“But he wasn’t?”
“Oh no, he is.” Finn chuckles. “But he’s my kind of crazy. Doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, or sleep until the deal is signed. Once I decided to give him a shot, it was non-stop. We begged and borrowed studio time, put together a rough demo, then hawked it around to every label in the country. Nobody wanted to give me the time of day.” He shakes his head, a nostalgic smile on his lips. “We would get these notes, like, ‘singer-songwriters aren’t really hot right now, can he get a band, and go more rock?’ Or this one exec, out in LA, he wanted to turn me into a Justin Timberlake guy, you know, with the dance moves and baggy pants.”
I laugh, trying to imagine it. “But you can’t dance!”
“Don’t I know it.” Finn grins at me. “But that’s the business now. Everyone’s trying to make you into something you’re not. Looking back, maybe it’s a good thing I never wanted it so bad. It stopped me making bad choices. You know, fitting myself into a tiny little box just to get ahead. I drove Kyle crazy,” he adds. “Turning contracts down like that. But if I was going to do it, I had to do it my way. No canned songs or big makeover. Just me and the music, the way it’s supposed to be.”
I can see it now in the way he talks: there’s a new ease to him. A confidence, that touch of swagger. Back here in Oak Harbor, Finn was always a renegade, but there was something restless beneath the devil-may-care smile. There was a sharp edge, something straining at the edges to get out. The man sitting so casually across from me tonight is totally comfortable in his own skin. He knows himself, knows he’s been true to who he is.
And there’s nothing sexier.
I take another gulp of champagne. The bubbles rush to my head, but I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol, or Finn’s blue eyes still watching me, dangerously intense.
“Still, I can’t imagine it,” I babble, suddenly feeling off balance. “The fame, the travel. You really made it. One in a million.”
“I got lucky.” Finn dismisses my praise. “That’s the other thing about this business, it really is about being in the right place at the right time. Some Hollywood person happened to hear one of my tracks off the demo, and used it in a TV show. Suddenly, everything blew up overnight. We were all over YouTube, had calls coming in from overseas. You can’t plan for that kind of thing,” he adds, with another modest shrug. “You’d go crazy if you did, trying to make lightning strike twice.”
Lightning.
Was that what the two of us were, I wonder: a bolt from the heavens at the right place, the right time? If he hadn’t been there on the riverbanks that afternoon, if I hadn’t left that New Year’s party on the dark, icy road? So much about us never made sense; maybe all along it was more accident than destiny.
So now I look at him and wonder, would it be so wrong to feel that heat again, to invite the wild jolt to my system, the pure desire I’ve been craving for so long? He was the only one to ever make me feel like this. And if lightning won’t strike twice for me with anyone else, can I really just put the past behind me – or go back, for one last taste?
The waiter arrives to clear our plates, and I realize the meal has passed me by. I’ve barely noticed eating a thing. “May I bring you some dessert menus?” he asks.
“I think this one would hunt you down if you tried to keep her away from the cake,” Finn jokes lightly, making the waiter smile.
“Right away.”
He returns with a heavy embossed page, describing half a dozen decadent treats. Finn glances it over. “How about we get dessert to go?”
He catches my eye, and there’s something glittering in those depths that makes my pulse kick. Here, in the confines of the luxurious restaurant, I can play it safe. We have a table between us, and people all around, playing out the polite rules of a date with small talk and light banter. But someplace else?
The rules don’t apply.
My blood simmers. That reckless instinct flares to life, but still, I fight to keep it down. “I don’t know…” I say vaguely.
“There’s someplace I want to show you,” Finn says. His smile is intoxicating, full of wicked promise. “Trust me, just this once.”
It isn’t trust that makes me consider it, but something more elemental. A desire that melts around my limbs like honey, making me remember in an instant just how good it used to be.
How good it could be, if I let myself take that chance.