Chapter 10
Juliet
Okay, there was one person I liked in the wedding party. One.
Petra had chosen to sit next to me in this hell-gathering, which was the first surprise. Maybe it was because she didn’t have a date. I was sitting alone, wondering what to do with myself since neither Mom nor Vicki had any time to talk to me, and Finn was busy with Alistair. Getting drunk was a bad idea, so I had stuck to one watered-down rum and Coke while sadly wishing for another one. Mom had started an awkward speech—she was probably on her third glass of wine, knowing Mom—and I had been focused on not looking at Finn, not fidgeting, and scoping out exits.
“It’s nice that you made it,” Petra said to me. She was short and curvy, and her dark hair was cut in a bob that curled behind her ears. “Vicki has been looking forward to seeing you.”
Since my sister had given me a quick—if hard—hug, said she was happy I was here, and then floated away to her other friends, I had my doubts about this statement. I curled in on the hurt that tried to seep into my chest. Of course Vicki was busy with her friends. What else had I expected? Why would I even let it bother me?
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. There was a text from Finn.
Ask her what music she likes.
For fuck’s sake. I didn’t need a script here. I put my phone away and didn’t look at him. I didn’t need to look at him—I already had the sight of him memorized, the way his lean body sprawled in his chair with unconscious ease, the line of his jaw under his scruff of beard, his tousled brown hair. The easy way he smiled when people approached him. His polite body language when Hayley squeezed his bicep while her husband stood right there.
I had never seen Finn in a group of people, and I’d had no idea how often people touched him, as if they had the right. Women putting their hands in various places on his arm, men slapping his back or clapping his shoulder. Finn’s response to these strangers’ hands on him was a practiced stillness that neither invited nor offended. A posture he’d learned early and had mastered for years.
Of course Finn was giving me pointers on how to talk to people. Everyone wanted a piece of him, even now.
I cleared my throat as Hayley took over from Mom and started talking. A story about her and Vicki in middle school and a teacher they hated, told with so many asides that I couldn’t figure out what the point was and didn’t care. My middle school experience had been very different from my sister’s.
But fuck, I was thirty-two. Maybe it was time to leave some things behind.
I cleared my throat and looked at Petra. “So, um.” I regrouped, tried again. “What kind of music do you like?”
Oh, God, that sounded stupid.
Have you ever even attempted small talk? Like, even once in your life?
Petra looked at me with a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “Guess,” she said. “Guess what music you think I like.”
I blinked, thought it over. “Selena Gomez,” I said, because Petra resembled her a little bit. “Olivia Rodrigo. Doja Cat.”
Petra gave me an even, unreadable look that looked, in fact, a lot like Selena Gomez. “Are you guessing that so you can make fun of me?”
I scowled. “I don’t make fun of people, and I definitely don’t make fun of female musicians. It’s against my religion.”
Petra’s eyes narrowed. “So you think that Olivia Rodrigo is better than Justin Timberlake, just because she’s a woman?”
“I don’t give a fuck whether she’s better,” I replied without thinking. “That’s subjective. I know she has to work ten times harder than him to get ahead.”
People hated when I talked like this. It got me labeled aggressive and strident and mouthy and too much. But I couldn’t turn it off. If you want polite dishonesty, don’t ask a woman who started an all-girl punk band that released an album called I’d Date You But I’d Rather Die.
Petra’s lips parted in surprise. Then her features relaxed into quiet humor. Something about what I’d said raised me in her estimation. “My favorite music is anything by Stevie Nicks,” she said. “Does that mean we can be friends?”
God damn it, Finn, I thought. You just had to be right, didn’t you?
The dinner broke up early. Alistair went home to the kids, Mom got in an Uber while calling last-minute instructions to all of us, Vicki and her friends milled around while husbands got their coats. Finn had disappeared.
I put on my own coat and slipped out of the restaurant. The hotel Finn and I were staying at was two blocks down the street, so I didn’t need to wait for a ride. I pulled up my hood, put my head down, and walked.
I had pushed through the heavy glass doors of the hotel lobby and was walking toward the elevators when I heard my name.
I turned. Vicki had come through the doors behind me, her hair windblown and her cheeks flushed. She’d been running.
“Where are you going?” she asked, the words coming out sharp on her exhale of breath.
I looked around. “Where does it look like I’m going?”
“You left.” This was an accusation. “You didn’t even say goodnight. You just left.”
I frowned, taken aback. “Vicki, what’s this about? The dinner was over, we were all leaving. So I left.”
“You could have said goodbye to everyone.” She held out her hands in exasperation. “You could have talked to us. You didn’t even try.”
“I didn’t try?” I pushed my hood back and turned to fully face my sister. Even flushed from running after me, Vicki looked pretty with no effort at all, just like Mom. “I came all the way from Portland for the weekend. How is that not trying?”
“You only did that because you have to.”
“You only invited me because you have to,” I shot back.
“These are my friends.” Her voice was rising. People were starting to look. “You didn’t even talk to them.”
Now I was mad, and I didn’t care that people were watching, eavesdropping with no shame. “I talked to Petra, which you would know if you hadn’t ignored me all fucking night.”
“I was busy. You could have talked to me. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Jules! People can’t pay attention to you all the time!”
“Believe me, I know,” I said, ignoring the stab of pain in my gut. “You haven’t paid attention to me in ten years.”
Vicki opened her mouth as if to say something, and then she stopped. We both stopped. We were on the edge of saying things we couldn’t take back, and we both knew it.
Ten years ago, we’d both said things we couldn’t take back. We were still paying for that.
We’d had a blowout argument, Vicki and me, after a painful Thanksgiving dinner. I remembered the two of us standing on Mom’s porch, yelling at each other, our breath puffing in the cold air, Vicki’s arms wrapped around herself in her sweater as her face went red with anger. I didn’t remember what had set us off, and it didn’t matter. Everything set us off.
But that night was different. Something nasty bubbled up in both of us, then boiled over, unstoppable. I told her she was boring, that she lived in a bubble and had never taken a risk in her life. That she was one of a million girls just like her, all the same.
You’re never going to make it big, Vicki had shouted back at me. You’re deluded. You’re a failure, and the only one who doesn’t know it is you.
Those words still fucking hurt, even now. Because part of me thought that Vicki was right.
“It’s fine,” I said shakily, swiping my hair from my face. The last thing I wanted was to relive that old fight. The thought of it made me suddenly tired. “Go back to your friends. I’ll see you at the fitting tomorrow.”
“You’ll be there?” she asked.
“I said I would be, didn’t I?”
The silence hung heavy again. This was about Dad, I realized. Dad, who had promised Vicki so many things in her life and had never fulfilled any of them. Dad, who was deluded about his music career, which was a failure. Dad, who I resembled, so Vicki would never trust me, no matter what I did.
As if our father hadn’t broken his promises to me, too.
I swallowed past the stones lodged in my throat. “I’ll be at the fitting,” I rasped. “I’ll be at the wedding. Go have fun with your friends.”
I turned and walked to the elevators. My sister didn’t follow.
It took me a second to find my room key in my pockets. Then I swung open the door of my hotel room and walked in, already tugging at my shirt.
“It took you long enough,” Finn Wiley said.
I shrieked, and my purse thumped to the floor.
Finn was sitting on my bed. He had made himself at home with his shoes off and his shirt untucked, an open bottle of beer on the nightstand next to him. Open in his hands was the book I was in the middle of reading, which he had presumably taken from my bag.
“What the fuck, Finn?” I shouted.
He didn’t flinch. “I thought you’d be faster getting back here. You looked like you wanted to escape.”
“How did you get into my room?”
In reply, he rolled his eyes, picked up his beer, and took a sip.
I could take an educated guess. He’d sweet-talked someone at the front desk. Bribed them with an autograph and a selfie. Or maybe he’d just used the thousand-watt Finn charm.
I pulled off my jacket and tossed it on the chair. Bent to unlace my boots. I was pissed that he’d broken in here, but not as pissed as I should be. After the evening I’d had and the encounter with Vicki, it felt less lonely with him in the room.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
“I’m fucking fantastic.” I kicked my boots off with more force than needed. “Go ahead and get it over with.” I motioned to the book. “Make fun of me so we can just move on.”
Finn flipped the book so he could read Emily Henry’s name on the cover. “Why would I make fun of you? Because you’re reading a romance? What do people assume you read—angry feminist essays? Avant-garde poetry? I saw the books you keep in your bedroom.”
I stood without speaking. He had been in my bedroom, sat on my bed. Now he was here. On my bed.
“I like this book so far,” Finn continued. “It seems to be about two writers who write completely different kinds of stories.” He put the book on the nightstand next to his drink. “I hate to spoil the ending, but I think they fall in love.”
I stared at him, my throat aching, my eyes smarting. He was gorgeous. I had worked so hard all night not to look at him, put so much effort into it that my jaw was tight. In response, he’d walked into my room, and now I was looking at him anyway.
He tilted his head at the slightest angle, his blue-gray eyes fixed on me. “What?” he asked.
I should have asked him what he was doing here. Why he’d gone to the trouble. What did Finn Wiley want? Why did he think he could find it here, with me?
He wasn’t going to get it, because I didn’t care what he wanted. I only cared what I wanted.
I climbed onto the bed and straddled his lap. Finn’s lips parted in surprise, and I took advantage. Lowering my weight down onto his thighs, I took his face in my hands and kissed him.
He kissed me back. Instead of bucking me off his thighs or asking me what I thought I was doing, he leaned up and parted his lips, deepening the kiss as my fingers curled in his hair. His tongue licked into my mouth.
Heat flared through my body, catching along my inner thighs, twisting in my lower belly. I melted into the kiss, bracing my hands on the headboard behind him and caging him in, letting my weight fall fully onto his hardening lap. In answer, Finn slid his hands over my belly and cupped my breasts through my shirt, his touch bold and sure.
I gasped into the kiss. My thighs tensed, my knees squeezing as Finn’s thumbs brushed back and forth over my nipples without a hint of urgency. I felt his thighs flex, and for a long second I just enjoyed the sensation of kissing this man, riding his lean body while we were both fully clothed, tasting the last remains of the beer he’d sipped on his tongue, feeling his hands on me with such unhurried pleasure it made me feel like crying.
I tried not to whimper when his hands left my breasts. He gripped my waist, and then we were turning, moving. He flipped me onto my back, and while we kissed again, he settled his hips between my legs without apology, pressing me down in a slow, sensual grind.
I met his movement with my own, grinding up into him and gasping against his mouth. My hands dove down to slide over his lower back, then grip his ass through the back pockets of his jeans. He flooded me, his taste and his scent, the weight of him. There was no insistence, just the solid press of his body on mine, the expert lick of his tongue against the inside of my lip.
Finn broke the kiss. “Say it, Juliet,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”
I squeezed his ass harder. “Get naked and fuck me.”
He shook his head, the slightest movement. “That’s what you want. It isn’t what you need.”
What? I thought through the fog of lust in my brain. Of course we were going to fuck. When you’ve made yourself as clear as I had, when a man has you pinned to the bed so completely that you can feel his hard cock through both of your clothes, it means you’re going to fuck. What else could it mean?
He didn’t let me ponder this, just bent to kiss me again, his mouth a revelation on mine. Who knew this man could kiss so well? I couldn’t think. I tried nipping my teeth on his lower lip, but he pulled back, dodging me. I needed to win this. I could do it by grabbing his cock, but I couldn’t fit a hand between our bodies, which were pressed too close together. I settled for rubbing against him and hooking my legs over his hips, gripping him between my thighs, unsatisfying but better than nothing.
Finn moved his weight to one elbow and trailed his free hand over my collarbone, moving his fingertips along the line of my throat. I had the brief thought that he might do something kinky, and then I stopped caring. My eyes closed and my head tilted back as I gave him better access to my skin. I couldn’t help it. His touch felt so good.
He was gentle as he traced my throat, my jaw, my cheekbone. His thumb traced under my eye, then along my eyebrow. My forehead. I thought of him saying, I want to know what’s going on in here.
Finn wanted me—I knew it. I could feel it. But he wasn’t going to have me, not tonight.
Instead, his thumb moved down and traced my lips.
And, for once, I let it all go.