Page 91 of Give Me a Reason

My eyes felt gritty as I reached for my phone. My heart flipped to see a message from Finn.

Finn:

Ireland told me what happened. I’m so sorry. Can we talk?

I set the phone down. What did we have to talk about? Sorry, I lost you your apartment and your job? He obviously didn’t get that actions have consequences, and we’d played with fire long enough. We were bound to end up in this exact same spot. It was unavoidable.

The phone buzzed on the nightstand. I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to forget everything, but I had a feeling he’d keep calling until he talked to me.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Where’d you go last night? Ireland said you never came home.” The concern in Finn’s voice made me nostalgic for him.

“Why would she expect me to?” I asked, my throat tight with emotion. It was harder than I thought it would be to hear his voice.

“I don’t know. Because you live there.” His tone was tight.

“It’s over, Finn. Everyone knows. Ireland’s upset, and Gia couldn’t even look at me.”

“Ireland’s upset, but I don’t think—”

“We lied to her. We snuck around behind her back. You never talked to her.” I heard the accusation in my voice, but I didn’t do anything to lessen the blow.

Finn sighed. “I was waiting for the right time.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. It was infinitely worse that she found out the way she did, but I have other things to think about.” Like finding a new job. I didn’t want to live in my old bedroom forever.

“I’m sure Ireland’s still fine with you living there.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. You didn’t see the shock on her face.” My heart was beating rapidly in my chest. I so badly wanted to give in, to think that everything would be okay. But these things never worked out for a girl like me.

“Ireland doesn’t dictate who I date.”

“She was my friend first, Finn. I betrayed her. I can’t continue to hurt her like that.”

“So this is it? You’re breaking things off?”

“I have other things to worry about, like where I’m going to work and live.” I sighed, the familiar ache in my chest expanding until it was hard to breathe. “It’s nothing I haven’t done before. I just hoped this time, things would be different.”

“We should talk about this,” Finn began, but I interrupted.

“There’s nothing to talk about. You’ll go back to your life, and I’ll go back to mine. I never should have thought it would work.”

“It was working. It can—” he broke off, and the line was silent.

Finally, I cleared my throat and said, “You know it won’t. How can we fix things with Ireland?”

Finn cleared his throat. “I’ll fix things with my sister. Don’t worry about her.”

“You’re her brother. That’s different. I’m the girl she trusted. I betrayed her. You don’t come back from that.” I’d never had close girlfriends, but even I knew you didn’t date their brothers. It went against girl code. We made things infinitely worse by hiding it from her.

“I agree. It doesn’t look good, but—”

“But nothing.” I rubbed my temple, hoping it would ease the ache this conversation brought on.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Aria, would you like some breakfast?”

I’d never been happier to be interrupted before. “I have to go. My mom is calling me.”

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