Page 23 of Finn Rhodes Forever

“That’s kidnapping,” Holden cut in.

“It’s not kidnapping, it’s hanging out.”

Emmett looked like I’d suggested Liv and I rob a bank as a fun bonding experience. “No,” he emphasized. “No kidnapping. Ever.”

I threw my hands up. “If you assholes are so smart about relationships, tell me what to do.”

11

Finn

“Look.”Emmett shifted in his seat at the bar counter, staring at me straight on. “Finn? I love you, man, but you have a reputation for being trouble. Even Mom jokes that you’re the devil.”

I glanced over at Liv taking a customer’s order on the other side of the bar. “Liv likes that about me.”

Even as I said the words, I didn’t believe them.

“She did when you were sixteen,” Emmett continued. “You know what grown women like?”

“True crime documentaries.”

Emmett paused before nodding. “Yeah, I think a lot of women do like those, but no, that’s not what I’m getting at. Stability. Responsibility. A reliable guy.” He gestured at himself. “Look at me, Finn. What do I look like?”

I surveyed his Oxford shirt and neatly combed hair. “A dork.”

Holden and Wyatt laughed, and Emmett shook his head at them. “Can I get some help here?” he asked them.

Holden cleared his throat. “He’s right,” he admitted.

“You’ve got a reputation,” Emmett went on.

“I don’t have a reputation,” I laughed. “Come on.”

Wyatt made aha!noise over the rim of his beer. “Remember the ladybugs?”

“Oh my god.” Emmett cringed, laughing. “The fucking ladybugs. Mom almost killed you. She was so embarrassed.”

I winced. Okay, yeah, I forgot about the ladybugs. I was twelve years old. The gardens outside our school had aphids, so they brought in ladybugs to eat them. The ladybugs arrived frozen in plastic bags, hundreds of them in each bag. The gardener had left them in the bed of his truck to thaw out before he released them in the gardens.

I’d seen those bags of frozen ladybugs, tucked two bags under each arm, and opened them inside the school. For weeks, ladybugs swarmed the windows in every classroom, flying into teachers’ mouths or kids’ food during lunch.

God, I had been such a little shit.

I sighed. “I was figuring out I had a thing for Liv, and it made me do weird things.”

“It wasn’t just that time,” Holden added. “Remember when you fell out of the tree?”

My stomach tightened. Another bad one. I was ten and cracked my skull falling out of the tree in our backyard. Holden had been a wreck because he was supposed to be watching me, but it wasn’t his fault. I was the one who climbed the tree after he told me to stay inside.

Wyatt snapped his fingers as he remembered. “The grocery store windows.”

Emmett hooted with laughter and Holden put his head in his hands.

“Right.” Emmett leaned back, laughing. “Glass everywhere.”

I had been sixteen, sprinting down Main Street in the rain. The soles of my skate shoes had zero traction left, and when I tried to turn the corner, I slid across the slippery sidewalk, straight through the grocery store's front windows. I walked away with just a tiny white scar on the back of my head.

A weird heaviness settled in my gut. When they laid it all out like this, especially compared to their accomplishments and where they all were in life, I saw myself in a new light.

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