FULL NOVELXO Finn Rhodes Forever: Chapter 36
“WHERE’S YOUR TENT?” Liv asked as we loaded our gear into her car a week later. The sun was rising, washing shades of pink across the sky.
I straightened up and closed the trunk, holding her gaze. “I didn’t bring one.”
Silence stretched as we stared at each other. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, and the corner of my mouth hitched.
This past week had been different. She was different. Lighter. Less guarded. At the bar, she had actually smiled at me a few times.
In public.
She still rolled her eyes at me, gave me that long stare when I irritated her, but now, she did it with a playful smile on her lips, like she was enjoying it.
“That okay with you?” I asked, keeping my voice low and my eyes on her.
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, eyes glittering. “Fine.”
I took a step toward her, smiling down at her. “I take my role of keeping you warm very seriously.”
She suppressed a grin. “Good.” Her tone was soft but bossy.
I dropped a quick kiss onto her lips, stepping away before she could pull me closer. “Let’s go. If we start fooling around, we’ll never leave.”
She huffed a laugh, and I knew I was right.
“WE CAN SPREAD out more if you want,” I said to her that afternoon as we made our way down a hillside to a creek Liv had flagged on her map. I arched a brow at her as she leaned a hand on a nearby tree for balance and stepped over a log. “Cover more ground.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay.”
I glanced over at her, pink hair swept up in a ponytail, bangs fluttering around her face. “Worried you’ll get lost?”
She snorted. “Fuck you.”
I smiled down at the ground as I stepped over a gnarled tree root. It was happening, things with Liv and me. Behind the warm pulse in my chest, panic dripped into my blood, one drop at a time, barely detectable, and I heard the same voice I’d heard years ago.
The last thing Olivia needs is a guy like you dragging her down.
My gut boiled. Where it mattered, I wasn’t that guy anymore. So I had a few speeding tickets. So I ran my bike over Miri Yang’s roses when I was sixteen. Even the stuff the kids in that class dug up, the picture of me smoking weed and the night in the drunk tank—none of that mattered. That was the old version of me.
I cocked a smug grin at her, the one that she both hated and loved. “It’s okay, baby. Stick close to me, I’ll protect you.”
She tried to give me a cold glare but her mouth turned up. “This cocky thing isn’t working for you.”
I winced. “I think it is.”
Being there for Liv, supporting her in her career, making her dreams come true, cooking her dinner at night. Those were the important things. Everything else was in the past.
“Whatever.” Twin flushes appeared on her cheeks and she rolled her eyes. “Have fun sleeping on the ground tonight.”
I crowed with laughter and she grinned, eyes glittering in the clear forest light.
THAT EVENING AFTER DINNER, we sat by the fire, roasting marshmallows. The sky was an inky blanket above us, punctured by an infinite number of stars, and beside me, Liv wore my hoodie. I smiled down at her.
Her wearing my hoodie sent a ripple of possessive pride through me.
“What?” She gave me a strange look. There was a little piece of marshmallow at the corner of her mouth so I lowered my head and licked it off. Her breath shuddered out of her.
I quirked a smile down at her before turning back to the stars.
She stuck another marshmallow on the stick. “The Thompsons keep asking me for another date.”
My chest shook with laughter. “I know. Shannon found me at the bar and I said to talk to you about it.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a flat look.
My head fell back as I laughed. “Baby, this one’s all on you.”
“I know,” she groaned.
A thought flicked into my head. “We should take your parents out for dinner.”
She stiffened. In her lap, her hands came together, twisting. “Why?”
A knot formed in my throat but I ignored it. “Because I want your mom to get to know me. Or, the grown-up version of me.” Jen’s face at the class presentation appeared in my head, amused but not impressed. “When she knew me, I was just a stupid kid.” My gaze lingered on Liv. “I want her to be on board with us.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, studying the stick she was using to roast marshmallows. “It’s still new to us, you know?”
Unease threaded through my gut and I frowned. “What’s new about it? We’ve been friends since before we could walk. Your mom should have known we’d find our way back to each other.”
An unwelcome thought rose in my head. Liv still had reservations about us.
I folded my arms over my chest and my brow furrowed.
Her hands twisted. “I want to give it a bit more time. I’m not saying no, I’m saying… not right now. I want things to be easy.”
Her eyes pleaded and I nodded. “Okay. I get it.”
I had hurt her, and now I had to be patient.
“Thanks.” Her teeth worried that pretty bottom lip but her shoulders inched down in relief. Her eyes searched my face a moment. “Can I ask you a question?”
I nodded.
“Why did you go cliff jumping that night?” she asked, voice soft.
In an instant, I was transported back to that night. The terror I felt, the shame, the worry that she’d see who I was and toss me aside. I raked a hand back through my hair as I put an answer together.
“I was terrified,” I told her. “I, uh.” My chest tightened. “I liked you for so long and then it was real. A part of me knew I wasn’t good enough for you.” Our eyes met. “I’m still not.”
She frowned. “Don’t say that.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
She stared at me in confusion. “What?”
I blew a breath out, wincing at the dark forest. “I wasn’t drunk when I got home. I’d had two beers over two hours.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But you tripped when you got out of the car. I saw you.”
“I did trip, but that was because I’d left my bike across the path to the front door, and I didn’t see it.”
“You were slurring your words,” she whispered. “You slumped against the door.”
Shame snaked through my gut, and I swallowed with difficulty. My heart was banging in my chest. “I did that on purpose.”
“Why?” Her eyes were wide.
“When we told each other—” I cut myself off, not ready to say it again. “I wanted you to hate me. It was easier that way, Liv. It was just a matter of time before you saw me the way your mom did, the way everyone else did. So I left before you could leave me.”
“And now?” Her voice was quiet.
“And now I’m willing to take that risk.” I thought about her biological father in the bar. “I’m not Cole.” Anger weaved through my chest and I shook my head to myself. “I’d never leave you, never leave our kid.” The image of Liv with our baby was almost too sweet to picture, and the idea of leaving her again, leaving them, made my stomach churn. “Jesus, Liv. I can’t even think about doing that. Even if you wanted out, I wouldn’t leave town again. I’d buy the house next door and watch you raise our kid with some other guy if I had to.” I scrubbed my hands down my face, dragging air into my lungs. “Fuck. I hate that idea.”
Her hand was on my thigh. “Stop picturing it. That’s not going to happen.”
The tension in my chest eased a notch. “I fucked up, Liv. I fucked up in so many ways, but I’m trying to fix it.” I turned to meet her gaze. “Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Good.” My voice was low while I stared into the fire, arms crossed, and a second later, Liv pulled my arm out and took my hand. I studied our joined palms, fingers laced, the nails on her delicate hand. My thumb stroked back and forth across her skin as my pulse slowed.
“What did you mean by the way my mom saw you?” she asked, frowning.
The knot was back in my throat. With my free hand, I rubbed the side of my jaw. “Remember that time we got in trouble in grade twelve for skipping?”
Her eyes narrowed as she remembered. “Yeah. We got ice cream.”
I nodded. “It was the first nice day of the year.”
She huffed a light laugh. “Right. We were so stir crazy after a month of rain.”
“Mhm.” I squeezed her hand, remembering how we ate our ice creams in the marina in town, letting the sun warm our faces. When we returned for the last class of the day, we both got called to the principal’s office, and our parents had to pick us up. “Before you left with your mom, she pulled me aside.”
I repeated the words to Liv, words I had repeated so many times to myself. In the past, during a weak moment when I thought about calling her, they’d ring in my head. I knew that sentence by heart, better than my own name.
“Dragging me down?” she repeated, face falling. “Why would she say that?”
I tilted my head, giving her a dry look. “Come on, Liv. I got you in trouble so many times.”
She blanched. “And I willingly went along with your bad ideas. I could have left. I could have said no. I could have ditched you a thousand times.” She shook her head at me. “Finn, what the fuck?” Her eyes flashed with frustration and anger, and she pulled her hand out of mine before she slapped my chest.
“Wha—?” She smacked my arm and I let out a yelp of surprise, jerking back. “Are you mad at me?”
She stared hard at me. “Yes.” She grabbed her marshmallow-roasting stick and whipped it at my boot.
I squawked a laugh and threw my hands up. My mind whirled. I had just confessed one of my darkest, deepest secrets and she was slapping me?
“Why?”
“Oh my god.” She tossed the stick aside before closing her eyes and rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Because you believed her.” She shook her hands out, inhaling a deep breath. “I’m so fucking mad at you right now. All of this because you believed something someone said about you.”
“It’s not just Jen. Everyone says it. Even my mom calls me the devil, Liv.”
Her throat worked and she nodded to herself. “Yeah. I guess so.”
She exhaled before scooting closer to me. Her hand slipped back into mine and her head settled onto my shoulder, and the worry and tension that had me by the throat as I told her the truth began to fall away.
“I missed you,” she whispered. “I hated you but I also missed you, and I’m happy you’re back.”
A pulse hit me square in the chest and I smiled. “Me, too.”
“I like the cartoons. I save them all.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, hiding her smile. “Yeah.”
I switched hands so I could loop my arm around her shoulder to keep her warm. We were quiet for a few minutes, staring at the fire, watching sparks crack and arc in the air before fading out.
In moments like this, with Liv’s head on my chest, our fingers intertwined, everything felt right. It was like the universe was finally putting the puzzle pieces of our lives into place.
My mind wandered back to Liv’s bad haircut, the date with the Thompsons, and the ugly clothes. She’d stopped avoiding me after that night in the bar, and after tonight, when she admitted she missed me?
It felt like she was all in.
Wariness surged in my blood, and I really fucking hoped Liv didn’t have something up her sleeve. She’d crush me.
I turned my head and pressed a kiss into her hair, inhaling her scent. After what I did, I deserved it.
When the fire burned down to the ashes and Liv could barely keep her eyes open, we climbed into the tent. She reached for me, but I held her wrists.
“You’re tired,” I told her. “You’re half asleep already.”
She made an unhappy noise. “What’s the point of us staying in the same tent then?” She sounded pissed, and it made me grin. Maybe she was thinking about the other night in the bar as often as I was.
Fuck, that had been hot, her bent over and submitting to me. The number of times I’d jerked off thinking about that in the last week was obscene.
“Come here,” I said, pulling her to me so we were spooning. My hand slipped into the front of her leggings and she moaned as I found her clit. “You’re wet already. How’d that happen?”
“Shut up,” she murmured, grumpy, and I grinned and massaged her. Her ass ground into my cock and my balls ached. “Did you bring condoms?”
“No, because we’re not doing that tonight.” I pressed kisses up the side of her neck and felt her shudder. “When we finally fuck again, I’m going to take my time.”
She shuddered under my touch. “Rude.”
I slipped two fingers inside her and she whimpered. My other hand was under her top, pinching her nipples, making her gasp, and within minutes, she was an arching, moaning mess, calling my name and pulsing around my fingers, soaking my hand.
When she was done, I sucked her release off my fingers. She tried to turn around but I held her to my chest. “No. Go to sleep.”
She wiggled under my arms and I laughed as she fought me before she relented, sinking back into me.
“I’ll get you back,” she mumbled, half asleep.
“Yeah? How?”
“I’m going to take you on another date.”
“Pass. Your dates are terrible. It’s my turn.”
“I like torturing you.” Her words slurred with sleep.
I grinned and pulled her closer, keeping her warm. She wasn’t trying to get me to dump her anymore, she was toying with me. I liked her torturing me, too, and even if she dragged me on another terrible date, I’d gladly go just to spend more time with her.