Page 117 of Hound Dog
Maybe I did need to be alone for a bit.
Or maybe that was just an excuse Finn was making because he didn’t want to look at his own issues.
“Is that all this is about? Me and Ben?”
As he shook his head, my breath hitched, burning painfully in my chest. “It’s not just that. I’m kind of a mess right now. I called my dad when I left you this morning… and it… it didn’t go well.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat, but he didn’t continue.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, squeezing him into a hug. “Oh, Finn,” I whispered.
“I just don’t think I know how to be in a relationship.”
Hot, salty tears filled my eyes, and when I looked up at him, he looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. “I can show you.”
His eyes searched my face as he let out a humorless chuckle. “You really want to be in the business ofteachingme how to be a good boyfriend?”
Any shred of hope I’d been feeling deflated. “You’ll never know if you don’t try.” Desperation wrapped my tight voice. When he didn’t respond, I added, “I don’t want to lose you, Finn.”
My chin quivered and one of my tears escaped, cutting a path down my cheek. Finn’s gaze fell to that tear, and he lifted his palm to my damp cheek, cradling it.
“I’m sorry. I wish I had it in me to be your boyfriend. But if I try to force myself to be something I’m not, I’ll fuck it up. I know I will. I’ll lose you as a girlfriend and as a friend. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk hurting you.”
Pain and anger shredded through my insides. It didn’t matter why he was ending this… because he was still ending it.
A hiss beside us jolted me from my thoughts. The water boiled over the rim of the pot. I launched forward, turning the heat on the burner down and pouring the macaroni into the boiling water.
Break or not, Finn still needed to eat.
“A break,” I repeated as I dropped a couple hotdogs into the other pot of boiling water. “Not a breakup.”
I looked over my shoulder just in time to catch his wince. “Haylee, that’s just a technicality—”
“Finn,” I snapped, slipping the cover onto the pot. “It’s still my birthday for another…” I paused to glance at the clock over the oven. “Two hours and four minutes. You can’tbreak upwith me on my fucking birthday.”
A smile twitched against the corner of his mouth, and he gave a solemn nod. “Okay, then. A break.”
I spun around to face him. The butcher’s block counter pressed into the small of my back.
“You have a lot going on right now, Haylee,” Finn said. “There’s a lot for both of us to figure out.”
That was true. Selling my mom’s house. Figuring out what the hell to do with my dad’s estate.Moving.
The question was, where the hell was I going to move now? Was Maple Grove still the place for me if Finn wasn’t in the picture?
“It'll probably take me a month or so to sell my mom’s house.”
The rims of his eyes tightened. “Then what?”
His stare was so intense, so sad, that it made my pulse quicken.
“I guess I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Haylee…”
I ignored him, cutting off his pitying tone. “I mean, I just inherited houses in LA, New York, and Paris. I’m sure one of those will appeal to me as a temporary place to live.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s true. I hope you’ll come back to Maple Grove eventually, though. Don’t stay away another six years because of me.”
He’d called me out. That’s probably exactly what I would have done, except that with Meryl’s age and health, it wasn’t quite so reasonable anymore.
