Page 183 of Knot Unwanted: Part One

He catches me looking and grins. “You’re staring.”

I look away quickly, my face burning. “I wasn’t.”

“You were.” His voice is teasing, but there’s a softness to it that makes the intensity of everything that happened last night thrum just under my skin. “It’s okay, sunshine. You can stare all you want.”

I roll my eyes, but the corner of my mouth twitches despite myself. Finn has a way of making me feel at ease, even when my thoughts are a tangled mess.

He reaches for the tray on the nightstand, handing me the glass of water Jax had brought up earlier. “Drink,” he says, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You need to stay hydrated.”

I take it without protest, sipping slowly as he watches me. His gaze is steady, and I can feel the weight of it even as I focus on the glass in my hands. There’s something soothing about the way he looks at me, like he’s making sure I’m okay without needing to ask.

When I set the glass down, he leans back against the pile of pillows, his fingers idly tracing patterns on the blanket. There’s amoment of charged silence between us, memories of last night lingering in the air like an unspoken question. I can see him searching for a way to lighten the mood, to ease the intensity that has settled between us. Finally, his expression shifts, eyes brightening. “You know,” he says, “we never did start our monumental task.”

I blink at him, my mind still drifting in the haze of yesterday’s memories. For a moment, I can’t place what he’s referring to. “What do you mean?”

“The nest,” he says, gesturing lazily to the room around us. “We bought all those blankets and pillows, and they’re still sitting in the shopping bags downstairs. I think we were supposed to be building the nest of the century, weren’t we?”

A quiet laugh escapes me, and I shake my head, my voice small. “This is your nest and I don’t think I’ve got the energy for monumental tasks right now.”

His lips quirk into such a sexy smile, I forget what we were talking about. The light streaming through the window casts shadows across his skin, highlighting the scars that crisscross his torso and the ones that travel the length of his hands.

I’ve seen them before—I couldn’t not notice them—but I’ve never asked. Not once.

My gaze lingers now, tracing the uneven lines, the jagged edges where the skin has healed but never quite smoothed. They tell a story, one I don’t know, and for the first time, I feel the weight of not knowing.

Finn shifts slightly, his hand moving to rest on his stomach, partially covering the scars there. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “They’re not exactly easy to look at, are they?”

I glance up quickly, startled by the vulnerability in his tone. “W-what?”

“The scars,” he says, gesturing to his torso with one hand. “I can put a shirt on if they bother you.”

“Finn, no,” I say immediately. My fingers reach out, brushingagainst his wrist, stopping him before he can move. “They don’t bother me. Not even a little.”

He looks at me, his expression unreadable, but there’s something guarded in his eyes, like he’s waiting for me to take the words back.

“They’re a part of you,” I say softly, my fingers tightening just slightly around his wrist. “A-and I don’t…” I swallow my hesitation. I let him inside of me last night. Surely, I can say this out loud. “I don’t think there’s anything about you that’s hard to look at.” The words spill from my lips like a torrent, and I almost bite my tongue. My cheeks burn hotter.

Finn exhales a shaky breath, his head falling back against the pillows as he runs a hand through his hair. “God, Hailey. You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not saying it to make you feel better.” Panic shoots through me. “I’m saying it because it’s the truth.”

He releases a chuckle, and for a moment, he doesn’t respond. But then he shifts, sitting up slightly, his fingers brushing absently over one of the scars on his chest.

“It was an accident,” he says finally, his voice low. “Two and a half years ago. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and things…went bad. Really bad.”

I stay quiet, giving him space to continue if he wants to.

“The car flipped,” he says after a moment, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Ren was driving. I was in the passenger seat, and when it rolled…” He sighs, releasing a long breath. “He walked away with some bruises and cuts. I didn’t.”

I feel my chest tighten, my fingers curling into the blanket in my lap. “Finn…”

“I don’t remember much after that,” he admits, his voice flat. “Just the hospital. The surgeries. The recovery. It was—” He stops, swallowing hard. “It was bad. And after that, everything between me and them…it just wasn’t the same.”

His words hang in the air, heavy and raw, and I can feel theweight of them pressing into my chest. I don’t know what to say to make it better—maybe there isn’t anything I can say. But I don’t look away. I let him see that I’m here, that I’m listening.

For a long moment, Finn doesn’t say anything else, his gaze fixed on the ceiling as if he’s lost in a memory he doesn’t want to relive. When he finally looks at me, his expression softens, though there’s still something guarded in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he whispers, his lips twitching in what I think is supposed to be a smile. “I didn’t mean to dump all that on you.”

---