Chapter 8
FINN
This is a mistake.
I know it even as I lower myself onto the couch, even as Marcella kneels beside me with that determined look on her face. Every instinct I have screams to get up, make an excuse, retreat to the workshop where I can sand something until my hands stop shaking.
But my leg hurts. It’s been hurting all day, the cold seeping into old wounds and making the scar tissue ache like it’s fresh. And she looked at me with those brown eyes and said let me help you, and I couldn’t say no.
Couldn’t. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
That distinction terrifies me.
“You’ll need to...” She gestures at my jeans. “I can’t really work through denim.”
Right. Of course.
I stand long enough to undo my belt, shove the jeans down past my knees. The scars are visible immediately—a map of raised tissue on my left thigh, puckered and pale against the rest of my skin. Shrapnel wounds. Surgical scars. Evidence of the day everything ended.
I wait for her to flinch. To look away. To make some excuse about why this isn’t a good idea after all.
She doesn’t.
“Sit,” she says softly, and I do.
Her hands are warm.
That’s my first coherent thought as her fingers press into the muscle above my knee. Warm and surprisingly strong, kneading with practiced confidence. She wasn’t lying about knowing massage techniques.
“Tell me if the pressure’s too much,” she murmurs, working her way up toward the worst of the scarring. “Some of this tissue feels pretty tight.”
“It’s fine.”
“Finn.” There’s gentle reproach in her voice. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what hurts.”
I exhale slowly. Force myself to focus on her question instead of the sensation of her skin against mine. “Higher. The scar tissue near the—” I gesture vaguely. “There.”
She adjusts, finds the spot, and I have to bite back a sound that’s half pain, half something else entirely.
“Sorry,” she says immediately, easing off.
“Don’t. It’s good,” I say, my voice gruff. “Hurts because it needs to.”
She nods, understanding somehow, and continues working, her thumbs tracing the edges of the scarring with a gentleness that makes my chest tight.
No one touches me like this. No one has touched me like this in years—maybe ever. Even the physical therapists at the VA were clinical, detached. Professional.
This isn’t professional. This is Marcella’s hair falling across her face as she concentrates, her lower lip caught between her teeth, her warmth radiating into me everywhere we connect.
“The IED,” she says quietly, not quite a question.
“Yeah.”
“You mentioned it last night. That you were checking a building when it happened.”
My jaw clenches. I don’t talk about this. Not with Moira, not with the VA shrink I stopped seeing, not with anyone. But her hands keep moving, steady and soothing, and somehow the words start spilling out anyway.
“Routine patrol. We’d done that route a hundred times.
Jimmy was point, I was on overwatch, and the building on our left had been flagged for possible activity.
I peeled off to check it while they continued down the road.
” I stare at the fire, not seeing it. “Thirty seconds. That’s all it was.
Thirty seconds, and when I came back out, there was nothing left. ”
Her hands still on my leg.
“Six men. My brothers. And I wasn’t there.” The words taste like ash. “I should have been with them. Should have died with them. But I was fifty meters away, and when the blast hit, I just—”
“Finn.” Her voice is thick. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to. Looking at her means seeing whatever’s on her face—pity, horror, the careful distance people put between themselves and tragedy. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Can’t stand to see it from her.
But I look anyway.
Her eyes are shining, but there’s no pity there. Just... understanding. Recognition. Like she’s looking at my pain and seeing something familiar.
“You survived,” she says quietly. “That’s not a betrayal. That’s just what happened.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“I know.” Her thumb traces a slow circle on my scarred skin. “Surviving something terrible never feels like enough. You spend the rest of your life wondering why you got to keep going when everything else stopped.”
I stare at her. “How do you—”
“My marriage.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.
“I know it’s not the same. Losing your team, losing my marriage—they’re not comparable.
But I spent three years slowly dying inside, and when I finally got out, I didn’t feel relieved.
I felt like a failure. Like if I’d just been better, smaller, quieter, I could have made it work. ”
“That’s not—”
“I know.” She meets my gaze steadily. “I know that now. But for a long time, I believed it. I believed everything Stephen told me. That I was too much. Too loud. Too passionate. Too big.” Her voice catches on the last word.
“He had a way of making every part of me feel like a burden he was generously tolerating.”
My hands clench into fists against the couch cushions.
“I learned to shrink,” she continues softly. “To take up less space. To apologize for existing. And when I finally left, when I finally chose myself, I felt like I’d failed at the one thing I was supposed to be good at. Being someone’s wife.”
“You didn’t fail.” The words come out rough, almost angry. “He did. He had someone—” I stop, struggle to find the right words. “He had you. And he made you feel like that was a burden instead of a gift.”
Her breath catches.
“You’re not too much, Marcella.” I’m not good at this—at words, at feelings, at any of the things that come naturally to people who haven’t spent four years hiding from the world. But I need her to understand. Need her to know. “You’re not too loud or too passionate or too anything. You’re—”
I can’t finish. Don’t have the vocabulary for what she is.
But she’s looking at me like I’ve given her something precious, and her hands are still warm on my leg, and the fire crackles, and the storm howls, and I’m so tired of being alone.
“Marcella…”
One moment we’re looking at each other across the space between us, and the next moment there is no space.
Her mouth is soft against mine, tentative at first, like a question.
I answer it with everything I can’t say—all the loneliness and longing and desperate, impossible hope that’s been building since she turned around in my kitchen with that wooden spoon raised like a weapon.
She makes a sound against my lips. Surprise, maybe. Or relief. Her hands slide up from my leg to my chest, fingers curling into my flannel, and I’m lost.
This is what I’ve been missing. This is what I’ve been hiding from. Not just touch—connection. The terrifying, exhilarating feeling of being seen by someone and not wanting to run.
I pull her closer, one hand in her hair, the other splayed across her lower back. She’s warm and soft and she fits against me like she was designed for it. Like we were designed for this, for each other, for—
Panic hits like a fist to the chest.
I jerk back so fast she nearly falls forward, my breath coming in sharp gasps that have nothing to do with desire.
What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?
I’ve known this woman for twenty-four hours.
She broke into my house by accident. She was supposed to be on a date with someone else.
And I’m kissing her like she’s the answer to questions I didn’t know I was asking.
“Finn?” Marcella’s voice is worried now, her kiss-swollen lips parted in confusion. “What’s wrong?”
Everything. Nothing. I can’t breathe.
I stand abruptly, nearly knocking her over in my haste to put distance between us. My leg screams in protest—she barely finished the massage—but I ignore it. Cross to the window. Press my hands flat against the cold glass and count my breaths.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
“I’m sorry,” I manage. The words feel like they’re coming from very far away. “I shouldn’t have—that was—”
“Finn.” She’s behind me now, close enough that I can feel her warmth even without touching. “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s okay.”
It’s not. It’s the opposite of okay.
I want her. Want her in ways I haven’t wanted anything since before the explosion that killed my team and ended my life in every way that matters. And wanting things is dangerous. Wanting things leads to having them, and having them leads to losing them, and I can’t—
“I’m not good at this,” I say hoarsely, still facing the window. “People. Feelings. Any of it. I’ve spent four years making sure I wouldn’t have to be.”
“Why?”
The question is soft. Non-judgmental. Like she genuinely wants to know.
“Because losing things hurts less when you don’t have them in the first place.”
Silence. Then, even softer: “And is that working for you? The not-having?”
I close my eyes. See Jimmy’s face. Mikey. David. Tony. Jamal. All of them gone, and me still here, trying so hard not to feel anything that I’ve forgotten how to feel at all.
“No,” I admit. “No, it’s not.”
Her hand touches my shoulder. Light. Careful. Giving me every opportunity to pull away.
But I don’t.
Something cracks open in my chest—something I’ve kept locked away for four years. The words come before I can stop them.
“I’d rather be scared with you than safe alone.”
I feel her go still behind me. For a long moment, she doesn’t respond, and I think I’ve said too much, pushed too fast, ruined whatever fragile thing was building between us.
Then, quietly: “That’s a big thing to say to someone you’ve known for two days.”
I turn to face her. She’s so close. Close enough to see the conflict in her eyes—hope warring with something harder. Wariness. Self-protection. The same walls I’ve spent four years building, reflected back at me.
“I know,” I say. “But it’s true.”
“Finn...” She takes a breath, and I watch her struggle. “I want to believe that. I want to believe this is real, that it means something. But I’ve been here before. I’ve believed someone before.”
“I’m not him.”
“I know you’re not.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “But I’m still the same person who got it wrong. Who saw what she wanted to see instead of what was real.” She meets my eyes, and there’s something raw there. Honest. “I can’t just... fall. Not again. Not that fast. Even if part of me wants to.”
The words should sting. They don’t. If anything, they make me want her more—this woman who’s been hurt and still showed up, still tried, still offered to massage a stranger’s scarred leg because she wanted to help.
“I’m not asking you to fall,” I tell her. “I’m not asking for promises or commitment or anything you can’t give. I’m just asking you to not leave. Not yet.”
“I can’t leave.” A ghost of a smile. “There’s a blizzard.”
“You know what I mean.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. The fire crackles. The storm howls. And I wait, heart hammering, for her to decide if I’m worth the risk.
“I can try,” she says finally. “That’s all I can promise. I can try.”
It’s not the answer I wanted. It’s not I’d rather be scared with you too or I’m falling for you or any of the things I didn’t know I was hoping to hear.
But it’s honest. And right now, honest is enough.
“Okay,” I say. “We’ll try. Together.”
She reaches up and touches my face with gentle fingers, the contact sending warmth flooding through me.
“Together,” she echoes softly, her expression softening—just a fraction. Just enough.
It’s not a promise. Not yet.
But it’s a start.