bailey says she’s ready to go upstairs, I’m running on the last thin thread of self-control I have left.
I’ve spent the last hour being reasonable.
Heroically reasonable, honestly.
I dance with her. Twice. I keep my hands where they belong. I don’t say one word about the way that dress moves when she walks. I don’t tell her that every time she smiles at me tonight, some inconvenient part of me starts making plans it has no business making.
I behave.
Mostly.
Now she’s standing beside me near the ballroom doors, heels in one hand, champagne still bright in her eyes, and all that good behavior feels temporary.
“You sure you’re ready?” I ask.
She glances over her shoulder at the dance floor, where Lily and Caleb are wrapped around each other in the middle of a slow song. “I think so. If I stay much longer, my aunt will probably put me to work.”
I look down at her bare feet, then back at her. “No shoes?”
“Not for one more second.”