Chapter Three Zoe #3
I’m back on the couch and under the blanket by the time Finn returns with two steaming mugs. He’s prepared mine just the way I like it: just a dab of cream, not milk, and a spoon of honey. His is black. Some things haven’t changed, and the way it hasn’t cuts me again.
He sinks into the chair opposite the narrow coffee table and spreads his legs in front of him. With a sigh, he leans his head back against the rest and closes his eyes. I wait as he lifts his mug to his lips and takes a sip of the scalding brew without even blowing on it.
“You’re going to burn your mouth.”
“I’m made of sturdier stuff than that. No worries.” His eyes open as he places the cup gingerly upon the table. With fingers steepled between his knees, he looks at me from beneath his inky lashes. “Zoe, there’s a lot that you don’t know about me, stuff I never worked up the courage to tell you.”
“That’s apparent. For instance, you’re a social climber.”
He winces under the brutal attack of my words. “I know that you can never forgive me. If it helps at all, I can’t forgive myself.”
“Then why are you here, Finn? Just to torture me some more?”
“No. I need you to know that my reasons for leaving had nothing to do with how I felt about you. I need you to believe that. I...” But his words stall and he shakes his head.
I wait for him to elaborate, but he just looks at me, as if he’s explained everything.
“Right,” I snap. “Of course. After a year apart, during which you refused to answer any of my texts, letters, or phone calls, oh—and during which you managed to engage yourself to a d-different w-woman,” I stumble, sniffing back those crazy incipient tears again, “you’ve decided to throw me some sort of cryptic ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ explanation, if we can call whatever you just said an explanation.
” Suddenly, I’m seething, anger rushing in to replace sorrow.
I welcome the burning hot edges. I’m so tired of feeling bereft.
I fling the blanket off me. “I don’t want or need your pity, Finn.
I don’t want or need y-you.” But my voice breaks, treacherous tears again derailing all my good intentions.
His eyes shutter before opening. I swear, they glisten with tears, though maybe it’s only my own, clouding my vision. He draws in a long breath. “I deserve your scorn, Zoe. And you’re right. I shouldn’t be here. It’s just that seeing you with that Neanderthal last night...”
A ragged sound of disbelief escapes me. Does he really expect me to believe he’s jealous?
“Yeah.” Another deep breath steadies him. His jaw firms. “I can’t give you the explanations you deserve. I’m fairly certain you won’t believe them even if I did. All I can say is that for the first time in nearly a year, I see a possible future.”
Another rumble of rage fills me. I start to snap, but he holds up his hand.
“And not the one you’re imagining. I wouldn’t...
” But his lips thin together and he swallows whatever he was going to say.
Again. “Look, I don’t expect a response from you, and I hope you don’t give me one right now, but I think I’ll be able to truthfully explain everything that’s happened.
Soon. If you’re willing to listen.” He pauses and his fingers rub the edge of the coffee table.
“I hope you’ll listen. Until then, I just wanted you to know how much I still...
” He breaks off before he finishes, shaking his head, and once more his lips purse against whatever words he wants to say.
I want to beat it out of him. At the same time, I just give up. He’s always been out of my league. And I’m such a sucker, so filled with hope at what he hasn’t said, just because he’s with me, that I’m already clinging to daydreams.
“I could really hate you,” I whisper, the sound as cracked as my heart.
“I know. Not a part of me blames you for that.”
I sit silent for a moment, not sure how to respond.
He lifts his mug and sips, but his eyes watch me over the rim.
Weighing me. Judging me? I don’t know. He’s a talented attorney.
When he left me, he was already up for a junior partnership at his firm.
I don’t know if he’s gotten the promotion, but I assume he has.
An air of power surrounds him, stronger than before.
Confidence, I guess. He makes me believe in the possibility he’s selling me, that in a short while he’ll explain everything, and that somehow, that explanation will help me, not hurt me.
But I can’t trust him. No matter how persuasive he is, he leveled me, and now I have to stand back up all on my own. So, I do. I struggle to my feet, even though it’s so hard to move upward against gravity, onward against his pull, that I’m nauseated by the effort. “You need to leave, Finn.”
Without waiting, I stumble and clunk to the door and manage to open it with fingers that seem to have grown to the size of Idaho potatoes.
Finn follows, standing too close, inhaling me as if...
as if he’s making a memory of the moment.
But then he’s gone, slipped through the crack and down the hall without looking back.
I close the door and lean on it while I try to get my emotions back under control.
I try. I fail. Because he’s offered me hope. And now, he’s gone. Again.