“Did someone take the guns?”
A humorless laugh. “No. That would have made sense, at least. Instead it was a drunk driver. He hit us from the side. Of course I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, so I flew through the windshield, landed on pavement.”
“Oh my God.”
“That ended up saving my life. The woman was trapped inside. Unconscious, I can only hope. Because all those guns—they caught fire. Exploded. The whole car, gone. Right there in the street.”
The pain in his voice draws grooves inside me, a kind of shared memory I won’t ever forget. Not his fear or his injuries in that moment, but for the woman.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says sharply. “I don’t deserve a damn thing.”
“You didn’t mean for her to be hurt.”
“I didn’t even know her name.”
There’s a hollow in my chest, whether from what I hoped this man would be or from his own shame. “I’m still sorry,” I say softly.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough. “I’m sorry too.”
“And then you became a cop?”
“Took a while. Woke up in a hospital outside the city, the cops asking a lot of questions. There was a time it looked like I wouldn’t walk again, definitely not run far and run fast enough to pass the physical. But I had to do something with my life, something useful, or I couldn’t see any point to living it.”
The difference struck me, then. How Stefano had become a cop to have power, so that he could live above the law. And how Finn had become a cop for the opposite reasons.
“Is that why you’re alone?” I ask.
I don’t just mean whether he’s in a relationship. There’s an air of loneliness around him. I recognize it because it’s the same one I carry with me.
He makes a rough sound. “I like people just fine. I just don’t want to get too close.”
“I don’t know how to be close,” I admit.
He’s quiet a moment, looking pensive. “We make quite a pair, you and I.”
“But we’re okay. We’re going to be okay.” Optimism. I would have to find enough for both of us. “We don’t need to get close to enjoy each other’s company.”
“We don’t?” He sounded skeptical, but also slightly interested.
“No sex either,” I add quickly.
He gives me that faint smile, the one I recognize from the road. “Of course not.”
“We can play a game.”
“Unfortunately I left my monopoly board at home.”
“Something without a board or any parts. Like I Spy.” It’s something I play with Ky, even though I have to play both parts. Mostly it’s just me pointing out things and naming them. Having a grown up to play the game with actually does sound fun.
He raises his eyebrows. “I spy something dark.”
The whole cell is dark. “You were the kid in class who heckled the teacher, weren’t you? Okay, smarty pants, you name a game we can play.”
“Truth or dare.” He says it like a challenge, like we’re already playing.
“No dares. The only point of that is to get naked, and we already decided not to do that.”
“Did we decide that?”
“I’m deciding it now.”
“Fine,” he says. “Only truth.”
“And I get to ask first, since I already told you everything about my life.”
He inclines his head in a gracious nod. “Go ahead. I’m an open book.”
“Ha! I very much doubt that.”
Finn seems casual enough when he pulls you over on the side of a deserted country road, with his quips and his detached amusement, but I’ve seen him pant in a nightmare, heard the desolation in his voice when he spoke of the things he no longer let himself do.
I want to know so many things about him, everything really. Each new bit of information I learn about him feels like a bead, one strung after the other. He’s a good man, but you know, ever since the accident, he’s had a stick is so far up his— I know why he became a cop, but not why he became a criminal.
“Who was your father?”
First there’s surprise. It flashes in his eyes, lightning quick. Then thunder rolls across his face, dark and ominous. “You’re a smart little thing, aren’t you?”
I close my mouth, feeling guilty and defensive all at once. The question sprang half-formed from my lips, spurred by a growing curiosity about this man. I never meant to anger him—or hurt him.
“Never mind,” I say quickly. “It’s none of my business.”
The storm cleared as quickly as it came, smoothed out into nonchalance so pure it couldn’t be real. “No, it’s okay. Fair question.”
“Hey.” I put a hand on his arm. “I’m serious. We can play something else. The quiet game. That’s a good one. I play it sometimes with Ky, but fair warning, I’m pretty good at it. He always loses. Possibly because he doesn’t understand the rules.”
Plus there’s less chance of me putting my foot in my mouth that way.
The corner of his mouth kicks up. “My father did the same thing I did. Only with less hesitation about killing if someone got in the way. Here’s the truly ridiculous part, I actually felt like a pretty decent guy, that I only ran drugs instead of people, that I mostly paid the girls I took with me and made them come when we had sex. Yeah, I’m a great fucking guy.”
My stomach clenches. He has so much remorse inside him, it’s impossible for me to hate him. Or maybe it’s because I grew up on the same streets as he did. I know that he actually was a great guy by those standards. And then he made himself even better.
“I’m sorry.” Sorry I brought it up. Sorry I had brought all this back for him with my middle-of-the-night escape from the city.
He continues as if he didn’t hear her. “The people of Provence. They didn’t trust me at first, which was smart of them. And then after a while, they did trust me. Bridget, she’s always trying to set me up. She says it’s time for me to stop punishing myself, but that’s the thing. I have moved on. This is what it looks like, steady, quiet.”
Bleak. And lonely. And heartbreaking. “I think it’s for you to decide. What you want, what makes you happy.”
“What makes you happy, Jessica?”
Unaccountably, this. Sitting in the dark with a kind stranger, spilling secrets I don’t even want to remember. The warmth of his arm under my hand, the solidness of his body beside mine.
He sounded a bit lost when he asked the question, looked a bit forlorn there in the shadows, and that seemed all wrong. I don’t know how to console him, but I can give him my company. He doesn’t have to be lonely tonight. And I don’t either.
I pat his shoulder. “Come on.”
He stares blankly but allows me to tug him down on the cot. I lay at his side, my arm slung over his chest to keep me from rolling backwards. Heat lingers in my body, leftover desire, but our touch is pure comfort.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper in the dark.
“Go to sleep, beautiful. I’ll watch over you.”