23. Finn
This was going worse than he thought; he didn’t like his odds.
Finn had just barely gotten her to be his, and now he was going to lose her.
But not without a fight.
He had fought for many things in his life. For his family to love him. His home. His place at the Way Station. But this was the most important thing he had to lose, and she was disappearing like stars in the morning sky.
He told her everything. Who he was. What they did. Where they were.
Sabrina would be mad, but he would deal with her later. Right now, the woman in front of him was the only person he cared about.
Finn groaned, pressing a hand to his side, trying to keep pressure on the wound. Lucie smacked his hand away.
The sharp sting from the bullet wound radiated through his body when he jerked back, lessening with whatever Lucie injected into him, but what made his chest tighten more wasn’t the bullet wound—it was Lucie’s silence.
Her expression. A mixture of shock, confusion, and anger.
But he could work with anger. Anger meant she still cared.
“Lu—” he rasped. The word barely made it out as she moved to his back. Even in the chaos, her hands were steady.
He winced as she started stitching him up, but all he could focus on was her face. The way her brows furrowed and the way she refused to look at him fully.
“This isn’t going to be perfect. I wish I had more supplies—your people might be able to do a better job when you get back to wherever you came from,” Lucie said, gathering more of his flesh and stitching it back together. “But it will hold.”
“We don’t have anything like this,” he admitted, gritting his teeth. “My team was too far away to help. We don’t have a person like you at our base.”
Of course, they had a first aid kit, but never a doctor on site.
They could fix scrapes, bruises, and the occasional case of poison ivy, but nothing for anything serious.
If there was anything serious, they would be transported to DC, where they could be treated at an Atlas hospital without question.
It was a long, two-hour drive. He never would have made it.
She pulled another stitch through.
He winced.
She bit her lip, concentrating. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.
He had seen almost every state in the country. Seen the natural beauties of the world, but right now, his entire world was inches away from him, and—holy shit.
He loved her.
Finn took a deep breath; goosebumps ran down his body, nothing to do with the pain, but with the delicate hands touching him.
He loved Lucie.
It hit him like a freight train, the realization sinking deep into his bones.
He hadn’t just fallen for her. Finn had been falling since the first time he saw her in that daisy yellow sundress weeks ago.
He hadn’t even realized what the feeling was until now.
Every look. Touch. Laugh. Smile, she’d gifted him—it had all built up, piece by piece.
His whole life, he’d run around with half of a heart searching for hers.
Finn was completely, utterly, and undeniably in love with Lucie Nightingale.
And it terrified him.
Worse, she was more than halfway done with his stitches.
Finn wanted nothing more in the world than to tell her, but she couldn’t look at him.
If he didn’t convince her now, then what would he have left in his life? He fisted his hands into her carpet, trying to focus on anything else but the pain, and what his realization meant.
But he didn’t want to tell her he loved her.
Love had been used like a weapon all his life. Three simple words, “I love you,” could make a person do anything.
Lie. Steal. Cheat. Kill.
Telling Lucie now he loved her didn’t feel fair with the pain clouding his vision, and Lucie’s face twisted in worry.
He didn’t want Lucie to feel like he was saying those three perfect words to manipulate her, even unintentionally.
Because he wouldn’t, he could never do that to her. Man—he really did love her. He needed her to believe him, but on her own terms, not because he confessed his love in the heat of the moment.
Finn clenched his jaw, forcing the words back down—swallowing them, burying them as deep as he could.
Now he couldn’t even look at her because he was sure that if he saw her blue eyes, he would break down and confess everything, and he was sure that would scare her off even more.
He would have to show her the truth instead. He would take her to the Way Station. If he brought her there, she would understand. It would validate his story. He’d earn her trust the right way without using those three barbed words.
“Let me take you to the Way Station,” he rasped, his voice tight with pain. “Give me a chance, and I will show you everything.”
“And have you serial kill me there?” she scoffed, looking up at him with her doe eyes. “Not a chance. I am not going to a secondary location with you after you just told me you killed someone and you’re a secret agent,” Lucie pushed.
Finn chuckled. He couldn’t help himself. But shit—did it hurt.
“Yeah. I guess it does sound pretty bad, huh?” he managed, with a strained smile.
Lucie didn’t look convinced, her gaze narrowing, as she went back to her own mission. Two—maybe three stitches, and she would be done.
Finn knew he was losing her. Fast.
This couldn’t be the last time he ever talked to her.
Finn reached for the communicator strapped to his wrist. He unlocked it, his movements slow and deliberate, wincing with every motion.
“Look—I get it. I wouldn’t trust me either after everything I’ve just dumped on you.” He held out the communicator, offering it to her as an olive branch. “But if you ever want to talk to me, this is how you do it. You call. I’ll answer. No matter what. I promise.”
Lucie hesitated, eyeing the device warily.
He wanted to get on his knees and beg her to leave with him. She would be safe at the Way Station. Safe from her father. Safe with him. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to convince her of that. Even if it meant breaking the Way Station’s one rule of never telling outsiders who they were.
See, this was what he meant: Love was powerful—too much for him, something he didn’t deserve.
But it didn’t stop him from gently pressing the communicator bracelet into her hand. To his ever-living relief, she didn’t pull away.
Immediately, he showed her how to use it, explaining the simple commands. “Just tap here, and it’ll send a signal directly to me. You can talk, ask questions, anything. You don’t have to trust me right now, but—at least you’ll know where to find me if you ever change your mind.”
She stared down at the communicator for a long moment, her brow furrowed as if she were considering something. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Fine,” she muttered, slipping it into her pocket.
As she finished the last stitch, her finger ran over the end to inspect her work. Finn clenched his jaw, soaking in her last touch.
“I’m all done,” she said, her expression cold and distant.
He lost her.
Would this be the last time he saw her? Felt her hand on his bare skin? Talked to her?
“You need to go,” she said firmly. I guess it was. “I have to clean up before my dad gets home.” She stepped back, wiping her hands on a towel previously stained with paint. Could he steal it to have one final piece of her?
Finn swallowed hard, nodding again as he painfully pushed himself up from the floor. Gritting his teeth. Careful not to rip one of the stitches she had carefully given him. The last thing he would ever get from her.
“I promised that if you listened and still wanted me to leave, I would. But can I hold you one last time?” he begged. He tried not to sound desperate, but his heart was raw and exposed.
She nodded.
He pulled her against him, not caring about the pain. The real pain ripped at him inside at the prospect of never seeing her again and never telling her he loved her.
For the first time in his life, he’d stopped thinking only about tomorrow and now what his future looked like with her in it. The images burned away into ash.
She didn’t want him. He’d finally shown someone all the pieces of his life, and it still wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.
Their hug was brief.
As fleeting as their time together. For a moment, he wished he didn’t work for Sabrina. That he didn’t know what the Way Station was. Or Legion.
As he looked at the stars in the night sky through her window, he wished he were simply a guy on one of his travels, that he’d stopped at a run-down tourist trap and never left, after finally finding a reason to stay somewhere.
Maybe in another universe, there was another version of Finn and Lucie still on the beach and able to go home together after they left—a time in space where he could be loved easily.
Shit—was he going to cry?
If this was the last time he saw her, he wanted to tell her he loved her. Say the words that had been circling his mind.
But instead, he held her against his chest and mouthed, I love you, above her head.
He just wanted to be the first one to say it.
And probably the last.