On Empty -Finn #2
I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. Figured that one.”
She gave me a look.
“I read a lot,” she added, a hint of defensiveness sharpening the words.
“What kind?”
Her mouth twitched.
“Everything. But mostly fiction. Escapism, I guess.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
She studied me for a beat, deciding something behind those eyes.
Then—
“I didn’t really have much else,” she admitted quietly.
“When I got arrested… I lost the few friends I had. John had made sure there weren’t many to begin with.”
The words landed heavier than her voice carried them.
I didn’t speak. Just listened.
“They all disappeared,” she continued, calm but distant. “Which, I guess makes sense. No one wants to stand next to someone like that.”
My jaw tightened on its own.
“And when you were cleared?”
She let out a small, humorless breath.
“They didn’t come back. Honestly, it was for the best. They were always more his friends than mine anyway. I think they were just spying for him. They were never really on my side.”
Quiet settled in around that.
I adjusted my hold, my hand pressing more firmly against the small of her back. She leaned into me—barely—but I caught it.
“That’s on them,” I said.
She shrugged.
“Maybe.”
She didn’t sound convinced.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
She tucked herself back against me, her voice dropping. “I focused on Lily. That’s all there needed to be. She kept me grounded.”
I nodded.
“I worked,” she added. “Bookkeeping from home, mostly. Numbers made sense. They didn’t shift on you. I also waited tables at a diner at night, right up until Fiona started renting the room.”
For a second, everything was almost normal. Two people talking in the dark, learning about each other. No dead things wandering through the streets outside.
I nudged gently. “What about before all that?”
That drew something different from her, softer. A small, private smile ghosted across her lips, as if it belonged to someone she used to be.
“I hiked,” she said. “A lot.”
I blinked down at her.
“Hiked?”
“Yeah.” Warmth crept into her voice for the first time all night. “My dad—he worked as an archaeologist, always out somewhere. Dig sites, old ruins, tunnels nobody had walked through in centuries.”
“Explains a lot,” I muttered.
She elbowed me lightly in the ribs.
“Hey.”
I smirked.
“Continue.”
She rolled her eyes but kept going, and I watched her face change as she talked. The tension around her mouth eased. Her shoulders dropped. She looked younger.
“He used to take me with him whenever he could. We’d explore all kinds of places—old tunnels, abandoned structures, anything historical he could get access to. Sometimes legal. Sometimes…” she trailed off with a guilty half-smile.
“Ah, a little criminal,” I joked.
“Sometimes not,” she confirmed, her voice lighter, like those memories lived somewhere the world hadn’t touched yet.
“I loved it,” she said quietly. “Getting lost in places most people never saw. Standing where someone stood five hundred years ago and just… breathing the same air.”
I sat with that for a second.
“Sounds like you had a good dad.”
Her smile softened. Something fragile crossed her face and disappeared.
“I did. He died before Lily, which makes me sad and relieved. He would have been devastated by what John did to me… to us.”
Another pause.
I nudged again, lighter this time.
“So. Books. Hiking. Exploring ancient tunnels.”
I tilted my head.
“You’ve basically been training for the apocalypse your whole life.”
It caught me off guard—the sound of it too ordinary for where we were, too easy.
Her gaze drifted away for a second. “I’d never thought of it like that.”
“You’re built for this, Libby.”
She shook her head, the smile fading but not disappearing entirely.
“I don’t feel—” she stopped. Corrected herself. “It doesn’t seem that way from where I’m sitting.”
“It should.”
She glanced up at me.
“Why?”
I held her gaze.
“You’re still here,” I said, letting the words hang in the air, my gaze steady on hers. “Still thinking. Still moving. Still keeping your kid alive and your head above water while everyone else already went under.”
I meant them.
She went quiet, not uncomfortably, but as if she didn’t know what to do with the words—where to put them, how to hold them. Like no one had said anything like that to her in a long time.
Maybe ever.
She settled back against me, her hand finding my chest again, directly over my heartbeat.
“Your turn,” she murmured.
I exhaled through my nose.
“Not nearly as interesting, honestly.”
“I doubt that.”
“Lot fewer books. Lot more bad decisions.”
She smiled against my shirt; I could feel the curve of it through the fabric.
“I don’t believe that either.”
I shook my head.
“Careful,” I said. “You’re starting to sound like you’ve got too much faith in me.”
“Maybe I do,” she said softly.
I didn’t respond right away.
I just pulled her tighter against me, pressed my chin to the top of her head, and breathed her in.
Her fingers curled into my shirt and held on.
Outside, the world waited—broken, hungry, and patient.
But in here, in the dark, with her heartbeat pressed against mine and her breath warm on my skin—this existed.
This small, impossible thing between us.
And I held onto it the same way she held onto me, like letting go wasn’t something either of us planned to do.