“Just walk me through it, Finnley, okay?”

“There’s nothing to walk through! That’s not why you two are here, anyway.”

“Sorry, little lady, but you can’t tell me when to turn that nosey part of myself off and on. It’s sort of a package deal. And before you turn to Clara to back you up, don’t bother. I promise you she wants to know just as badly what’s behind you accepting a legitimate date with the one and only Garrett Wallace.”

Finnley, who already felt a little bit like she’d been sucked up inside of a tornado the way Dorothy had been at the start of her strange story, turned and looked at her friends in dismay. She held onto the grim hope that when Elsie, who was doing all of the talking, and Clara, who was silent but looked every bit as invested in the conversation as Elsie was, saw the look on her face they would let up some. Instead, it only seemed to spur them on. Elsie started to laugh and shake her head in something Finnley thought might closely resemble disbelief, and Clara just continued to look at her totally unfazed. For probably the thousandth time since Finnley had made the calls for her two best friends to come and help her get ready, she wondered if maybe it had been a terrible idea. True, she didn’t know the first thing about getting ready for a date with a certified billionaire, but she might have been able to figure it out. At least if she had just gotten herself ready solo, she wouldn’t have had to field so many questions. And the worst part was that they were questions she wasn’t prepared to answer even for herself, let alone for other people. And these people just so happened to know her well enough to have a pretty clear idea of when she was lying to them, which meant evasive maneuvers were kind of out of the question. With this knowledge squarely in mind, she took a look at her friends’ expressions and walked out of her bedroom, heading straight to the kitchen to open the bottle of bubbly Elsie had brought along for what she was now referring to as the “monumental occasion.”

“Woah!” Elsie shouted after her, hopping off of the bed immediately so that the old mattress creaked tiredly. “What the hell, Finnley? You can’t just bail!”

“She’s sort of right,” Clara called after her, sounding annoyingly like the sister she truly was to Elsie. “Not when there’s so much hanging up in the air. And it’s a legitimate question, too! It’s totally the kind of question you would have asked me when me and Weston started dating. In fact, I’m pretty sure you did ask me something similar, and probably a whole lot worse!”

“I know, I know,” Finnley groaned, pouring three glasses and distributing them to the friends who had so quickly trailed after her. “It’s just that it’s so much more comfortable when I’m on your side of the question asking.”

“Too bad,” Elsie crowed, reminding Finnley very much of how she’d been before her relationship with Caleb had mellowed her out some. “Because you’re not! Now spill. What made you say yes to Garrett? Because last time I checked you were kind of leaning towards the side of hating him a little.”

“Not the last time I saw her,” Clara said quietly, smiling to herself and starting Finnley up with her never ending blushing again. “The last time I saw her, they seemed to be getting along pretty freaking well.”

“Okay!” Finnley said loudly, loudly enough to make both girls jump, which made her feel a little better, whether it was a friendly reaction or not. “Enough! If both of you will just be quiet and let me talk we can get this part out of the way and back to the part where you guys help me figure out what the hell I’m supposed to wear.”

It was enough to shut them both up, at least for the moment, which was such a relief that Finnley hardly minded trying to explain something to her friends that she hadn’t yet been able to explain to herself. She gave them all kinds of reasons, mostly centering around the fact that she wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on in Cubed so that she could keep the company safe. She made some noncommittal comments about how going out with a good-looking, rich guy wasn’t the worst thing a person had ever had to do for work, which got some knowing looks passing between Elsie and Clara but mercifully didn’t draw any comments. She talked so much and so quickly that by the time she was finally headed out of her front door she wasn’t even sure what she had said. It had been a whole lot of babbling, foolishness that hadn’t amounted to much of anything aside from making her more nervous than ever about the date she was about to go on.

“What the hell am I doing?”

And wasn’t that just the question of the hour? What was she doing, meeting Garrett Wallace for dinner in the middle of everything else going on at the moment? Everything with Cubed was up in the air, Travis acting like some kind of freaking robot while the rest of them just kind of milled about, still without much of anything to do with themselves. And then there was the fact that Garrett himself was a man she had no idea how to figure out. Was he an untrustworthy asshole just like his father, or was he the misunderstood, lied-to man she had caught a glimpse of in Clara and Weston’s apartment? She had no idea, had no idea how to answer that and wasn’t even sure if she wanted to anymore. She was too tired to keep fighting the desires that had been creeping up inside of her ever since Garrett had spilled that drink on her in the bar.

“I don’t want to think anymore,” she whispered to herself, hating the sound of the words coming out of her mouth, and yet knowing full well that they were true. “I don’t want to think.”

With this idea firmly planted in her mind, she got into a cab that drove her across town and delivered her to a restaurant that looked much too fancy for her to even open the door of, let alone sit down inside of and eat. She took a deep breath and then just stood there, peering up at the too large, ornate double doors and feeling very much out of her league. If it were possible for her knees to actually start knocking, she was sure that was exactly what they would do. She was torn between her desire to get as far away from this pretentious-looking building as she possibly could and her desire to see Garrett again outside of the office. She could still feel his lips on hers, could still taste his spice, and it was a maddening thing indeed.

“Miss? Are you coming inside?”

Finnley looked down quickly, startled enough to come very close to letting out a little scream, and saw a sympathetic-looking door man. Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to call him a door boy because he didn’t look like he could have been more than twenty, and that was pushing it. He was thin, thin enough that it looked like he was swimming inside of his sweltering uniform, and he kept tugging at his too-buttoned up collar as if he thought it was probably going to choke him. All in all, despite the fact that he was an employee of the place she was currently feeling too intimidated to step inside of, he looked every bit as uncomfortable with his surroundings as she felt. She laughed, feeling her first bit of relief since she’d called her friends to get them to help her get ready and uttered a shaky laugh.

“I don’t know,” she confided, glancing at the doors again and wondering if this whole thing had been a total, gigantic mistake. “I’m still thinking it over. Tell me, would you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If our positions were reversed and you were the one standing here and I was the one asking if you wanted to come in, would you do it? Or would you turn around and haul ass home?”

“I don’t know, miss,” the kid watching the door laughed, tugging at his shirt again and looking a mixture between amused and bewildered. “I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before. And to be honest, I couldn’t afford this place even if I did take it into my head to come in and eat.”

“Believe me, I can’t afford it anymore that you can.”

“Then, begging your pardon, what are you doing here?”

“That’s an excellent question, you know that? Best question I’ve been asked in a long, long time.”

Finnley was clearly confusing the hell out of the poor kid and was mostly doing it to stall for time. In the end, she went inside because that was what she had said she was going to do and because she was already all dressed up and ready for the date she was now contemplating bailing on. Mostly, she went inside because she knew that if she didn’t, it would drive her crazy from the moment she left until the end of time. She wanted to see why Garrett wanted her to come out. She wanted to see if there was more between the two of them than just that one kiss, or if the chemistry between them was more of a one-hit-wonder kind of a thing and she was willing to put herself out there some in order to do it.

“Finnley! I swear to God, you’re trying to give me a heart attack.”

Finnley, who had been about to give her information to the hostess waiting to get her seated, turned to face a decidedly flustered looking Garrett. He looked as if he’d been running his hand through his hair compulsively, giving it a disheveled look she was sure he hadn’t worn before he’d left the house, and his eyes had that vaguely hollow look to them that Finnley always associated with somebody who hadn’t slept well enough. When he took her loosely by the upper hand, she noticed that his hand was actually a little bit clammy. Basically, he had all of the hallmarks of a man who’d been nervous for a good amount of time, and if she hadn’t understood very well that it would be cruel, she would probably have burst out laughing. Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to her that Garrett might be nervous about their date, too, and seeing that he was with her own eyes made her feel instantaneously better.

“You know what?” Finnley said with a smile, turning again to look at the hostess, who looked part confused, part just plain bored. “This is the guy I’m supposed to be meeting. Thanks for your help though.”

“Sure,” she said dully, smacking her gum a little while she spoke in a decidedly unfancy way, considering her surroundings. “No problem. Enjoy your meal.”

Garrett only nodded curtly, not the friendliest she’d ever seen him be, and then began leading Finnley through what was arguably the fanciest restaurant she had ever seen. There were chandeliers everywhere, enough that Finnley was sure they could have serviced an entire fleet of houses, and deep, plush carpet that made her feel like she might fall right off of her heels. All of the tables and chairs and basically everything else she could see was made out of some kind of rich, dark wood that she had no doubt was super-expensive. Everywhere she looked, there were incredibly rich people sitting and eating (or if they were talking about the majority of the women, not really eating much at all), a lot of whom stopped to look at her and Garrett as they passed. She couldn’t be quite sure without stopping and asking, something she had a good feeling Garrett wouldn’t appreciate one bit, but something told her they were all looking at her and wondering what the hell a girl like her was doing in a place as nice and fancy as this. They were looking at her and wondering what in the hell a guy like Garrett was doing with a girl as unimpressive as her in tow, as opposed to one of the many model-esque women populating New York. If she had understood how genuinely drop-dead gorgeous she was, she might not have thought either one of these things; she might instead have understood that these strangers were looking at her because she was beautiful, and for no other reason than that, but she didn’t understand, and so the first place she went to inside of her head was a negative one. She felt the panic begin to rise in her throat over the idea of having to sit and have a meal with these people so close by. She was on the verge of pulling Garrett aside and telling him that she couldn’t do this, after all, when they passed through the dining room and into what she very quickly realized was a pretty fantastic looking bar.

“What’s this? What are we doing in here?”

“I thought we could have our date in the bar instead of the dining room. If you don’t like that I can talk to the hostess. I’m sure I can get us a table—”

“No! No way, this is perfect! This is more than perfect, actually. The idea of sitting out there with all of those judgey people makes me feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

“At least it’s you this time and not me.”

“Oh yeah!” Finnley laughed, sitting at one of the ornate barstools with a major sigh of relief. “What was that all about? You said I almost gave you a heart attack?”

“You did!”

“But why? I might be like, five minutes late maybe, but no more. That’s hardly heart-attack status.”

“It’s not the late thing that I was worried about. It was the fact that I could see you standing out there talking to the door guy, and I was just about convinced that you weren’t coming in. I was actually sure you weren’t coming in, if you want to know the truth.”

“Well, then how come you didn’t come outside and say something?”

“Because, I’m not in the business of forcing women to date me, Finnley. Believe it or not, I like a woman to sit down across from me because she wants to.”

“Which I’m sure they always do.”

There was a moment’s pause in the conversation when the bartender stopped in front of them and made them both the kind of fancy cocktail Finnley claimed to hate but secretly totally loved. Even during that pause, however, Finnley could feel the tension in Garrett, who sat just close enough to her to feel like a tease but not so close that they were actually touching. It was a confusing kind of tension, something she hadn’t encountered in any of the men she’d been out on dates with in the past. She would almost have sworn that he was mad at her for something; she just wasn’t sure what that something was. All she knew was that she wanted to bartender to hurry and finish up with his drinks so that she could ask him why he was acting so weird. As it turned out, she didn’t need to ask. He was right there and ready to let her know exactly what was on his mind the moment they were mostly alone again. When he turned to look at her, closely and with that same almost anger she’d suspected from her peripheral glances, his expression was fiery enough that she almost drew back from him. She probably would have if she hadn’t been so determined to make it clear that she wasn’t intimidated by him. She liked him, whether she wanted to or not, but something told her that he already had way too much experience with people who were intimidated by him. So she held her ground, so well that when she had time to think about it later on, she was sure she had done a damned good job, but it didn’t do anything to deter him from making the point he felt he needed to make.

“Okay, Finnley, I’ve got a question for you, and it’s one I’ve been wanting to ask you from the beginning. Or from when you found out who I really am.”

“Awesome. I totally love questions like this.”

“You may not love it, but I need to ask it anyway. Just who exactly do you think I am, anyway?”

“That’s a silly question. I know who you are. You’re the one-and-only Garrett Wallace, right?”

“See, but why do you say it that way? That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Why do you do that?”

“Hold on, are you like, offended or something?”

“I don’t want to sound like a little bitch so no, I guess I’ll say I’m not offended. But do I love it? No. I get the feeling you think I’m a different man than I am.”

Finnley looked at him quizzically, the strength of her drink already going to her head as she did her best to take the measure of him. She could see that he was being honest with her, that he really did hate it when she talked about him that way, but what she couldn’t figure out was why. That was probably because she hadn’t ever stopped to think about the way her words affected him, but then again, why should she? He was stupid rich and so was the rest of his family. Not only that, but his family was turning out to be pretty freaking shady, too. In her mind, there was no way that anything she said could possibly upset him, or at least not enough that he would want to talk about it. She wasn’t sure if she should be amused or ashamed of herself. Meanwhile, Garrett was looking at her with a face that made it clear that he wasn’t just talking for the sake of hearing himself talk. She found herself momentarily at a loss for words when she saw the look in his eyes, and even when she did force herself to speak, she felt her words to be seriously lacking.

“I don’t know. I haven’t...I haven’t thought about it, I guess. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything unless you mean it. I’m just trying to understand. I’m trying to understand who you think I am. Because it’s clear to me that you’ve decided you already know.”

“I’m sorry, but did you bring me here to berate me? Because if that’s the case, I think I’d like to go.”

“No, of course I didn’t. But tell me this, Finnley. Answer me honestly, too. Have I made a bunch of judgements about you without even knowing you? Did I decide I knew everything about you without putting in the effort to get to know you?”

“I have no idea,” Finnley answered coldly, peering into her drink to avoid his face. “I can’t read your mind.”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t because you aren’t anyone but you, and I know that. It makes me curious about you. It makes me want to get to know you more. We all have our pasts, Finnley, and they’re part of what makes us interesting. It makes me want to spend as much time around you as it takes to figure out what makes you tick. If that’s what you’re into with me, we’re in a good place. If not, we should just go home now.”

Finnley was gawking at Garrett, and she knew it. She hadn’t come into this restaurant with a particular expectation, but she hadn’t been expecting this. She kept waiting to get mad enough to get up and walk out on him, but instead she found herself wanting to stay. He was right, and she knew it. She’d pegged him into a little hole, which was something she would never have tolerated another person doing to her. It may not have been his intention, but his words had made her ready to shrug off the prejudices she still held about people born with his advantages. Right then and there, she decided that she was in. Clara and Elsie might have killed her for making a decision like that, but regardless, the decision was made. Once it was done, she felt the nerves and fears she had carried with her into the date melt away. Rarely in her life had she been called out so pointedly, but it turned out it was exactly what she needed. 

“You’re right.”

“Am I?” he asked, his own nerves still very much intact. “And in what way am I right? Are we seeing where this goes, or are we going home?”

“We’re seeing where this goes, I think. I think I might really like that.”

“And we’ll stop judging each other unfairly?”

“Don’t you mean to ask if I’ll stop unfairly judging you?”

“Oh, you know. However you want to look at it.”

“Well, however you want to look at it, I think we should just try and have a nice time and see where it leads. How does that sound?”

“How does it sound?”

“That is the question on the table, sir.”

“It sounds fucking fantastic, that’s how it sounds.”

And as it turned out, that was exactly what it was. Once the two of them had talked about the elephant in the room, mainly the fact that they had yet to talk about what they were doing, Garrett and Finnley were free to just enjoy each other. It was true that there were still plenty of things not yet worked out or even spoken about between the two of them, but there would be time enough for that. For now, the good food and better drink was all either one of them cared to think about. It was exactly the kind of lubrication they needed to give over to the flirtation they had been skirting around ever since they had met, and when they finally left the fancy restaurant of Garrett’s choosing, it was because the damned place was closing. They wandered out onto the street, both of them laughing and flushed and full of more cheer than any of them had felt in a good while. All of Finnley’s initial misgivings were cast aside, and when they began to creep back inside of her all it took was looking at him to drive them out again. She had no real idea of what she was doing, but she knew that she didn’t want their time together to end. Whatever else there was, and there was probably plenty, she knew that for sure.

“Finnley, can I ask you something?”

“I’m surprised you bothered to ask,” she laughed, feeling giddy and reckless and glad of it. “My permission hasn’t seemed to stop you from doing and asking what you wanted so far.”

“You’re right. So then here goes. Don’t go home.”

“Home’s where you go at the end of the day. Where else would you have me go?”

“I mean, don’t go to your home. Come to mine instead. Don’t let this night be over. Come home with me, and we’ll figure the rest out from there.”

She should have said no and she knew it, but when he leaned forward and kissed her fully on the mouth, it was all over for her. He pressed himself against her, which in turn pressed her against the brick of the restaurant they had just left, and she felt the length of him stiffen and press against her hip. It was all the warning she needed, and yet she chose to ignore it completely. When Garrett Wallace hailed the next cab they saw, it was both of them that got inside and when the driver asked, “Where to?” he was given only one address.