Page 143 of Haze

After a few more minutes of silence, he asks a single question. “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll brush the dirt off my butt and go back to the lab tomorrow and start analyzing the data I have. Then, I’ll take the findings of my incredibly flawed trial run to the board and see if they can provide any guidance. I’ll spend the next six months to a year reformulating, and maybe we’ll find a better option or better answer. We’ll have to run—”

“Kathleen. I don’t mean with your research.” Finn stops me from talking about the one thing keeping me sane in all this.

I’m starting to feel like a table tennis game with how much I’m shaking my head. “I don’t know, Finn. I’ve never failed before. It feels like some sort of sick punishment for lying to Thalia on Cade’s behalf. I told her it would be better for her if she took the year off. And now, here I am in the same boat, not even six months later.”

“God is not punishing you, Kathleen,” Finn tells me.

He reaches across the table to pick up my hand and holds it in his own.

“I don’t understand your belief, but I appreciate you saying that. I sure feel like somehow the universe or God or karma has my number and is calling in for the shitty things I’ve done.” I pause.

The waitress sets our beers on the table and asks if there’s anything more we need. After reminding us that our food will be out soon, she walks back to wherever she’s been working in the meantime.

When she’s gone, I continue. “I’ve never failed, Finn. I’ve never, not once in my entire life, done anything less than perfect, with the exception of having a wolf who doesn’t fit her role in the pack. I’ve hit every single goal. I’ve aced every test. There was a question when I got hired for the lab team if it was my last name that got me in the door, and while yes, being a shifter was a nepotistic part of the hiring processrequirement... it wasn’t my last name that got me in the door. It was that I worked my fucking ass off. To what end?” I’m laughing. I don’t know why, but I’m laughing. “It’s some sick karmic joke.”

I pick up my beer and take two large swallows. I think today calls for wasted before dinner.

“Slow down. That’s the only one you’re getting,” Finn cautions.

Shaking my head, I look him up and down in a quick bitch move. “I didn’t know you were in charge of me.”

I’ve let Finn run my life since my heat. It was easier. He was practically glued to my side. Sure, it felt good, but there’s no way I’ll live that way full-time.

“I thought you and I had come to an understanding that I am.” Finn tilts his chin down, looking at me with a firm, glaring scold.

Shaking my head, I put the beer glass down for a moment. I tilt my head, further expanding the look of my confusion. “You can’t be serious. Things said in heat can’t be taken seriously. You marked me. That doesn’t give you permission to micromanage my life. The last week was fun, but it’s not sustainable.”

“I’m as serious as a heart attack, Kathleen.” His voice is stern.

His words make my wolf prickle against my skin, looking to appease the angry and grumpy noise he made.

I shake my head. What is this day coming to? First school and now this? “I’ve evidently let you get away with this idea of grandeur so long that you actually think I’ll be perfect and submissive all the time. It’s bad enough that I have to live with her. You can’t expect me to just...”

Our waitress comes back with our food. I hope the pizza is a big enough distraction to turn the conversation away from me.

“Before you keep ranting about what you can and can’t do. Perhaps, if you’d listen for a moment.” Finn pauses, catching my eyes. “I don’t have sex when drunk, and I would much rather blow off steam that way with you than call for a cab to get us home.”

I bite my lips together.

After a moment, I come up with a witty answer. “In my defense, I’ve never had that as an option to blow off steam before.”

When I shiver, Finn moves from his chair around the table and sits next to me on the bench.

He wraps an arm around me and whispers in my ear, “Getting drunk is an option for forgetting your problems, and if you’re dead set on getting drunk, I’ll be your sober cab. But it also means I’ll forgo all my ideas to help you relax.”

The beer glass on the table is alluring, but I’m flooding my panties, and Finn knows it.

I look at him. “I can still finish this one? Because you haven’t had the pizza, and with the beer, it’s really an experience together.”

He nuzzles in and, with a gruff growl, further ignites my body. “Yes, faolan. You can finish this one.”

Cutting my pizza into bite-sized pieces only gets a single raised eyebrow from Finn, but it allows me to eat it with a fork while I lean against him, looking at the river. He eats his slice like, I suppose, a normal person.

Halfway through my second piece, I whisper, “I got kicked out of school.”

“I know, faolan. You’ll be okay,” Finn assures me.

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