Page 48 of When He Saved Me
Finn
Hi
Baby. Are you okay?
Finn
Yeah
No
Three dots flashed over and over across my screen for a full minute before the next text finally came through.
Finn
Can I come in?
Are you here?!
I rushed for the front door before his reply had even come through. Just as I reached the door, my phone buzzed with his response.
Finn
I’ve been outside for an hour
I yanked the door open, and there he was. Standing on my front porch, his breath coming out in little puffs in the cold December air. He looked…lost.
“Baby. Have you been standing out here in the cold all this time?” I asked as I yanked him inside and shut the door behind him. I pulled him into me, rubbing my hands up and down his arms, trying to warm him up.
“After the gig, I drove around for a while, and then I parked on the curb. I didn’t want to go home, but I didn’t want to wake you.” He shrugged, his arms limp at his sides, his face pressed into my shoulder so I could barely make out his words. “I’ve only been standing outside for about ten minutes. I couldn’t decide what to do.”
“What to do about what?” I pulled back to look at him, trying to puzzle out the source of his distress. “What happened tonight?”
“My father… I don’t think my parents ever really loved me.” His eyes were hollow. No tears. No pain. No anguish. Just empty, as if he’d bled every feeling he’d ever had dry and there was nothing left but emptiness.
My heart cracked. Just split right in two. Maybe he was numb, but I wasn’t, and I ached for him. “Oh, baby. Come on.” I grabbed his hand, pulling him behind me down the hall to my room. I closed and locked the door behind us and turned to find him standing in the center of the room, staring into nothing. I stripped off his coat, tossing it on the chair in the corner, then nudged him to sit on the edge of my bed. Gently, I kneeled and removed his shoes before pushing him back to lie on my bed. He went willingly, moving as if he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.
I’d seen Finn angry and I’d seen him sad. I’d delighted in one of his rare smiles and thrilled to see his head thrown back in ecstasy. But I’d never seen him like this. As if the world had finally beaten him down and just taken everything he had until there was nothing left.
It scared me.
“Talk to me, Finn. Tell me what you need.”
His eyes found mine, and he shrugged. Shit. Maybe he didn’t know what he needed. ButIneeded to touch him. To hold him. To reassure myself that he wasn’t going to float away like dust in the wind.
Wanting him to be comfortable, I stripped him down to his boxers, then did the same before climbing into bed beside him and pulling the covers over us.
We lay like that for a long time, his back to my front, my arm wrapped tight around him. I kissed the back of his neck, pressing my lips to his chilled skin, infusing as much love and warmth as I could into the touch.
His breathing had evened out, so I thought he might have fallen asleep, but finally, he spoke. “When I was thirteen, I walked in on my father having sex on the desk in his home office. The woman he was with was not my mom. I don’t know who she was, probably some woman from the country club or maybe his office. She was laid across his desk on her back, legs over his shoulders, and he was pounding her, going to town. Hadn’t even bothered to remove his tie.”
His voice was robotic, devoid of emotion as he spoke, as if he was simply laying out the facts in stark black and white. I leaned up, propping my head on my hand so I could try to at least get a glimpse of the side of his face. I wanted to turn him to face me, but I had a feeling he needed to get this out without looking at me. Still, I brushed his hair back and kissed his temple as he continued, hoping that those small actions would somehow break through the icy shell he’d drawn up around himself.
“I was old enough to know what was happening, and I tried to back out of the room without getting caught, but I stumbled over the leg of a side table, knocking a book onto the floor in the process. I froze, terrified of my father’s reaction, but he never stopped fucking her. Just yelled at me to get out as he pumped into her over and over again. She never even looked at me.”
I kissed him again, this time behind his ear.
“I worried about the incident for days. Was my father going to punish me? Threaten me? Should I tell my mom? Did she know? My relationship with my mother wasn’t warm by any means, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She didn’t deserve to be cheated on, no matter how much of a cold-hearted bitch she was.”
