Chapter 31 Neglect #2
“How?” Hailey asked, running to catch up.
“Curse,” he said curtly. “Adalwolf.”
Hailey stared at the ground as they walked, not sure what to say or ask or think…or feel…
“I stole all your mail,” Fin said suddenly.
Hailey pressed her brow down and pulled her chin back. “What?”
“Yeah. Every day,” he confessed. “You actually got in to Harvard.”
Hailey’s jaw fell again, and Fin smiled mischievously.
“I had to get you here,” he said shrugging, “and there was no way you were coming to Bear Towne if you knew you could go to Harvard.”
“There were an awful lot of scholarships available for Bear Towne…”
“I know!” Fin said excitedly. “I wrote all of those and put them in your mailbox.”
“You what?”
“Some of them were pretty good, right?” He smiled proudly.
“Mating habits of the Arctic Ice Worm?”
“I know.” He sniffed. “I’m brilliant.”
As they walked, Hailey recalled laughing with Holly as they wrote their ridiculous Bear Towne essays, and it made her chuckle.
Fin looked at her expectantly. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about Holly,” she told him.
“She was hell-bent on finding a school we could both go to, and she wasn’t afraid to come to Alaska.
” She raised her eyebrows. “I was, but those ridiculous essays we wrote… ‘gave impetus to my spirit of adventure’,” Hailey told him, repeating some of the verbiage she’d written for his “scholarships.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What word?”
Fin shot her a wry grin. “Impetus.”
“Why?”
“Because, it makes me want to prove to you that I am not what that word sounds like.”
Still smiling, Hailey shook her head. “You’re a juvenile. You’re a four–hundred-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile.”
“I’m a four-hundred-and-sixty-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile,” he corrected. “And I am far from dysfunctional,” he added.
Hailey lowered her head, her smile widening.
“Impetus,” she whispered, and Fin growled.
“I never washed my shirt,” he said quickly.
“What shirt?”
“The one you cried all over.”
“Which one?” She’d snotted on several of his shirts…and he…never…washed…
“Ew,” she said, scrunching her nose.
“Hm,” Fin pursed his lips. “Is that creepy?”
“I think so. Or funny. I can’t decide, but it definitely rises to at least weird.”
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. Guess I wasn’t ready to let go…” He sighed heavily then brightened. “Your turn,” he said, bumping into her.
Hailey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I once told a girl at Hullachan’s that you used to be a woman,” she confessed.
“What?”
“She was really pretty,” Hailey said, going red in the face, “but she wasn’t very nice, and she wanted me to introduce you to her and get your number and set her up on a date, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going out with…” Another girl, Hailey realized.
“With what?”
Hailey shook her head. “She just wasn’t very nice,” she said, her heart pounding.
“At least I didn’t tell her you were the impetus for the—” Fin cut her off by throwing her over his shoulder.
“—oof—condom machines in the ladies’ room.
” She laughed as he threw her in a pile of snow and plopped down beside her.
Seeing the last bit of sunlight paint the indigo sky reminded Hailey of Holly’s funeral and how Fin stood next to her, hugging her tight when she wept.
“You’re the only person I want around me when I’m sad,” she said. “And you’re the first person I want to find when I’m happy.” She sat up and looked at him.
“I didn’t want to stay away from you after Holly’s funeral,” Fin told her, still lying in the snow. “Asher and I had an argument, and he made me go away. Eventually, we agreed you should choose who you wanted to…hang out with…”
He moved his hand across the snow and next to Hailey’s, reaching his fingers close to hers, but not touching them.
Watching his hand the whole way, Hailey slid her pinky only a little so it barely brushed his skin.
Then she stood up and crossed her arms.
“Cobon wants me dead, and Asher’s the only thing stopping him,” she blurted. She just couldn’t hold this in any longer. “Now Asher wants to kill me. But, only temporarily… Is that possible?”
“Hailey—that’s a really bad idea,” he told her, sitting up.
“Asher said he and Cobon came up with a plan to—”
“This is Cobon’s plan?” Fin stood up. “Did it ever occur to you that Cobon is a manipulative, murderous liar?” He shook his head and whirled around at her, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“And he’s insane! You saw what he did to Holly!
He’s using Asher, he knows how to manipulate him—this is just a ploy to get Asher to kill you! Can’t you see that?”
“What am I supposed to do, Fin? I can’t stop them!” She was shaking all over when Fin wrapped his arms around her.
“We’ll figure it out,” he vowed, and Hailey sniffled into his shirt.
“You better wash this,” she chided, trying to laugh.
“I won’t,” he smiled, rocking her gently in his arms. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“You should be.” Hailey wiped her face with his shirt and looked up at him. “Save your aggression for the ice.”
“You still coming to the game this weekend?”
“That was this weekend?” she asked, feigning surprise as she wiped her last tears away.
“Yeah…you… Did you forget?” he stammered, sounding genuinely disappointed.
Hailey smirked, and he rolled his eyes.
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to see what paranormal hockey looks like.”
Fin held her close as they walked into Eureka, saying, “I think you’re in for a surprise…”