51. Chapter 50
Chapter 50
Finnley
If I had just kept my mouth shut for two more minutes, none of this would be happening. I just had to take her down a notch and, in the process, it feels like my heart is being forcibly ripped from my chest. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I’m strong enough to walk away from him. But I have to.
“I have to get out of here. I can’t do this anymore. We have to stop.” It comes out hysterical, and if I don’t get out of here right now, I may hyperventilate.
He shakes his head once and closes his eyes before staring down at me. “Why? Because of Tristen? You think she matters to me? The woman who can’t even call her daughter on her birthday?”
“Yes. No. Fuck ,” I sob. “I don’t know.” Tears pour out of me and my throat is raw. It’s too much. This was only supposed to be fun. Temporary. “It was just— You didn’t marry me because you love me, you— It’s not real . ”
“Not real?” he asks, hurt in his voice thick. He cups my face in both of his hands, pulling me in so that our foreheads are touching. “This has always been real for me. Nothing has ever been more real in my life.”
His words hit their mark and my chest aches with a longing to believe him, to throw caution to the wind with all of my insecurities about Tristen, the circumstances surrounding my mama’s cremation, and my worries about him leaving me some day, whether by choice or by force. I shake my head, but I don’t pull away from him. Our breaths mingle together, our lips an inch apart. It would be so easy to close the small distance and lose myself in his kiss, in my best friend, in my husband. The man I’ve come to associate with home.
I do believe him. But the words that come out don’t match up with the truth of his. “You’re just saying that because my feelings are hurt,” I manage to whisper.
“No,” he says. His thumbs softly stroke over the apples of my cheeks, swiping away the tears that will not fucking stop. “I love you, Finnley, so goddamn much, and it’s killing me that you can’t see it; won’t accept it for what it is. Please, just accept it for what it is, baby,” he pleads. “Please.”
I can’t take it anymore—his proximity, his scent, his warmth, the way his eyes bore into mine, and the hammer of his heart under my palm. And that’s why I don’t stop him when he tips his chin up and presses his lips to mine. I shudder against him as his hands leave my cheeks and dig into the hair at the back of my neck.
“Please believe me,” he murmurs against my lips, and I sink into his arms, mine finding their way up to snake around his neck.
I’m nearly climbing him, trying to push closer as I fist the neck of his shirt. It’s a desperate kiss, full of longing and everything we’ve both felt for so long, and I feel it everywhere. It wraps around my heart and buries itself there, in the battered and bruised parts that Tristen just stomped all over. But it’s not enough to drown out her words as they drift back to me, immediately followed by Paige’s…
You really are clueless, aren’t you? You’ve always been his little charity case.
You can still be married to Daddy even if he’s with my mommy.
A sob breaks free from my chest as I break the kiss. I shove at his chest, pushing him back a step. “I can’t do this.”
His look of surprise turns to one of defeat when he reaches for me, and I pull my arm out of reach. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs before meeting my eyes again. A muscle in his jaw ticks. “So, that’s it, then? You’re just walking away?”
I sniff, hating the loss I see in his eyes and knowing I’m the one who put it there. “I have to.”
“And what about this?” he asks, lifting his chin at me. “What about us?”
I close my eyes, feeling miserable and knowing that as much as I hope for it, nothing will ever be the same between us. I can’t even look at him as I say the words. “Hopefully we can still…be friends.”
“No,” he says, stepping into me and tilting up my chin to catch my eye when I won’t look up at him. “I want you. I want us together.” He links our fingers. “I want what I didn’t have with Tristen.”
“That’s just it though, Huddy.” It causes me physical pain to use his nickname, but it would cause more not to. “You and Tristen were together. Really together for almost ten years. You had this .” I raise our hands. “And just like that, it was over. I couldn’t—” I falter, my voice cracking. “I couldn’t bear that if it happened to us.” It causes physical pain to know it is already happening to us and I don’t know if we’ll come back from it. But I have to try.
“I don’t have anyone else. If I don’t have you, I don’t have your family and I don’t have Paige. I don’t have dinners at the ranch, and I don’t have birthdays for Pop, or weekends at Hutch’s.” I sob, my dark eyes pleading with his hazel ones as my words rush out. “The business, my family—it’s all wrapped up in you. I’d lose everything if I lost you. I can’t do life alone.”
He makes an impatient sound in the back of his throat, but then softens his features. “Listen, I know you were raised by a hell of an independent woman, but you don't have to be alone. You don’t have to face shit on your own. You won’t. I’ve been here since you were seventeen, and I’ll still be here when you're seventy. I don’t know how to make you see that I’d fucking do anything for you.”
“I know that, but—”
“No. You don’t.” He cuts me off.
Running a hand up my arm and shoulder, his fingers come to rest behind my neck and his thumb traces my cheek again. I want so badly to turn my face into him, to let him take me away from here and live happily ever after. But people like me, the ones who everyone leaves, don’t get happy endings. At least not like this.
“There are two reasons I get up every morning, Finnley. That little girl upstairs and you,” he says, gently, emotion so thick in his voice it’s tight. “You’re mine.”
A tear rolls down my cheek and splats on the concrete. When I look back up at him, his eyes are wet, too.
“Tristen, she—”
“Tristen doesn’t matter.” He sighs.
“She does. She was your real wife and she’s Paige’s mother, Hudson. This isn’t the same. You said as much to Paige. It’s not the same as you and Tristen." Just saying the words he spoke to Paige makes my stomach twist. I squeeze my eyes shut, expelling more tears, before meeting his gaze. “Why would you say that?”
His expression clouds with confusion. “Of course, it’s not the same. There’s no comparison. I didn’t think I needed to explain that to you. ”
“Do you know how that makes me feel? That what we have is nothing like a real marriage?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I cut him off with a curt nod. “You did, actually. You said it was just to help me and not like what you and Tristen had.”
His jaw ticks and he takes a deep, pained breath. “That’s not what I meant.” When he meets my gaze again, he shakes his head, remorse filling his eyes. “I panicked. Just give me a little bit,” he pleads. “I’ll fix it, I promise. I swear to God, I’ll fix it, baby. I’m so fucking sorry for making you think that what we have isn’t real. It is. It’s everything. Paige doesn’t understand what my marriage to Tristen was like—the shit that woman put me through. She may never understand it. She still thinks there’s a chance we could get back together. She needs to know it’s not happening, but I have to be careful with her. She’s only six, Finnley.”
He’s right. Paige is so young, and it crushed her when her mom left the first time. All the more reason to protect her from another breakup when this doesn’t work.
I shake my head. “You’re right. We might be married, but it was never supposed to be real. It was supposed to be temporary. So, that’s what we should be.” The words stick in my throat, but I manage to squeak them out.
Hudson fists his hair in one hand, then drops it to his side. “First of all, you are my real wife. You . You may not have a fucking ring on your finger yet, but you are my wife. I yelled that shit for the entire town to hear at Roxy’s. Or have you forgotten? You are my wife. Not Tristen. And yes, she’s Paige’s mother, but Finn, fuck. You’ve been more of a mother to that little girl in the last few months than that woman has been her entire life.”
I can love Paige as his best friend without taking a wrecking ball to her life any more than I already have. I can be there for her just like I always have. We don’t need to be together for me to love her. I cling to that. Paige is who matters here, not my feelings or Hudson’s.
“And this is hurting her. It’s hurting Paige, Huddy. She’s always been your top priority, and right now, she is hurting. You just said that she wants you two back together. I’m just the one standing in the way of that. I can’t do that to her. I love her too much."
“You’re not doing anything to her, Finn. There’s no shot Tristen and I are getting back together. You have to know that. She came back and fucked everything up. We were fine until she showed up and we’ll be fine when she’s gone. Paige will get there. She loves you, too.”
I shake my head. Maybe I’m a coward, maybe I’m just terrified of being alone, but even if it’s not Tristen, something is going to come between us someday, and I can’t risk that. He says he won’t survive it if I get sick and he loses me, but I won’t survive it if something happens between us and our friendship is lost because of it. He’s too much a part of my life to let that happen.
“But it’s not real, Huddy. We’re only married because of my damned diabetes.” Even as I say the words, I know they’re a lie. Of course, they are. And yet…
“No. Fuck that. What we have, what we’ve been doing these past few weeks is more real than anything I’ve ever done. More real than anything I ever had with Tristen. Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”
“Of course, I do.” My voice cracks. “I love you… We’ve had fun, a lot of laughs, and yes, we have amazing sex, but—”
“This was never just about sex for me. You’re fucking it for me, Finnley.”
“And what happens when it’s over?” I ask, silent tears still leaking from my eyes. “What happens when things get hard and we can’t figure shit out? We’ll end up divorced, and then we’ve ruined that little girl in there and our friendship in the process. I can’t risk that.”
“You’re just scared,” he says heatedly .
“Yes!” I shout. “I’m scared. I’m scared of losing everything. I’d rather be your friend than risk not having you in my life.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “You keep looking for reasons why you think this can’t work, but you need to start looking for reasons why it can; why it will . I can’t go back. I won’t. I can’t just be your friend anymore.”
“You have to,” I say quietly.
He laughs then, the tone and his expression incredulous, and his chest heaves once. “You’re not even going to fight for us?” He shakes his head and looks around, then drags his hand down his face.
“This is me fighting for us. For our friendship. And for Paige.” It kills me to say it, but this is the way it has to be.
“You’re running,” he says, quiet frustration in his tone. “I don’t understand why.”
I don’t give him another reason. All I can do is hope that he understands one day, and it doesn’t do more damage to our friendship than we already have.
“I have to go,” I whisper, looking up into those stormy hazel eyes I’ve come to love so much. “Please let me go.”
He’s got more to say. It’s written all over his face. “Don’t shut me out, Finn.”
“I just need space, ok? You have to figure things out with Tristen. I need time to—” I break off with a sigh.
“How much space? How much time?” His voice is desperate.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “I’ll call you, ok?”
He swallows hard but says nothing. I take his silence as agreement. Then, I use the one thing that I know will make him acquiesce. “Go be with Paige. She needs her dad.”
“Fuck.” He drops my hand and steps back, his hands hanging at his sides.
Pulling open the door on the Volvo, I slip inside and turn over the ignition. I fight the urge to turn and look at him before backing out of the garage. Once I’m out of the driveway, I pull away from the house and head toward Timber Haven. I don’t look back.