Chapter 10
The performance of the century, or at least the decade so far
Alex
I woke up warm.
Not the restless, overheated warm that usually had me kicking off covers and rearranging my pillows three times before giving up and wandering out to doze on the couch until my alarm went off.
This was a steady, enveloping warmth that made my entire soul want to sink deeper inside of it.
I could tell it was still early, the soft gray light of not-quite-sunrise filtering through my bedroom curtains.
My pillow felt different. Firmer. Moving slightly with each breath.
Finn’s arm wrapped around my shoulders, my head tucked against his chest like I’d always belonged there.
His other hand rested loosely against my hip, long fingers curved over the fabric of my sweater.
I could feel the steady, relaxed rhythm of his breathing, the warmth of his skin through his t-shirt, the comfort of another person sharing my space without making it feel crowded.
Weird. And nice.
When was the last time I’d slept so well?
The question drifted through my mind as I stayed absolutely still, unwilling to break whatever spell had blessed me to stay asleep past five-thirty for the first time in months.
Usually, my brain started its morning routine the moment consciousness started to return, either cataloging the day’s tasks or choosing violence and screaming the chorus of whatever Blink-182 song I’d listened to last repeatedly before I was fully awake.
But lying here against Finn’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, was the most relaxing thing in the world.
I lifted my head slightly, careful not to wake him, and really looked at his face.
The morning light caught the network of fine scars across his left cheek and temple, some barely visible and others more pronounced, like the one across his nose.
Another deeper one traced along his jawline, disappearing into his beard with others, forbidding anything grow.
His face looked younger in sleep, the thinly veiled stress and grief I’d noticed softened into something more vulnerable.
It was evidence of everything he’d survived. The accident, the long recovery, deeper emotional scars I knew nothing about. I wanted to trace each mark with my fingertips.
“I can feel you examinin’ me, Alexandra.”
His voice was sleep-rough but amused as he adjusted his hold on me, pulling me closer instead of letting go. My face heated at being caught staring, but he didn’t seem bothered. If anything, the small smile playing at the corner of his mouth suggested he didn’t mind being studied at all.
“Sorry,” I murmured against his chest. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. Your brain is loud when you’re thinking.”
I laughed despite myself, the sound muffled against his shirt. “My brain is always loud.”
“I know,” his hand moved to stroke my hair, fingers gentle against my scalp, before kissing the top of my head. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest at his words. It wasn’t the sharp spike of attraction I’d felt before, but something steadier. Safer. Like I could just be for once in my life.
“I don’t normally like being touched. Or held,” I admitted at length.
“I can let go.”
“No,” I responded a little too quick. “It’s nice.”
Finn chuckled and tightened his hold on me, squeezing me with a delicious pressure that brought life into my body. Then he relaxed and leaned back a bit to look at my face, swiping my hair out of my eyes.
“We should probably get our stories straight on a few things,” his eyes searched mine. “If we’re gonna pull this off.”
“Right,” I was suddenly aware that we knew hardly anything about each other. “Do you have any food allergies? Dietary restrictions? Strong opinions about pineapple on pizza?”
“Nope, none, and I think people who get worked up about other people’s pizza preferences need hobbies,” his fingers traced lazy patterns against my shoulder. “What about you?”
“Tree nuts make my throat close up. I hate tomatoes with the passion of a thousand suns, and I will judge you if you put raisins in perfectly good cookies.”
“Noted. No walnut brownies, no caprese salad, no oatmeal raisin cookies pretending to be chocolate chip.”
“Exactly,” I shifted to look at him properly. “Middle name?”
“Bannock. You?”
“Joan, after my mom. What do I call your parents when I meet them?”
“Nolan and Bridget works just fine. They’re not formal people. You can call my grandma Móraí. She’s very Irish.” He paused. “What’s the story with your parents? Enzo’s dad is your stepfather, right?”
“Antonio,” I nodded. “Since I was thirty. My dad died when I was twenty-five.” I caught my body starting to tense and made myself relax against his chest. “Tony’s good people. Loud, enthusiastic, makes terrible dad jokes in three languages.”
“And your mom?”
“She means well but has opinions about my life choices, or lack thereof,” I traced one of the lines in his tattoo with my finger. Ink dark enough to mean he’d gotten it after his accident. It must have hurt to have needles poking into the scars it covered. “How long have we been dating?”
“Since LA? That’s about two weeks now.”
“Two weeks feels too new for how comfortable we are together. Maybe we should say a month? Met before the engagement party but kept it quiet?”
“Makes sense.”
I stopped tracing the human form on his bicep, spreading my fingers and wrapping them around his arm. His hand stilled in my hair as I looked up at him.
“Finn, can I ask you something more serious?”
He looked down at me, carefully hiding the apprehension in his eyes. “Of course.”
“Tell me about your time in the Navy?”
He blinked, confusion crossing his features briefly. “Oh. You’re asking about Navy service in general as part of our story?”
“No,” I made my voice softer. “I’m asking about yours. The real one.”
He swallowed and didn’t answer for a moment. “First tell me what you do know. Beyond what Dom and Enzo have told you about me.”
I considered this. “Honestly? Mostly what I’ve seen in movies. Aircraft carriers, deployments, call signs that usually sound cooler than they probably are in real life,” I began tracing another line of his tattoo. Wax dripping from a candle around the falling mortal form. “Why?”
“Because if someone asks you about my service, you should probably say more than ‘he flies jets like Top Gun,’” a shadow crossed his face. “And there are details about what happened that, if we’re doing this, you should know.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his breathing steady beneath my cheek. When he finally spoke, his voice carried a detached tone, like he was debriefing someone on a mission rather than sharing something personal.
“I learned to fly on my grandfather’s plane when I was around fourteen.
Ol’ Piper Cub that had no business still being airborne,” his fingers resumed a gentle movement down my back.
“But being up there… it was the only place that made sense. Everything on the ground felt chaotic, unpredictable, and boring at the same time. In the air, there were rules. Physics. Cause ‘n’ effect. I was an adrenaline junkie since birth, but somethin’ about the rules, and the consequences of ignorin’ them, gave me a thrill like nothin’ I’d ever experienced. ”
I kept tracing the lines of his tattoo, following the careful detail work of the wings, noting the way his drawl was more pronounced when talking about the past. “So you joined up to keep flying?”
“That was part of it. The other part was wantin’ to matter.
To do something that required the best of what I had to offer.
” He paused. “Twin thing, maybe. Dom was already talkin’ about acting by the time we were fifteen, ‘bout being someone people would notice for what he could do, not who he was. I wanted to be essential in a different way.”
His thumb traced along my shoulder blade.
“And I didn’t wanna stay in Wyoming,” he admitted.
“Everyone expected me to take over part of ranch operations, marry Lou, have a couple kids, and call it a life. Good life, probably. Safe life. But the idea of knowin’ exactly what the next forty or fifty years’d look like made me feel like I was suffocating. ”
I felt him take a deeper breath, “Lou didn’t understand why I’d want to leave when I had everything she thought I needed right there. Neither did my parents, really. But I needed to find out who I could become if I wasn’t just Nolan Walker’s son from North Star Ranch. Dominick Walker’s brother.”
“And you’re a… Commander?”
“Was a Lieutenant Commander,” his jaw ticked. “Twelve years to get there, sooner than most. And gone a year later.”
I reached my arm around his side, anchoring myself to him the same way he was holding me.
“Did you get a call sign right away?”
“In flight school. ‘Steady,’” his voice shifted, tightened in a way I hadn’t heard before. “I could land on a carrier in rough seas when other pilots were wavin’ off. Never lost my cool, never broke under pressure. Other pilots wanted me as their leader because I was—”
He stopped abruptly, jaw clenching.
“Because you were steady,” I finished gently.
“Yeah,” the word came out rough. “For thirteen years, that’s who I was. Steady. Reliable. The guy who could hold formation when everything went to shit, who could bring his bird and his squad home no matter what.”
I felt him swallow hard. “And then one day I couldn’t. One day I became the guy who couldn’t save his wingman. Who couldn’t even save himself and spent eighteen weeks in a hospital just to earn a medical discharge.”
My hand splayed over his back. “Finn...”