I pounded the side of my fist on his door once then opened it and walked right in.
Fin was in much the same position as Rees, ass to the bed, back to the headboard, knees cocked but his elbows were to them, his head bent, his hands wrapped around the back of his neck.
But the instant I walked in, his head snapped up and he growled, “No way, no fuckin’ way. Get out.”
“You’re still seventeen, Finley Holliday. I’m still your elder. I’m your aunt and you’re going to fucking listen to me.”
He knifed out of bed, leaned toward me and roared, “Get out!”
“No!” I shouted back. “My nephew is not gonna grow up to be that asshole. No way. Not on my watch. You don’t play with hearts like that, Finley Holliday,” I threw an arm out toward the wall that faced Mike’s development. “You don’t ever play with hearts like that. She’s heartbroken, Fin, un-fucking-done.” I jerked a finger at him. “You did that to her. She’s way too fucking young to be dicked around by a master. You knew you were going to pull this shit with her, you should have never gone there.”
“Get out, Aunt Dusty,” Fin growled, his face stone cold.
I ignored him and kept ranting.
“Asking another girl out while you’ve been seeing one for months and doing it before you got up the courage to break up with Reesee?” I hurled at him. “Spending every second you can with her? When you’re apart, connecting through your cells every other second? Then you just scrape her off. What the hell?”
“Get out!” he thundered.
I crossed my arms on my chest and shot back. “No. For all men in the world, Fin, you explain to me right now how you can be such a dick.”
Fin crossed his arms on his chest too and snapped his mouth shut.
“Answer me, Fin,” I demanded.
“She’ll get over me,” he clipped.
“Yeah? You sure of that? If you are, you have not been paying attention. Because the earth stands still for her when you walk into a room. She’s fifteen but she’s Reesee. She looks at you and she knows straight down into her soul what she sees. And you cannot tell me that you, my brother’s son, didn’t look into her eyes as she was looking in yours and see what everyone saw. You cannot tell me you didn’t see what she was giving to you. So now you’re gonna tell me why you’re perfectly okay with throwing away that kind of beauty.”
“Shut up and get the fuck out,” Fin growled.
“No. You made a decision, you bear the consequences. You played your plays and any play you play affects a variety of people. I care about her. You broke her heart. Which means you broke my heart. And these are your consequences.” I leaned toward him. “So explain it to me.”
“Get the fuck out,” Fin bit off.
“Explain it to me,” I repeated.
“Get the fuck out!” Fin thundered.
“Explain it to me!” I yelled.
“I had to let her go!” Fin roared then I watched in horrified fascination as he turned, stalked to the wall and punched his fist right through.
“Fin –” I whispered, dropping my arms and starting toward him but halting dead when he turned back to me and his face held more pain then Rees’s.
A lot more.
Agony.
Suddenly I was finding it hard to breathe.
“Fin, honey,” I whispered.
“She’s too good for this ‘Burg,” he told me. “That school in Chicago accepted her and she said she wasn’t gonna go because she didn’t want to be that far away from me. What the fuck was I supposed to do, Aunt Dusty? Let her make a fucked up decision about her future for me? She could write bestselling novels or report for some newspaper or, I don’t know, all sorts of shit. All sorts of shit she,” he leaned toward me again, his hands in fists at his side, “cannot do if her ass is rotting on a fucking farm!”
Oh my God.
“Honey –” I started gently but Fin cut me off.
“I talked to her about it. Told her we could still text and I’d drive up to see her but she wasn’t gonna do it and it got me to thinkin’. About her. About how her Mom sold her Mercedes so Reesee can have this, her fuckin’ Mom who never did shit for her finally kicked in. And she did because this is important. This is her future. This is her life. I thought about how Mr. Haines never said dick but everyone knows cops aren’t millionaires and he isn’t even blinking in order to do what he’s gotta do to give Reesee the future that’s all hers if she just takes it. And what am I doin’? Makin’ her feel tied to this fuckin’ place and me. I do not want to be that guy who ties her down. I wanna be like Mr. Haines, even like her fuckin’ mother, and let her be free so she can fly.”
My heart squeezed and then it slid straight up into my throat.
But Fin wasn’t done.
He finished on a tortured whisper. “So I set her free.”
Oh, my beautiful nephew.