Page 91 of The Moment Promised

“You know where, Adeline,” he says in this low, raspy voice.

I sigh, setting the comb onto the vanity of his bathroom. “I couldn’t leave my mother before, and I certainly can’t leave her now,” I say, tears stinging my eyes because going to FSU with him could change everything.

I could finally be a nineteen-year-old girl in college instead of my mother’s caregiver.

She might be sober for now, but even if she stayed sober, Jason is here, and there’s nothing I can do about it with the little evidence we have.

Right when hope starts to light up my life, something always creeps in to steal it away.

I hear Finn shuffling from his bed, and when I look at him, he’s walking toward me, then behind me. I stop breathing when his stomach grazes my back. Finn spins me around.

We are touching almost everywhere.

His head is tilted down, he glances at me through pleading eyelashes. “They are both adults, Adeline,” he says.“Please.”

I would follow you into a hurricane if it meant being with you a little while longer.I peer down. “Why?” I ask.

His eyes scatter across my face, like they are examining every edge and contour. “Why?” he repeats with a sarcastic laugh. “Because I want you to.”

I’m in a daze looking at him this close up. “Why?” I ask again.

“Because.”

“Why?”

“Because I do, Adeline, that’s why.”

I force out a breath. “Well, do you want me there because I’m your best friend and you miss me? Or is there another reason?” I bite my lip, realizing the recent circumstances of my life has done something strange to my filter. Maybe I’ve got nothing left to lose.

He reels back an inch, not saying anything.

All my fears catch up to me in this moment. He’s left us in Authensville, and the worst part is there was a final moment of us together that I hadn’t realized was our end. If I had, I would’ve memorized every detail of it.

We agreed things would be back to normal once we returned home, and that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.

My chest caves, it feels like my heart is an avalanche. I know he’s just honoring the fling, but there was a moment where I truly believed he would want me beyond that. I push at his chest to leave, but his hands encage my wrists, trapping me in place.

His eyes turn glassy. “Don’t go.” His voice cracks. “I’m sorry,” he says, letting my wrists go and grabbing the arch of my back, pulling me closer. “I know you wanted a fling, but God, agreeing to that with you was the worst decision I’ve ever made.”

I shatter.

He holds me tighter when he says, “I knew from the start how much it would break me to go back to being friends. I knew but I still agreed because even a few weeks with you is worth the lifetime of misery that follows. God, Adeline, I wasn’t failing economics. I took the summer off because I was so miserable being away. Every day without you is like a fist in my chest squeezing my lungs. It was unbearable, but it let up the moment I saw you in the parking lot. I could finally draw a full breath.” He pinches my chin, angling my face so our gazes meet, “I know this is the last thing you would want to hear from your summer fling…” He hesitates. “So I would understand if you needed some space.” He releases me and takes two steps back.

A tear rolls down my face, then another. I whisper, “What are you telling me?”

He sighs, “I can’t even look at another girl because my mind returns to auburn hair, and blushed skin scented with vanilla.” He laughs without humor. “I have dreams where you’re mygirlfriend or my bride or my senile wife… Hell, my roommate even knows your name from hearing me talk in my sleep.

“I fell in love with you a very long time ago, Adeline.” There’s a long pause, my heart doesn’t even beat. “I love you as a person, a friend, and as the other half of my soul.” His voice breaks, “I’ve loved you long before I knew what the word meant, so when you said you wanted a fling, I talked myself into believing it wouldn’t end this way for me…” his eyes glass over but they never leave mine, “To experience what it would be like to be loved by you too, even if it was for pretend.”

There are a million words whirling throughout my mind like a tornado, so fast I can’t grab a single one. I’m speechless, but Finn keeps going, “And now—” his voice breaks as if he’s in pain, “I know exactly how you sound when we make love. You gaze up at me as if…as if you love me too, and?—”

“I do.” The words fall from my lips, Finn’s eyebrows bunch together, he shakes his head as if he didn’t hear me correctly, so I whisper, “I love you.”

His expression is frozen in what seems like denial. I take two steps, eating away the distance between us. I reach for his hand and place it over my heart that beats so rapidly for him. “This is what you do to me.”

His eyes are filled with emotion as he watches me, so I keep going, “You look at me and my stomach flips. You laugh and I forget everything that’s wrong in the world. And when you touch me, it feels like I’m free falling.” I step even closer, so we are pressed together. “You’re the only person in the world who brought light into the worst years of my life. You know me better than anyone.”

He moves his hand up my sternum and around the back of my neck, holding me tenderly. I say carefully, “I’ve fallen in love with you little by little each day we’ve known each other... I just hadn’t realized until I saw you again this summer. It was liketen years’ worth of love caught up to me all at once.” I drag my palms up his chest and wrap them around the back of his neck, similarly to the way he holds me.

---