“Love wouldn’t have paid the bills,” Finn counters. “It doesn’t put a roof over your head, or get you to drama school, or give you the thousand things you should have to make a start in life. Come on, Eva. We were a couple of teenagers. How were we ever supposed to make it work?”
“So maybe we would have failed,” I shoot back fiercely. “Maybe it would have all fallen apart. But that was my choice to make. Mine. It was my life, and my heart, and you took that choice away. You didn’t let me choose you!”
My voice echoes into the dark. Finn looks at me, with such sadness in his gaze I could turn the clock back and wipe all this pain away. Make it so he never had to doubt himself or suffer. Make it so the last words he ever heard from his father weren’t cruel and twisted blame.
Because I see it now, the impossible choice he thought he had to make. I’ve been blaming him all this time for leaving me, searching for his reasons and coming up empty handed. I thought it was selfishness, or cowardice. I thought it was my fault, or that he just didn’t love me enough to stay.
But in the end, it was because he loved me more than enough, and too much to believe he deserved happiness. Everything in his life had told him that he was no good, so was it any wonder that when it came to that razor’s edge of indecision, he picked the darkness? The fear.
The road alone.
He wasn’t to know the burden he left behind. I ache to think of him out there on his own. I had my parents, Lottie, even Gracie, trying to blot out my broken heart in all the wrong ways. But Finn? He had nobody, and nothing but the life he built for himself from scratch, piece by piece, with only his own determination and talent to light the way. I wasted my chances, but he conjured his own out of thin air, and look what he’s made of them now. Success, admiration, the whole world at his feet.
He made it all happen, because that’s just the kind of man he is.
I hold him close. “Thank you for telling me,” I whisper. “I’m just so sorry I didn’t know. I wish I could have been there for you, helped you somehow--”
“Hey.” Finn pulls back. “Don’t you ever say that,” he orders me, his eyes blazing in the dark. “You were the first person to believe in me. You kept me going, even through my darkest days. You’re the whole reason I’m here, why I made anything of myself. I never stopped loving you, Eva,” he swears. “It’s all because of you.”
I stare at him in disbelief, but his words haven’t even landed before his lips crash down on mine; a fevered kiss that’s edged with desperate emotion. He pushes me back against the wall, and I take him in, taste every last moment. He wraps my legs around his waist, hands wild in my hair and on my skin. I kiss him hungrily, nothing holding us back now.
The years melt away and for the first time in what feels like forever, the ache lifts from my chest.
I never stopped loving you…
Finn carries me back inside the bedroom as my head spins and my heart pounds with giddy relief. He tumbles me back onto the bed, and then I feel the weight of him, God, that glorious weight – his body pressing me into the mattress, his muscular limbs wrapping around me, holding me tightly. Safe and sound in his arms again.
He peels off my robe, and exhales a slow breath. “You’re a masterpiece, you know that?” he whispers, dropping a dozen kisses on my naked skin, light as feathers. “I could never put in words what you do to me. I’ve tried a hundred times, but those songs, they don’t even come close.” Emotion rushes through me, and suddenly, I’m on the edge of tears. “Hey,” he murmurs, brushing my cheeks. “Don’t cry, baby. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“No,” I shake my head, trying to blink back the tears. “I’m sorry. I let you down, I’ve spent all this time hating you.”
“I deserved it.” He rests his forehead against mine, so I feel every breath on my own lips. “You’re right. It wasn’t my choice to make. And all this could have been avoided if I’d just talked to you. Trusted you enough to let you in.” Finn pauses, his voice breaking with intensity. “Do you think you can you ever forgive me?”
I cradle his face in my hands. That face that’s haunted my dreams, so gorgeous it almost hurts to look.
“I already do,” I breathe, and watch his eyes flash with raw emotion. “I forgive you, Finn. But can you do the same for me?”
He frowns. “You don’t need it, Eva. You never did.”
I open my mouth, but Finn swallows up my confession with another burning kiss. This one is deeper, more powerful than ever, and the strength of it takes my breath away. Dazzling and free, I sink into the kiss, his mouth on mine, his body moving over me, touching me, opening me up to the heat and slow burn brilliance that builds, coiling tight through every inch of my body.