Page 16 of Home Free

“You do?”

Aliyah nodded.

Elise took a bite of her open-faced sandwich. It was next to impossible to imagine leaving Boston alone, but maybe that’s what it would take. Maybe Julia was right and Finn was a crutch that would only make it harder for Elise to stand on her own two feet.

Her chest constricted with loss. Finn was the only man she’d ever loved. Everyone else had been a way to pass the time, a balm to soothe the bone-deep insecurity that came from her troubled childhood and the belief that she would never, ever be good enough.

Therapy had taught her that.

Therapy had also taught her it was a mistake to fill the hole inside her instead of healing it. It didn’t matter whether she was stuffing it full of nice clothes or fancy vacations or men. None of those things would ever be enough.

Eventually, she always came face to face with the abyss of her own emptiness.

Did that mean she would be alone forever? That her whole life would be devoted to healing to the exclusion of love and happiness?

She didn’t want to believe it, but she didn’t want to fall into old patterns either, didn’t want to wait too long, like her mom, who hadn’t started getting her act together until she was in her fifties.

All of which meant she was no closer to knowing what lay ahead with Finn — or without him.

9

Finn paced the floor in the garage, eying Eudorus like the prey he was. He had no idea how long he’d been at it. Time lost all meaning when he was in the garage beating the man who held the key to Fedir and Iryna’s murder.

It had become a kind of escape. A kind of meditation.

Here there was no ticking clock, no worry about the future. Sometimes he’d come to awareness almost as if he’d been unconscious, his hands aching, knuckles bruised and bloody, and have to remind himself that he was doing it for Fedir and Iryna.

For Petro.

The thought of them would bring him back to his purpose, igniting his rage like a fiery wind on a dying fire.

The man in front of him muttered something and Finn leaned closer. The tattoo on his arm, a tattoo of Achilles, now smeared with Eudorus’ blood, mocked him.

“Do you have something to say?” Finn demanded.

It wasn’t unusual for Eudorus to speak. The man often spoke words that were indecipherable to Finn. He listened anyway, hoping for a break, for one moment when Eudorus’ suffering would eclipse his determination not to give anything away.

The man spoke again, but the words were garbled. Finn took a step closer, craning his neck to hear as the man struggled to get the words out. He tried watching the man’s mouth, hoping it might help him decipher the words, but his lips were split and swollen, making it impossible to determine what he was saying.

It sounded like… boxgrove?

“What are you saying?” Finn stepped forward and shoved Eudorus’ forehead, forcing the man to lift his head. “Boxgrove? What is that?”

Eudorus’ eyes cleared for a split second, then shone with wild fervor. The only sound in the room was the man’s labored breathing. Or was that Finn’s?

Finn waited for him to say something else. Instead, laughter burst from Eudorus’ throat in a low, hoarse gurgle.

It took Finn by surprise. In the weeks they’d kept Eudorus prisoner, he’d run the gamut from stony silence to open defiance to incoherent rambling.

Never had he laughed.

Finn stepped closer. Eudorus’ close-cropped hair had grown longer in the weeks he’d been imprisoned. Finn grabbed a fistful of it and yanked his head back.

He looked into Eudorus’ eyes, for the moment clear. “What the fuck are you laughing at?”

It took a moment for his laughter to subside. “Your… your friends,” he gasped.

“My friends?”

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