20. Ethan #3
“A few.” Max sits up straighter, frowning. “The bottle was full when Sophie got here. It’s half empty now.”
Finn shrugs, a lazy roll of his shoulders that confirms what I’m already suspecting. He’s drunk. He isn’t stumbling drunk, at least not yet, but definitely more than tipsy. But the thing is, Finn doesn’t usually get drunk. Most definitely not before a night out and when we have plans.
“What’s going on with you?” I ask. “You’ve been off all week. And now you’re trying to drink yourself unconscious before dinner?”
Finn is quiet for a long moment. He drains the rest of his whiskey and sets the glass down on the coffee table with a heavy thunk.
“Remember that girl I told you about?” he says. “From the gala?”
Max and I exchange a glance.
“The one with the dark eyes?” Max says slowly. “The one you wouldn’t shut up about for days?”
“That’s the one.” Finn laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“Dark eyes. Red dress. Smelled like rain and roses. Talked with me on the terrace like we’d known each other for years.
” He tips his head back against the couch, staring at the ceiling.
“Kissed me like the world was ending. Then ran away before I could even get her number.”
“What about her?” I ask, though something cold is already settling in my stomach.
Finn lifts his head. Looks at me. Looks at Max.
“It was Sophie.”
The words hang in the air like smoke.
I stare at him. “What?”
“The woman from the gala.” Finn’s voice is rough, scraped raw. “It was Sophie. She was working. Undercover, apparently. Hunting some other alpha, and she thought I was him.”
Max doesn’t answer. I can see him processing, fitting pieces together.
“She kissed you,” Max says slowly. “Sophie kissed you.”
“Yeah.” Finn reaches for the bottle and pours himself another measure.
“At the time, I figured I’d freaked her out somehow, and that was why she ran.
But she told me, the day she turned up at Synthera, that she’d been undercover that night.
” He pauses. “It explains a lot. She bolted the second I told her my last name and she realized I wasn’t her target. ”
My mind is spinning, trying to reconcile the cold, professional agent who just left our house with the woman Finn described that night—passionate, mysterious, someone who made him feel like he’d finally found something real.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask. “When she showed up here, when you realized who she was—”
“Because I’m a fucking idiot.” Finn takes a long swallow of whiskey. “I thought if I just ignored it, it would go away. And I was embarrassed that she duped me so easily.”
Max shifts in his armchair, and when he speaks, there’s no softness in it. “So she kissed you to get to someone else, worked out you were the wrong man, and walked.” He takes his time with the next sip. “Please tell me you’re not still pining for her after finding out the truth.”
“Of course not, I—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Max sets his glass down with a click. “She’s an operative, Finn. Getting close to people, making them feel something, using it, that’s what she’s paid to do. Whatever happened at that gala, she was just doing her job. It didn’t mean anything.”
Finn’s head comes up. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’re drinking because you can’t make yourself believe it.” Max leans back. “She finds our mole, she files her report, she’s gone. The woman in the red dress doesn’t exist. She was a costume Sophie put on for one night, and you’re still carrying a torch for a costume.”
It’s harsher than he needs to be, but I don’t say anything. Because maybe Max isn’t wrong, Finn needs to hear it, and we need to break whatever spell she cast over him that night.
“She smelled like rain,” Finn says quietly, ignoring all of it. “Rain and roses. I still can’t—” He shakes his head and doesn’t finish.
Max makes a low, disgusted sound and drains his glass. “She smelled like whatever the mission needed her to smell like.”
I keep my mouth shut. Partly because I don’t share Max’s certainty, not quite. I keep thinking about the way she went still on the porch, the careful way she said it’s peaceful here, with that wistful look on her face.
And partly because I’m watching Max.
He’s on his third whiskey, arguing a little too hard and a little too long about a woman he insists is nothing but a con in a costume. Max doesn’t usually get worked up over women. Hell, he barely even remembers the names of the ones he’s slept with.
But I’m not about to point that out and hand him something else to be furious about.
I look at the clock. “We’re supposed to be at the club in an hour.”
Finn snorts into his glass. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”
Max glances at the empty bottle, at Finn sliding sideways into the cushions. “No,” he says. “I’ll cancel.”
He stands and pulls out his phone, then pauses over Finn and gives him a warning look. “Do yourself a favor. Stop looking for a woman who was never real.”
Then he walks off to make the call, and Finn stares into the fire, and I sit there with my whiskey and say nothing at all.