Finley Embraces Heart and Home (Love Austen 4)

The doorbell rings, and I’m still silently hyperventilating, staring at my story in Cress’s clutches as Maria and Rush enter on a thick waft of perfume.

I feel exposed, like any one line might give me away. Their disgusted laughter is already enough to deal with.

I can’t . . . I just can’t.

My chair squeals against the floor; I turn my back on all of them and race upstairs.

Mrs Norris.

If she wasn’t so evil . . . I just know she completely obscured my play from view on purpose. Ford wouldn’t have gone digging through my drawers for it if it hadn’t been for her.

“No more cuddles from me,” I tell her.

Her little lips lift in a smile.

Ethan rushes into my room, and I jerk my finger at Mrs Norris. “Take her. I never want to see her again.”

He looks at his cat, sprawled happily over my work, and crosses to me, his lips curving in gentle amusement, his eyes still filled with concern.

He wants to hug me and he won’t, and it makes everything worse. I shove his chest, and he rocks back with it. Let’s me do it again.

Just hold me in your arms!

“Fin. Fin, talk to me.”

I slump against the windowsill, and he perches next to me. He speaks so quietly, I almost don’t hear him. “You wrote a story about us?”

I swallow. The sun warms our backs. We grip the lip of the sill under us. “You were away for a year. I missed you.”

He nods, like this is understandable. How is he so calm about this when he’s the one who freaks out about touching me?

Because in his mind, that part of us is over. He doesn’t wallow in it like I do. He’s just made it a rule to move on.

“I didn’t think he’d find it, Eth. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

I struggle to lift my head and meet his confusion. “It’s not autobiographical, exactly.”

He shrugs this off with a chuckle. “You changed the names. Ford would have said something if he’d known it was based on us. I’m sure it’s fine.”

I shake my head. He’s not getting it. “It’s a fantasy.”

“Okay.”

He’s still not . . . “It’s everything I couldn’t tell you and wanted to.” My face is hot. “It’s everything I imagined you couldn’t tell me.”

He swallows. “Ah.”

“Exactly. It’s like being caught jerking off.”

“You don’t want me to read it?”

“And less, perform it!”

He nods.

God, when will he be comfortable enough—when will he trust himself enough—to hold me again?

If he trusts himself, he’s over you.

I still at the icy realization.

“I’ll convince them to swap the play,” he says.

I don’t want him ever trusting himself around me.

Ethan pushes off the sill and I grab his elbow, halting him. I let go quickly.

“I don’t think you can.”

“Sure I can. I will.”

“No, I mean. If you do, they’ll see its importance. They’ll guess the truth.”

Ethan absorbs this slowly, sinking back onto the sill. “Oh, shit. What if . . . what if . . .”

Neither of us have any what ifs.

I lean my head against the glass and laugh hollowly. “You’re going to read it. You’re going to act it.”

“Fin—”

“And I’m going to watch and pretend they’re not dreams I wish would come true.”

The mind I love must still have wild places.

K. Mansfield, Journal

The following weeks are hell.

It feels like they practice the play from morning to night without pause, all of it in my face, like the world laughing at what I secretly desire.

It’s not all horrible. Ethan acts his part with such feeling that I’m convinced he’s doing it for me. So that each of his lines, if they can’t be said in our reality, are true in this version of it.

It’s bittersweet.

And I despise Cress.

This afternoon we’re at the river behind Mansfield, the whole crowd of us, including Maria and Rush and our teen and pre-teen neighbours, Elinor and Zach. Those two hang out on the other side of the river, up on rocks, too shy to really join us.

Ethan swims across to them a half-dozen times, splashing them into squeals and trying to get them to come over, but to no avail. They’re not the little kids he used to babysit anymore. They’ve grown up.

I wonder how much Ethan and I have grown in the same time. Not physically—at least, not quite as much—but emotionally. Are we still teenage Ethan and Fin suffering the same fear of other people’s expectations? Or are we braver now?

My stomach twists, and I don’t like the taste of the answer forming so quickly.

Maria dives from a rock and resurfaces with a shriek and a laugh. Her bikini top has come off. Again. She glances at Ford swimming by, but he ignores her and continues his lap.

“Rush?” she demands after a disappointed half-minute.

Rush, standing in the shallows, wades in and finds the scrap of material for her.