She waits a beat, her small fingers skimming over my rough knuckles. “Are you mad, I’m not staying with you tonight?”
“I’m not mad that you’re not staying with me,” I admit. “I never want you to stay if you don’t want to. But I am kind of pissed you have to leave.”
“It’s not that I want to leave you,” she says. “I hate us being apart.”
Me too, baby.
For a moment, I just hold her. But when I look at her, even though I’m frustrated, sad, and somewhat angry, I smile. I can’t help it. Sol makes me happy. “This is why it’s hard to let you go. If you didn’t want to be with me, it would be tough to hear and take, but I’d let you walk away because it’s what you feel and want to do. But you sitting here, telling me you don’t want to be without me, makes everything that much harder.”
The way her stare travels along my face, I know she’s not only listening to what I say, but sensing how every word carves into my bones like a saw.
“I wish me living with you could be as easy as that,” she whispers.
My lips skim over hers. “And I wish you could see it’s not as hard as you think.”
I’m making her feel worse by saying what I do―and I hate myself for it. I don’t want to guilt her into something she’s not ready for, no matter how much I wish she was. That doesn’t mean I can pretend like I never asked, or deny how I feel.
I’m ready for more. A lot more. Her moving in with me is just the start. “Will you at least think about it?” I ask quietly.
She averts her gaze, but nods. “I’ll think about it.”
“Yeah?” I ask, not sure she means it.
“Finn, it’s not that I don’t want to live with you.” She leans in close, her pretty stare begging me to believe her. “I want to wake up with you beside me every morning, and your face to be the last one I see at night. But I’m not sure it’s the right thing for me and my family. At least not now.”
“I get it,” I tell her.
“I hope so,” she says, her voice laced with so much emotion it tugs at my heart in a way nothing else can. “Because when I tell you I love you, I mean it.”
Her face lights up at my grin. This is one of those moments when life seems too perfect to be real.
So when the screaming starts, I’m reminded that nothing is perfect, and that life can be fucking cruel.
CHAPTER 22
Sol
Finn and I both jump, our bodies turning toward the sounds of those screams. It only takes me seconds to see what he sees, but those seconds freeze time and etch in my mind like words chiseled on stone.
Tía stumbles out of my house, barely clutching the metal railing in time to keep from falling. She’s the one screaming―the one crying for someone to help her!
The clicking sound of Finn’s seatbelt releasing and his door swinging open breaks through my shock. In the moment it takes me to unfasten my seatbelt and leap from his truck, he’s already tearing down sidewalk. I’m running full out, skidding over the patches of ice and falling on my knees in front of Se?ora Segura’s house. “Sol, que pasa?” she asks.
I can’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t know myself. All I know is that it’s bad.
I ignore the pain of my throbbing knees as I struggle to stand. Finn reaches Tía who’s now in hysterics. Between her sobs and her speaking rapidly in Spanish, I’m not sure how much he understands. But he understands enough: that she just arrived, my mother’s name, and that she’s not moving.
I didn’t run far, but my heart is already ramming against my chest and my breath is burning through my lungs.
“Sol?” Se?ora Segura says, despite recognizing the severity of the situation.
“Call the police,” I tell her in Spanish. I lurch forward only to slide yet again, vaguely aware of the growing numbers of neighbors opening their doors and hurrying out of their homes.
I make it to the bottom of my front steps just as Finn reaches the top. “Stay here,” he barks before charging inside.
The aggression in his voice halts me in place. Something is very wrong. But as much as I’m afraid to see what it is, I can’t do as he asks. I hurry up the concrete steps, stumbling when Tía snags my arm and pulls me back.
“Don’t go inside!” she yells at me in Spanish.
I yank free from her grasp only for someone else to grab me. Tía and others gathered holler to those holding me to keep me back. I push up on my feet, slapping away the sea of hands trying to restrain me and sprint inside.
The heels of my boots slam against the wood floors as I reach our small foyer. I slow to a stop when I realize that no one is following me, and that the house is oddly silent.
“Finn?” I cry out.
It’s like he’s not even here. “Finn?”
I start toward the back when he yells from upstairs.
“Sol!”