Page 28 of Finn

I sniff. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

In a haughty tone, he tells me, “Did you ever consider that maybe I’m hungry? Did you even think of that?”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. You’re out of luck anyway. We’re closing.”

He looks at me, I look at him, and we both know he’s not here to eat.

So, whyishe here?

I’m about to ask, but then he says snarkily, “By the way, is your phone broken?”

Ahh, this is about the text, the one I ignored.

Acting clueless, I shake my head. “No. Why would you ask?”

Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes at me as he says, “Did you see my text from this morning?”

I nod and admit quietly, “I did.”

He blows out a breath. “Then why didn’t you respond? And for that matter, why’d you take off this morning and not say a thing? You know, if you didn’t want to wake me up, a note would have been nice, Sammie. Or are you just a fuck-and-run kind of girl?”

I raise my hand to smack him, but he’s too fast and grabs my wrist.

He doesn’t let go, and I hate that his touch is electric. It’s a reminder of the things we did last night and how good it all was.

Our eyes meet, and since there’s no real anger in his, I can’t stay mad at him.

Softly, I admit, “Okay, I probably deserved that comment.”

He lets go of my wrist and shakes his head. “No. I deserved to get hit for saying it. I shouldn’t have stopped you.”

“I’m glad you did,” I say. “Hitting you wouldn’t have been right. Violence is never the answer.”

Chuckling, he counters, “On the ice, sometimes it is.”

More tension dissipates, and I laugh. “Yeah, I guess you have a point.”

Raising a brow, he gestures to his Escalade. “Hey, can we talk in there? You said the restaurant is closing, so I’m sure people will be coming out soon. We don’t want to be a spectacle, right?”

“No,” I murmur, knowing we’ve been lucky thus far to be the only ones in the lot.

Since he does deserve some answers, I add, “Yeah, let’s talk in your car.”

We head over to his Escalade, where he opens and holds the passenger door for me to get in.

I say, “Thank you,” even though I simultaneously love and hate that he’s such a gentleman.

I almost kind of wish he was back to being mean and jerky.

He closes my door, then walks around to the other side of the SUV.

Jumping in, he says, “Oh, hey, I have something for you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, hold up.” He lifts off his seat and fishes around in his back pocket. Seconds later, he’s holding out a black elastic hair tie. “You left this on the coffee table, and I wanted to return it to you.”

The hair tie is an instant reminder of last night, and I’m back to remembering how his body felt pressed to mine,how he feltinsideme.

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