Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FINN
The water didn’t help.
I stayed on my side of the kitchen island, glass in hand, and pretended the cold drink was doing anything at all to undo what had just happened four feet away.
Emily was on her side. Same thing.
Water. Silence.
Two people who had just confirmed a hypothesis and were now facing the peer review.
It works.
I ran the internal diagnostic I’d been dreading. The checklist Trent would’ve made me fill out if he were here, which, thank hell, he was not.
Pain at the site: none. The deep ache that usually showed up when blood flow redirected south: absent. The phantom nerve twinge from my half-hearted attempt in the shower a few weeks ago? Not there.
Instead, functioning was so normal it almost scared me worse.
Yeah, it worked. My body had made that point with the subtlety of a stadium Jumbotron, and now I was standing in my kitchen with an erection and my best friend’s sister pretending we were scientists.
She took another sip. Set the glass down with a precise click. Squared her shoulders.
“So,” she said.
“So,” I agreed.
Excellent. Groundbreaking conversation.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Number eighteen for the day, but who was keeping track?
“The data is encouraging,” she said, and her voice held a professional edge. “We’ve established that the physiological response is intact. That’s a positive result.”
“Positive,” I agreed, gripping the water glass.
She nodded. Tapped her fingernail against the counter. Twice.
Then her veneer slipped enough for me to see underneath.
Want. The kind that doesn’t file itself into a framework.
Emily had taken care of me. Every day, without complaint, without making me feel like a charity case. She’d helped me ice, cooked in my kitchen, organized my supplements, and slept twenty feet away in the guest room in case I needed help.
She gave and gave and gave.
And I hadn’t given her a damn thing back.
I set the water down with a soft clink.
“Em.”
She went still, her fingernail stopped tapping.
“What?” she asked.
“Take off your pants.”
“Excuse me?” she asked me.
“You heard me.”
She stared. Then she burst out giggling like we were talking about building a deck with a butter knife. “Finn, you can’t just—”
“Clinical trial,” I said. “Your rules. Rule two: everything’s on the table. I’m invoking rule two.”
“You’re invoking—” She shook her head. “That’s not how clinical trials work. There’s a protocol. There’s a hypothesis. You don’t just—”
“Hypothesis,” I said. “You’ve been taking care of me for weeks and nobody’s been taking care of you. I’d like to test that.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
I waited.
Emily Sinclair could argue constitutional law in her sleep. She could dismantle a witness before lunch and file a counter-motion by two. She had a comeback for everything I’d ever said to her.
She didn’t have one for this.
“The framework,” she said, but the word came out softer than she probably wanted it to.
“Is the framework a yes or a no?”
She seemed to wait for a punchline. Except, I wasn’t kidding.
“Yes,” she said. Then, like she needed to qualify it, “For the data.”
“For the data,” I agreed.
Her lips parted. A flush crept up her neck.
She was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on all evening—worn-in jeans and a faded T-shirt. She reached to unbutton her jeans.
“Not here,” I said.
She paused, thumbs hooked in her waistband. “What?”
“My room.” I held out my hand. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
She stared at my hand. Then she took it.
I led her upstairs. My bedroom was dark except for the light from the hallway cutting a stripe across the floor.
Same bed, same gray-and-navy everything, same space I never brought anyone into. Not dates, not hookups.
If a girl stayed over, we stayed in the guest room.
That was the rule.
Emily paused in the doorway, taking it in. She didn’t say anything, which meant she got it.
She stood at the foot of the bed and did that bit with the lawyer math she loved so much. Calculating outcomes, weighing evidence, running scenarios.
“Stop thinking,” I said.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“That’s why I’m going to help.”
I kissed her. Different from the kitchen. This kiss was slower. A question.
I waited for the answer.
She gave it by curling her fingers into my shirt and pulling me closer.
I eased her jeans down over her hips. She stepped out of them, her hands braced on my shoulders, and I guided her back until her knees hit the mattress and she sat.
Then I knelt.
Her expression was almost startled.
“Finn, you don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
Just three uncomplicated words.
I tossed aside my glasses, hooked my fingers into the waistband of her underwear, and drew them down. She lifted her hips to help. Then I pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee. She got goosebumps all up her inner thigh.
I worked my way up. Slow. Intentional. The inside of her thigh, where the skin was impossibly soft. Higher, where she tensed.
Emily’s hand found the back of my head, her fingers threaded loosely through my hair.
When my mouth reached the center of her, she made a muffled sound like, ‘oh.’ I stayed. I took notes about what made her fingers tighten. What made her hips rock forward. What made her thighs press against my ears like she was trying to keep me there.
Just my mouth and her body and the sound of her coming apart.
When she came, her back arched and her hand pressed hard against my scalp and she said my name. Just Finn, and it was the best thing anyone had ever called me.
I stayed between her knees until she stopped shaking. Then I pressed a kiss to her hip bone and sat back.
Her T-shirt was bunched around her ribs. Her hair had come loose from its knot and fanned across my pillow.
My pillow.
“Data,” she managed.
“Data,” I confirmed.
She pressed both hands over her face. “That was not objective.”
“Science is messy.” I grabbed my glasses so I could see her better.
She dropped her hands. Her eyes were glassy in a way that made my heart jump.
“What about you?” she asked, her attention dropping to where I strained against my shorts with zero subtlety.
I shook my head. “Tonight’s about you.”
“That’s not how reciprocity works, Finn.”
“Good thing this isn’t a contract.”
She narrowed her eyes, the argument forming.
She wanted to push. To make it fair. To balance the ledger.
“Em,” I said. “I’m not ready for that.”
I didn’t know what she found while she watched me, but after a minute she nodded.
“Okay.”
I stood. My dick gave plenty of objections to stopping, but pain wasn’t one of them.
“Stay here,” I said, pulling the comforter up and over her legs.
Her eyebrow lifted. “In your bed.”
“In my bed.”
“You don’t let anyone sleep in here.”
“I know what I said.”
She didn’t move for about four years. Then she pulled the comforter to her chin and rolled onto her side, facing the window.
I went downstairs. Drank another glass of water standing in the same room where it had all started. Her legal pad chilled on the island where she’d left it earlier, the yellow pages covered in truffle recipes and flow arrows and the occasional doodle of a coffee cup in the margin.
I stared at the legal pad for a while.
When I went back upstairs, she was asleep. Curled on her side, one hand tucked under the pillow, the comforter pulled around her shoulders.
I stood in the doorway and let that sink in.
Then I climbed in beside her, careful not to wake her, and lay on my back.
My body was still wide awake. Still making its position on the matter very clear. I ignored it with the discipline of a man who had spent weeks learning to be patient with the parts of himself that wanted to rush.
She shifted in her sleep and her shoulder pressed against my arm, warm and solid.
Rule one said no weird feelings.
Rule one wasn’t working out.