Chapter 19

Gia

Finn orders an Uber once we reach the station and by the time we exit one of my favorite buildings in New York, it’s waiting on us. I expected him to say goodnight here. To put me in the car the way he did last night and send me home. But he doesn’t. He gets in with me and my heart starts to beat just a bit faster.

The sweet tortuous tension is building between us, egged on by our silence as we fly up the dark city streets. The car stops at a stoplight, two blocks from my building. I don’t want this night to end with him. At least not in this way. Where I feel like everything I did was wrong. I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath.

“I’m glad I came with you,” he says so quietly that his words are almost lost against the soft purr of the car engine. I open my eyes and pivot my face up to his. He’s staring straight ahead. Seemingly at nothing. He’s lost in something. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen what a normal loving family looks like. I realize this wasn’t your ideal. I know you miss your father and wish it had been him there instead of George.” He blinks once and then angles his face to mine. “But I’m glad I came with you,” he says again and I can’t help but smile.

His eyes drop to my lips and that familiar conflicted demeanor crosses his features.

I want him to kiss me so bad that my lips are practically vibrating with the thought. My hand reaches up, gliding along the crest of his stubbled jaw, up his cheek and into his soft thick hair. His eyes shut briefly before they reopen, dark and filled with heat. “Gia,” he breathes. “I can’t do this with you. Despite how badly I want to. It’s why I sent you home last night. I’m just not that guy anymore. I don’t want intimacy. I don’t want love or a relationship. And that’s what you deserve.”

I shake my head. It is what I deserve. It’s also what I want. I know Finn has something dark about him. Something which makes him scary and damaged. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been at this game long enough to recognize the signs.

But I still want him. Even if just for tonight.

Maybe that’s naïve of me. Maybe that’s beyond pathetic and juvenile. And maybe I’m hoping that after one night he’ll realize that more with me isn’t so bad. But even if he doesn’t…

The car glides through the now green light and less than a minute later, we’re pulling up in front of my building. I can’t say anything to him. My pride is telling me to shut up. It’s telling me I shouldn’t have to throw myself at a man for them to want me. It’s telling me Finn only leads to heartbreak.

But when he steps out of the car behind me, I don’t object. I don’t tell him no. But I don’t allow myself to hope either. I assume he’s just making sure I get into my building safely, but as I twist the key in the lock, the Uber pulls away and that hope I was just tamping down turns into a million excited bubbles. Finn tugs open the door once I get it unlocked. He lets me enter first and then he’s directly behind me, his hand wrapped around my waist as he guides me to the elevator.

“I’m just walking you up,” he explains, but his voice his thick with want and his hand is pressing me against him in a way which lets me know those words were meant more for him than for me. I don’t say anything. There really is nothing I can say back. Stepping onto the elevator, he draws me to the very back, leaning me against him, my back to his chest. His fingers glide across my neck, moving my hair away from my shoulder and then his face drops into it with a deep sigh like there is no other place in the world he’d rather be. My eyes close and I take in a deep silent breath.

The elevator chimes and the doors open. This is going to quickly. I’d give anything to have the power to alter time right now. To make it slow instead of fast. To turn these seconds with him into hours. He releases me, taking my hand and leading me down the hall to my door. My heart is pounding. My breaths short and ragged.

Finn removes the keys from my hand, unlocking my door and opening it. Then he pauses, my keys encapsulated in his large hand. I stare at it for a moment, trying to force my eyes up to his. It’s not easy feat. I’ve been rejected by him a time or two already. Indecision. That’s what the look on his face says.

He wants to leave, but he can’t make himself do it.

He wants to stay, but he knows he shouldn’t.

Finn is a very black and white person, I realize. He exists within the realm of all or nothing. A lot of doctors are like that. They like their facts. They have an empiric way of viewing the world. Clinical. But ironically, he isn’t there with me. He’s very much in-between. Stuck there, might be a better way to phrase it.

Because it’s not at all where he wants to be.

And as is common with him, I find myself growing tired.

So I move to step away from his lingering form, just about ready to go inside and shut the door in his face when he latches onto me. I don’t even see him coming, but suddenly I’m glued up against the wall of my hallway and his large warm body is pressed to mine. His hands cup my face, tilting it until I’m forced to meet his steely gaze.

“This is wrong,” he says and I can’t stand that he led with that. “It is. I want you like I’ve never wanted another woman, but it won’t go beyond tonight. It won’t,” he says fervently and I despise that he’s so adamant with this and yet, I respect his honesty. I appreciate he cares enough about me to make sure I know exactly where we stand and exactly what this is. He doesn’t want me to get hurt with unfulfilled emotional expectations and the irony of that is not lost on me. “And even though I’ll hate myself tomorrow for the position I’m putting you in tonight, I can’t leave unless you tell me to.” His head dips and his nose brushes mine once, twice, before his forehead drops to mine and he holds my gaze captive from mere inches away. “Tell me to go,” he pleads.

“I can’t,” I admit, hating myself a little for it. “I want this too. Even if just for tonight.”

He examines me closely. Trying to determine if I’m full of shit or not. I am and I’m also not, but I doubt he can tell.

His eyes close and a shuttered breath passes his lips. And then his mouth finds mine in what is easily the most desperate and passionate kiss I’ve ever experienced. I detonate. A thousand grenades going off simultaneously. Stars dance behind my eyes and I realize it’s because I’m not taking in enough oxygen. I’m trying so hard to capture every one of his sounds, every pant he lets go of.

A loud rush of air sucks its way into my chest and he pushes me deeper into the wall. I hold onto him. Beyond unsteady. My knees weak. Our lips move against each other, our tongues dancing sensually, fighting for control. He wins. I want him to win. One hand is threaded through my hair, holding and adjusting my head however he wants it. The other is opening the buttons of my coat, desperate to get at what’s beneath.

My neighbor’s door clicks, making the telltale sounds of locks unlatching before it begins to open. Finn jars back abruptly. He smiles down on me and I feel that smile in the darkest recesses of my heart. The parts I’m trying to turn off in order to allow this. “Inside?”

I nod. I wish he would stop trying to give me the out my brain is begging me to take. The rationalizations are much easier to listen to when he stops questioning my motives.

He opens my door, allows me to pass him, shuts and locks it behind him. His eyes flitter around my apartment, going from space to space before they land on the purple present he gave me earlier. They change then. Growing more of one thing and less of something else. And when they find me again, his smile shows me everything. Everything he keeps hidden. It only lasts for a moment. The briefest of seconds. He quickly tucks it away, but I saw it and that’s what I cling to as I step into him, reaching up on the tiptoes of my high heels and kiss him with everything I’ve got.

If it is really only one night, I want everything. And if I can change his mind on that position, well, I’m going to give it my all. Pathetic or not. Right or wrong. None of those things matter in this moment. That’s the thing about lust. It blinds. It covers up rational thought with its own brand of logic. It obscures true feelings until they turn into something else entirely.

Finn growls into my mouth, sighs out my name and then rips my coat from my body. He slams it to the floor, followed by his own. He lifts me, wrapping my legs around his waist, hiking the hem of my short dress up until our bodies are aligned at the most perfect point. I moan, throwing my head back and he takes full advantage of my exposed neck, kissing, nipping and sucking as he goes.

“Gia,” he breathes against me, making my body erupt in chills as a shiver runs down my spine. He walks us across the dark expanse of my apartment until he reaches the door to my bedroom. But he doesn’t go in. He pauses here and just…stares at me.

And then something hits me. It hits me so hard and with so much force that I actually feel my eyes welling up and my chest clenching with a tightness which has me gasping for air.

I can’t do this.

Finn told me point blank that he doesn’t want intimacy. He doesn’t want a relationship.

He doesn’t want love.

And I think I might be falling for him.

If I sleep with him, where will that leave me?

“I can’t do this,” I utter before I chicken out and give into something that has the potential to ruin me. Finn nods like he knew it all along. Like he actually agrees with me. I don’t think he can do it either and for some reason, that makes me feel a little better. It makes me feel like maybe I’m not the only one hurting here.

“I’m so sorry,” he says with so much pain in his voice that some of that wetness which had been pooling in my eyes leaks out. “It’s not you, Gia. It’s not. This is all on me.”

“I know,” I say because I do. I know it’s not me. I know it’s him. He kisses me on the lips again, this time it’s slow and sweet and filled with so much sorrow it makes me want to wrap my arms around him and hold him close.

So I do. But I lower my body to the ground, tug the skirt of my dress back down my thighs and then I hug him. And when he’s done kissing me, when the sadness begins to turn back into lust, he draws back, pressing his forehead to mine once more. His anguish in his crystalline eyes cuts me to the quick.

“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else,” he says quoting Woody Allen and the card he gave me earlier tonight. “At least that’s the case with you. Because if it were ever going to be someone, it would be you.”

I smother the sob climbing up the back of my throat.

He presses his lips to mine once more, but this time it’s a goodbye.

“See you around, Gia.”

I smile, but it’s not real. He knows that’s it not real so I don’t know why I’m faking it. He’s not even bothering with pretenses. I can see his pain. Feel his heartache.

“See you around, Finn.”

He releases me, turns and walks out of my apartment, shutting the door behind him. And as the door makes that clicking sound, and I know it’s good and closed, I collapse to the floor. I acknowledge it was the right thing to do. So does he.

So why does it hurt so much?

Why do I feel worse instead of better? Empty instead of gratified? The answer is not something I want to contemplate too closely, so I don’t. It won’t solve anything to come to realizations in this moment. Epiphanies have no place here.

Tonight should have never happened.

Because now I have to find a way to get over him.