Page 116 of Hound Dog
His tone saying my name was like an arrow straight to my heart.
Wordlessly, I turned around and we walked toward each other, stopping short of embracing. Instead, I slowly lowered my cheek to his chest, listening to the rhythmic thrum of his heartbeat.
I’m falling in love with you.
The thought rushed into my mind so quickly, I barely had time to register it.
With Ben, everything had been different. Slow. On paper—perfect. Everything happened in a timeline that both my mom and Emily Post would have approved of.
With Finn, it was frenzied. Passionate. Messy. But so intense that I’d never been more sure of any feeling in my life.
I love him.
I loved him… and he had passed out when he’d learned I was thinking of moving here.
“I kind of sprung that news on you, didn’t I? That I was moving to Maple Grove?”
A chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Yeah. You did.”
With two fingers, he guided my chin up to look at him. Then, he pressed a delicate kiss to my forehead. My eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment, I thought everything was going to be okay.
Until I opened my eyes and looked up into his troubled face.
Our eye contact didn’t linger for long. Leaning down, he pressed his cheek against mine, and as he whispered, his hot breath brushed my ear. “I like you a lot, Haylee.”
Liked.
He liked me a lot.
That should be a reassuring statement, right? So why did I feel such a sense of dread?
I gulped, sensing more. “But?”
His jaw twitched against mine.
“But I think maybe we should step back. Take a break.”
Even though deep down I’d sensed this was coming, it still hurt like a punch to the kidney.
“A break,” I repeated.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know you say you’re okay, but you just ended things with Ben. Maybe we shouldn’t have rushed into this.”
Heat flushed up from my chest to my face. Anger and pain swelled in my stomach so fast that it nearly knocked my breath from my lungs. “This isn’t a rebound, Finn,” I said, maybe a little too sharply.
“If that’s true, then a break won’t change anything, right?”
But I was afraid itwouldchange something. Not on my end, but on Finn’s.
Finn took my hand and squeezed. “When was the last time you were alone, without a boyfriend, for any length of time? When I met you six years ago, you and your high school sweetheart had just broken up.”
I gulped. I’d basically never been alone.
Not for any extended time.
The crack in my heart deepened. I wasn’t going to be able to talk him out of this.
And what hurt even worse was that maybe he was right.
