“You have to pace yourself,” Dad says, and I can tell he’s smiling but I also know he’s serious.
“This is the long haul.”
Sighing, I say, “I know, I know.”
“How was fishing?”
“It was awesome. I’m smitten.”
“With the sport, or with the guy?”
It’s my turn to sigh. “Maybe both.”
“Good. Bring Finn tonight. I’ve told Salvatore I’ll be available when Release Horizon begins filming in April.”
Tonight is a party hosted by Dad’s colleague and good friend Salvatore to celebrate the launch of Sal’s new production company. Release Horizon is their new Oscar-hopeful-baby, the sweeping drama Dad told me takes place on—drumroll—a ship. I honestly can’t even imagine Finn at the party, but that knee-jerk reaction makes me feel surly and rebellious against my own instincts. If Finn is one of My People, then he belongs there, whether he knows anyone or not.
Besides, Dad signing on for a project that begins principal filming in just over six months makes my heart soar. It’s so optimistic regarding Mom.
I return to the dock to find Finn snacking on a giant bag of chips. He offers some to me, and I grab a handful. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I got a whiff of the salty vinegar deliciousness.
“Want to go to a party tonight?” I ask around a mouthful.
He speaks through an equally huge mouth of food. “What kind of party?”
“Movie people. Fancy. Martinis and olives.”
Shrugging, he says, “You’re my date?”
I shove another handful in my mouth and nod.
He smiles, wiping some salt from my chin. “Sure thing, Snap.”
FINN IS DRESSED and waiting outside Oliver’s when I pick him up at seven. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore for his meeting in L.A., but tonight he manages to look infinitely better. He’s more relaxed and has clearly been outdoors all day. Sun-kissed Finn is deadly.
He climbs into the passenger seat, grumbling about my tiny car, and then looks over at me.
“Whoa,” he says. “Get out.”
“What?” I panic, looking down at my dress to make sure I didn’t spill OJ all over myself when I chugged it straight from the bottle just before sprinting out the door.
“I want to see you,” he says, leaning across my lap to open my door from the inside. “Get out so I can see you.”
“Oh.” I climb out, smoothing my dress down my thighs, and walk to the front of the car. Finn doesn’t follow me out, he only slumps back against the seat and stares at me through the windshield. I watch his mouth say, “Jesus.”
“What?” I call.
Shaking his head, he says, “You look amazing.”
I look down at my dress. It’s sapphire blue—my best color—with a tight bodice and flared skirt that hits just above my knees. I’m wearing gold strappy heels, and around my throat is the simple gold arrow necklace my father bought me for my eighteenth birthday. To be honest, I barely focused on getting ready tonight, and it strikes me as a little funny that the night of the bar, when I wanted to look casually adorable, Finn teased me endlessly. Here, when I was distracted and chugging OJ like a hungover frat boy in my hurry to get back to him, he seems speechless.
When I climb back in the car, he immediately leans across the console, taking my face in his hands, and looks at me for a heavy, pounding heartbeat before he presses his mouth to mine. As soon as we touch, his lips part slightly and he exhales a quiet “Oh,” and then leans closer, taking my bottom lip between his. When I feel the teasing slide of his tongue, it’s done, I’m done.
My hands are in his hair, and I want so much more I’m nearly wild. I want to feel him along every inch of me. His sounds are so deep and quiet they’re like vibrations that go straight to my bones, rattling me, turning me into nothing but individual pieces of a girl: hands that shake, and blood that rushes too strong in her veins, and legs that push her up off her seat and over onto him. He reaches to his side, flipping his seat back with ease, and I’m crashing over him, legs spread over his lap. He yanks me down, grinding up into me and I cry out when I feel the thick press of his cock between my legs.
When he groans, the sound pushes a button somewhere inside that unleashes the frenzy. I don’t care that we’re in the car in the middle of a street. It’s quiet. It’s dusk. We may as well be alone on an island somewhere for all I care about the setting.
Feel him, take him in your body and feel him. It’s been too long.
He’s one step ahead of me, reaching between us to unzip his pants and shove them down his hips and I feel his bare cock on my thigh; the skin is paradoxically warm and soft around something so inflexible. His fingers fumble with my underwear, pushing them aside, not even bothering to take them off, fingertips seeking and finding me wet and greedy, my unintelligible sounds telling him where I need him to be.
“We doing this?” he rasps.
I nod urgently and he holds himself for me to take in. It’s all happening so fast, he’s sinking deep inside, and we’re gasping because it’s so good.
It’s so good.
His gaze catches mine and the relief in his expression makes me feel shaky and fragile, like blown glass. I’ve missed this, I need this.
I think I need him.
He sits up, kissing me wet and messy, groaning against my teeth when he’s buried inside and grunts these tiny perfect sounds of approval every time I rock forward and back, whispering, Like that, and Ah, so good, and, Jesus, baby, I can’t . . . He trails off, more kissing, more teeth grazing my lips, my jaw, my neck. More sounds of need. Just please . . . I can’t.
He reaches between us, two fingers so gently petting where I need him. A ragged groan tears from his throat, and I hear the tiny hiccupping sounds I’m making, begging, so close— “Oh, shit, I’m coming,” he gasps right when I’m falling. And I throw my head back and scream— because it feels so different—and at the same time he cries out, arching from the seat and wildly shoving deeper into me, my body clutching and squeezing all around him. It feels like forever that I’m coming and kissing him and his hands are on my face and his sounds are pressed into my skin in my tiny car with no tint on the windows, at the peak of the sunset in Indian summer.
I love him.
I love him.
I crumple against his chest, on the verge of tears. It’s a relief I can barely process—being with him like this again, even if it’s in the front seat of my car with the skirt of my dress billowing around me.
He feels so sturdy, his heart pounding against my ear.
Finn twitches inside me, his shaking breath ruffling my hair. “Harlow,” he says quietly, exhaling in a tight burst.
“I know,” I agree. “Holy shit that was amazing.”
“No . . .” He pulls my shoulders so I’m sitting upright, and I feel the press of him, still hard, still inside me. “Baby, we didn’t use anything.” His face is so close to mine, his eyes searching and anxious. “I don’t have a condom on.”
I groan and start to climb off him but then stop, reconsidering our attire. I really don’t want to Monica Lewinsky it into the party with this blue dress. “Can you grab me a tissue from the glove compartment?”
He nods, reaching around me, and somehow manages to retrieve one. It’s such a real moment, and in such stark contrast to the wild fucking of a minute ago, that I feel a little light-headed. Just as I move to pull away, he reaches for me, touching two fingers to my jaw and whispering, “Shh, wait, wait, wait. Come here.”
I lean in, closing my eyes and giving in to the sensation of melting into him as he groans, digging his hand into my hair to hold me close. His tongue slides against mine, gentler now. My heart is slamming into my breastbone from exertion, and from the teasing adrenaline of my impending panic.
“Are you okay?” he says against my mouth.
I nod. “I can’t believe we did that.”
“Me, either.”
“I guess we should go clean up before the party.”
We adjust our clothes and stumble out of the car. Back at the front door, he pulls his keys from his pocket, unable to meet my eyes when he quietly asks, “Are you on the pill?”
“No.” I try to do the math to figure out where I am in my cycle—I think I’m supposed to get my period in a matter of days—but I don’t want to linger on the potential implications of the unprotected sex we just had. I want to stay in the happy, jelly-limbed place of bliss and my newfound admission that I’m totally freaking in love with Finn Roberts.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell him, with absolutely no proof whatsoever. It just feels good to say it, and as soon as I do, I feel sure of it. It will be fine! Everything will be fine!
He nods and walks inside, leading me down the hall to the small bathroom next to the room he’s been staying in. I turn and look through the open bedroom door as he stops and grabs a washcloth from the hall closet. His suitcase is open on the bed, filled with neatly folded clothes.
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” he says. And then, “Well, probably not. I don’t know.” He nods toward the bathroom, indicating I lead us inside.
Turning on the hot faucet, he holds his hand underneath until the water heats, and then wets the cloth. “Come here.”
I watch him reach under my dress, and close my eyes as his hand glides up the inside of my thigh, around to my hip, and he slips my underwear down my legs to my knees. I gasp when he gently slides the warm cloth between my legs.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.” More than okay. Heaven. “It feels nice.”
He reaches under my dress with his other hand, wrapping his fingers around my hip and squeezing.
“I mean, you. Are you okay?”
“Are you okay?” I volley back.
He looks up at me, smiles a genuine smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Even if I’m knocked up?”
“Yeah. We’ll figure it out.”
I swallow, nodding. “Then I’m okay, too.”
His expression straightens and he blurts, “Tell me that wasn’t just sex for you.”
Reeling from this, I slide my hands into his hair and pull him into me. “It went way past ‘just sex’ a while ago. I think that’s why I wanted to stop. There’s too much else going on. For both of us,” I add.
He tilts his chin to look up at me, resting it on my navel. “We gonna try to do this anyway? I mean”—he swallows nervously—“I really want you, but not just like this anymore.”
I bite my lip, wanting to unload all of my angst about the last two weeks: worrying about my mother, using Finn for distraction, and then becoming so absorbed in him I feared I would want so much more than either of us could manage. And now he’s telling me he wants it, too. I close my eyes, thinking about the television show, and the stipulation that he not be in a relationship, and the thinly veiled goal to find him an on-screen romance. Now the easiest path forward—signing on to the show —would make a relationship between us impossible. Even if he passed on the show and went home to try to salvage the business, we’d never see each other because he would be working even more than he is now.