FINN WAS STILL avoiding me—and frustrating me because when he thought I wasn’t aware he stared at me. I didn’t know why, but I wished he’d stop watching me because it made it harder for me to forget the fact that he knew so much about me.
Thursday was much of the same but I had a lot to take my mind off it. I was still being kind of a bitch to Hayley and on top of all my schoolwork I had my work for the Chronicle. Eloise’s director was sick so rehearsal had been canceled after school. I’d told her to just go home with Gil and I’d get a cab because I intended to stay behind after the Chronicle went to print to work on school stuff.
Really, it was just an excuse to stay out of the house as long as possible so I didn’t have to interact with Hayley about the upcoming engagement party.
Finn stopped by the Chronicle for about two seconds to drop off his photos before leaving for crew practice, and Jasper thankfully treated me as if I didn’t exist.
Once everyone had left for the night I headed to Franklin’s classroom. He had to close up the media room because of all the expensive equipment in it, but he offered me his room and I took him up on it. He left me to get on with it, heading home, grumbling under his breath about papers he had to grade.
Half an hour later, I’d gotten through my Microeconomics homework and looked up at the clock to check the time. Something caught my attention in the doorway.
I startled at the sight of Jasper leaning against Franklin’s doorjamb.
Unease crept down my spine. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Awhile.” He shrugged off the door and sauntered casually inside.
My pulse sped up in warning like it knew something I didn’t. “What do you want?”
Jasper snorted, casualness disappearing from his expression to be replaced by anger. “What do I want? An apology for trying to embarrass me in front of my friends last Saturday.”
If I hadn’t been so concerned, I might have laughed. “I made a smart-ass comment that everyone but you has forgotten about.”
He raked his gaze over me as he took another few steps in my direction and instinct had me rising from my seat. “Maybe so. But I’m thinking you and I need to talk.”
I began to stuff my things into my bag as my pulse started to race for real. “If you’ve come here to intimidate me, it won’t work,” I lied.
“Let me rephrase, then,” he snapped. “I’m going to teach you a valuable lesson about how things fucking work here, India.”
“No, you’re going to turn around and walk out this door,” a familiar voice warned.
Jasper jerked around at the menacing tone and relief moved through me at the sight of Finn striding into the room. He deliberately brushed past Jasper, nudging him hard with his shoulder so he stumbled into a desk. Finn kept walking until he was by my side.
“You okay?” he asked, eyes raking over me in concern.
I nodded, silent.
“What was the plan?” Finn bristled as he glowered at Jasper. “Get her alone and then what?”
Jasper sneered at us. “Are you insinuating what I think you’re insinuating? Please,” he scoffed, “I’ve never needed to force myself on a girl in my life. Do you really think I’d need to force myself on a piece of trash like her?”
Finn lunged for him and I was just fast enough to grab his arm and haul him backward. “He’s not worth it. I don’t care what he thinks of me.”
Jasper laughed. “But Finn Rochester cares. I wonder how interested Eloise would be to find out her loyal lapdog wants to get in her freeloading ‘sister’s’ pants.”
“You piece of—”
“Finn, don’t.” I tightened my hand around his wrist to keep him still. “He’s slime who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s also never going to come near me again. Right?”
“You’re already a bad memory.”
“We’re serious.” Finn stepped up to him, towering over him. “I’ll ruin you if I even so much as see you looking at her.”
“Jesus! Fine.” Jasper held up his hands as he backed off.
There was a tense moment when I thought Finn was going to change his mind and go after Jasper again. Finally Jasper made a move toward the door and I breathed a sigh of relief when Finn let him.
But he just couldn’t leave quietly. “Remember who you are, Rochester. Don’t go making enemies with the wrong people over a nice piece of ass.”
I saw Finn tense, but he didn’t make a move toward Jasper and the scum left us alone in awful silence. Finn turned back to me. As I gazed up into his face I knew I’d never been more thankful to see someone in my life. “How did you...?”
Finn ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Patrick got me after practice today to say he’d overheard Jasper making a bet with some friends that he’d nail you by the end of the night.”
My stomach twisted at the thought. “Do you think he would have...?”
“I don’t know.” His face turned red with anger again. “As far as I’m aware he never has before but I couldn’t take the chance.”
“I’m glad.” I drew in a shaky breath and realized I was trembling.
“I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you,” Finn said quietly, so quietly I wasn’t even sure I heard right.
We stared at one another awhile and as I fell into his dark eyes something began to build in me, swirling hot and thick in my chest. It scared me because it was a feeling I could never act on. I looked away, tears stinging my eyes. “Thank you.”
I felt his warm hand on my shoulder. “India...”
Despite myself, my eyes were drawn back to his.
He opened his mouth as if to say something and then he stopped as if thinking better of it. Instead he said, “I’m going to get you some water. You sit down for a second. I’ll be right back.”
My immediate reaction was to grab his hand and beg him not to leave me, afraid to be alone, but I quashed that instinct and nodded. I took Finn’s advice and sat down, not believing that one stupid smart-ass comment could cause such a horrible drama.
Finn came back with two cups of water from a nearby water machine.
“Here.” He placed the water on my desk and took his seat beside me.
We sipped in silence for a little while.
And then I had to ask, “So...you were worried about me?”
Finn heaved a massive sigh. “Yes.”
“But you said you didn’t want to be friends.”
“I said I couldn’t.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Yes.” He searched my face. I didn’t know what he was looking for. “I wanted nothing more than to be there for you when you told me all that stuff about your dad. And even though I said I couldn’t be the person you were asking me to be, I went home that night and for the first time in a really long time I didn’t feel so alone.”
Emotion welled up in my throat, constricting it and anything I might have said.
“You’ve never told anyone what you told me, have you?”
I shook my head, pushing past the constriction. “Not even my best friend back in Cali.”
He looked pained. “India, if I could change the way I reacted I would.”
“This, today, went a long way to making up for that.”
“No, it didn’t. What you gave me...trusting me like that.” He sat back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. When he moved them, he was looking at me in that soulful, tortured way of his that made me want to wrap my arms around him. “I... I’ve known Eloise since we were kids.”
I froze, the blood rushing in my ears, as I suddenly wondered if he was about to admit what I refused to contemplate.
“I care about her a whole lot,” he continued, “but our situation isn’t like other kids our age. My dad...well, of course you’re right about him. He’s always been that way. Very controlling, with a major anger management problem.” His voice lowered, thick with pain as he confided, “He used to hit my mom. When I witnessed him hitting her, she told me it was a secret that I couldn’t tell anyone. She was a doctor. A pediatrician. A smart woman. Now I find myself wondering how someone like her could have stayed in that...taken it from him.” He shrugged but I could tell it tortured him still. “When she was diagnosed with cancer my father was nice for a while. And then she died and he got worse than he was before, except now I was the one he controlled and used as a punching bag. Unfortunately for him I grew up bigger and stronger than him. The physical stuff stopped, but unfortunately for me the control issues did not.
“I was fourteen and my father caught me making out with our cook’s daughter.” He gave me this rueful, boyish smile that I felt deep in my gut. “He punched me in the ear so hard it was ringing for days. That I could handle, but the constant being on my back about dating the ‘right kind’ of girl started to really stress me out. So... I began dating Eloise to appease him.”
Now I felt something else hit me in the gut, and it was a something I did not like. “Finn.”
He leaned toward me. “India, I’m not using her. I mean, I am, but it’s not like that. Eloise is getting what she wants out of this relationship, as well.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You are using her.”
“I’m not.” His chair screeched as he pulled it closer so our knees touched. His dark eyes moved over my face and I sucked in my breath at the open appreciation I saw there. “I’m not using her...but we are in a relationship together. I guess it just never occurred to me that I might actually meet someone in high school. Someone I...”
That feeling in my chest, that thick, hot feeling, threatened to overwhelm me at all the things he wasn’t saying. “Finn, Eloise is going to be my family.”
He looked so forlorn it took everything within me not to reach for him.
“What is it you’re hiding?”
“I can’t tell you. Please, just trust me.”
Hurt and frustration swept through me in equal measure but I tamped it down. It wasn’t my place to demand his secrets.
My frustration was suddenly mirrored in his eyes as he looked up at me. “I wish things were different.”
But they weren’t different. They were the same, history repeating itself. I cared about someone and they didn’t care enough about me back to be honest about what was really going on.
I didn’t know if I was angry at Finn or just angry that nothing ever seemed to be easy for me. Everything was always a fight.
It felt like I lived in a constant clusterfuck.
I gave a huff of laughter. “Story of my life.” I shook my head, grabbed up my bag and, unable to look at him, said, “Thank you for your help tonight.”
“You’re not leaving without me.”
His protectiveness confused and pissed me off even more. “I’m not? Funny, it looks like that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
His familiar scowl was back in place at my sarcasm. “You’re also not going home alone after what happened here. I’ll give you a ride.”
“Finn.” I slumped, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Sadness flittered through his eyes before he managed a carefully blank expression. “I think I can handle driving you home.”
Still a trembling mess after everything that had happened, I gave in and followed Finn out to his car.
The tension that we’d shared before was nothing compared to how it was now. Now that Finn had in a roundabout way admitted he liked me and I’d realized that what I was feeling for him was attraction, the tension could not be mistaken for anything else but sexual.
I’d never felt anything like it before—it was the most frustrating, scary and exhilarating feeling in the world.
When we eventually pulled up outside the house, the guilt washed over me. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about Eloise’s boyfriend and he certainly shouldn’t be feeling this way about me.
I felt like we were to blame for the whole thing but I didn’t know why.
I hadn’t asked the universe to make Finn like me.
And I had definitely not intended to like him in return.
“India,” he said just as I moved to get out of his car. “I’ve never really cared what anybody thought of me before...but I really don’t want you to think I’m a bad person.”
I stared into his beautiful eyes. “I can’t imagine ever thinking you’re a bad person. I meant it earlier...thank you for coming for me tonight. I’ll never forget it.”
“This feels weirdly like a goodbye,” he said with a bitter twist to his gorgeous lips.
“Maybe it is. I guess we’re both just a complication the other doesn’t need.”
Slowly, so slowly my heart had time to increase in hard, steady thumps, Finn slid his hand over the center console between us and stroked his thumb along the side of my hand. I felt that simple touch in every nerve, my body reacting to it in a way it never had to the touches and deep kisses that had come before it.
I stared at our hands for a moment, wondering how different my life could be if Finn wasn’t Eloise’s boyfriend, if we’d just met as strangers at school, felt the inexplicable bond between us and were free to do something about it.
Suddenly very aware of how long I’d been sitting outside the house in his car, I fumbled for the door handle. “See you around, Finn.”
He didn’t say anything in return.
Hurrying into the house, I couldn’t look back, and I was more than grateful that I didn’t bump into anyone as I rushed upstairs to my room, where I locked the door, fumbled for my phone and called Anna. Not only did I want a distraction, but I badly needed to hear a friendly voice.